ship, and certainly, a much stronger resemblance to the Passover scene in the Upper Room at Jerusalem, than could be found in the administration of the sacrament in St. Paul's cathedral of that day, to say nothing of the pompous mass in former times celebrated within those venerable walls.

Our Nonconformist fathers met and separated in safety on the occasion just described, but there were liers in wait, who not long after discovered their proceedings. Besides Mr. Fox's ordinary, houses in Aldgate and Smithfield are mentioned; but above all other places of meeting, the mind lingers with interest over the quiet close, not far from the village of Islington, where they were wont to meet early in the morning on the summer Sabbaths, the identical spot where the congregation in Mary's time used to assemble, and where the occurrence related in the last chapter took place. As the dew sparkled on the grass, and the birds twittered on the hedges, and the sun threw his brightness over the far-spreading landscape, the scene would wear, in the eyes of these confessors, a robe of holier beauty, as they thought of their martyred fathers, who had knelt on the same greensward, and studied their Bible under the shadow of the same old trees. They viewed that congregation some thirty years before, as related to their own by certain common principles and usages; they often alluded to it in their examinations and writings, and no doubt treasured up many a holy legend of heroism and suffering, which they had heard from eye-witnesses in their younger days, and which they now loved to relate to their children as they sat in the winter evenings round their spacious old English hearths. One Sunday morning they were tracked by their enemies to the close at Islington, where fifty-six were apprehended, and sent two by two to the jails in London, which afterwards received inmates

from other places where the Congregation had been found worshipping. Many persons of the same principles had been committed to prison before, and a considerable multitude might have been numbered of those who in this way suffered for their non-conformity.

"Some of us," said they, in their petition to the Council, "have now been more than five years in prison; yea, four of these five years in close prison, with miserable usage, as Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood at this present in the Fleet. Others they have cast into their limbo at Newgate, laden with as many irons as they could bear; other into the dangerous and loathsome jail, among the most facinorous and vile persons, where it is lamentable to relate how many of these innocents have perished within these five years, and of these some aged widows, aged men, and young maidens; where so many as the infection hath spared still lie in woful distress, like to follow their fellows if speedy redress be not had. Others of us have been grievously beaten with cudgels in the prisons, as at Bridewell, and cast into a place called Little-ease there, for refusing to come to their chapel service, in which prison they and others of us not long after ended their lives. Their manner of pursuing and apprehending us is with no less violence and outrage. Their pursuivants, with assistants, break into our houses at all hours of the night. There they break up, ransack, rifle, and make havoc at their pleasure, under pretext of searching for seditious and unlawful books. The husbands in the deep of the night they have plucked out of their beds from their wives, and haled them unjustly to prison."

"We profess," they add in another document, "the same faith and truth of the Gospel, which her Majesty and your honors, the whole land, and all the reformed Churches under heaven this day do hold and maintain;

we go beyond them, being our only fault, even in the judgments of our tyrannical and most savage enemies, in the detestation of all Popery, that most fearful anti-Christian religion, and draw nearer in some points by our practice unto Christ's holy order and institutions. We have as good warrant to reject the ordinances of Antichrist, and labor for the recovery of Christ's holy ordinances, as our fathers in Queen Mary's days. Are we malefactors? Are we any more undutiful to our prince? Maintain we any errors? Let us then be judicially convicted thereof and delivered to the civil authority. We crave for all of us but liberty either to die openly, or to live openly in the land of our nativity." The latter request was denied to all, the former granted to some. On the 21st March,

1593, Barrowe, Greenwood, and others, were indicted at the Old Bailey upon the statute of 23 Elizabeth, for writing and publishing sundry seditious books and pamphlets tending to the slander of the Queen's government, whereas the book complained of in their trial did not at all relate to the Queen or her government, but treated of religious questions, and was entitled "A Brief Dissection of the False Church."* The courage with which conscious integrity filled their hearts greatly annoyed their enemies, and they bitterly complain that none of them showed any token of recognition of their offences, and prayer of mercy for the same." Barrowe and Greenwood were to suffer as examples, and the 24th of March was fixed for their execution. Early in the morning they were

*The examination of Barrowe, Greenwood, and the rest are preserved in the Egerton Papers, Camden Society's publications, p. 167, from which it appears that all the specific accusations against them related simply to their religious opinions.

† An exception was made on behalf of Scipio Bellet, who recanted, and expressed great sorrow for what he had done.-Strype's Whitgift, 414.

brought out of their dungeon, their irons were smitten off, but just as they were about being bound to the cart which was to convey them to Tyburn, a reprieve arrived. The hope of life was re-awakened in minds fully prepared for death, but the reprieve had come only that the sufferings of the martyrs might be prolonged by attempts to provoke a conference, and to persuade them to recant. They were firm to their principles, and therefore their doom was sealed.

On the last day of March, 1593, very early in the morning, as spring was breathing its fresh breezes about the environs of London, the mournful procession of the death-cart, with the condemned and the attendant officers, passed under the archway of Newgate, and slowly ascended Oldburn Hill. It was not studded with buildings and crowded with bustle as it is at the present day, but from the windows in the picturesque gables which then stood beside the road, there were not a few who looked on the sad procession, and pitied the fate of men so unjustly treated. As the train moved along, persons came out and joined it, to witness the end, if not to sympathize in the sufferings of the martyr pair. They enter the St. George's-in-the-Fields, where the fresh grass springing up after the winter snows, and the budding leaves of the hedgerows, symbols of life and mementoes of cheerful youth, bringing joy to the hearts of multitudes, are rather calculated to fill with melancholy feelings the breasts of the two condemned, were it not that Christian hope tells them of a rich and everlasting spring-time in the paradise of God, soon to open on their eyes. They reach the gallows-tree at Tyburn, where the vilest malefactors had paid the penalty of their offences, and patiently do they undergo, at the hands of the common hangman, the horrid ceremony of adjusting the ropes to their necks.

A large crowd had by this time gathered, notwithstanding the precautions to keep the tragedy as secret as possible. They are permitted, according to the common custom in such cases, to speak for a few moments, when they express their loyalty to the queen, their submission to the civil government, and their sorrow for any hasty irreverent expressions which in the heat of controversy may have escaped their lips. They declare their continued faith in the doctrines for which they are about to suffer, and entreat the people around them to embrace those principles only as they appear to be the teaching of the word of God. They then offer a prayer for her Majesty, the magistrates, and the people, not forgetting their bitterest enemies. A breathless silence pervades the crowd, as every eye is fixed on the men standing beneath the fearful beam, when a faint buzz is heard in the distance, a commotion follows on the outskirts of the dense mass, and a messenger, hurrying his way through the opening ranks, speedily approaches the place of death. The execution is stayed-he has brought a reprieve; the men, though ready to die, feel the life-blood, which had begun already to curdle in their veins, throbbing afresh. They are grateful for the royal mercy, and bless the name of Elizabeth; the multitude partake in the sentiment, and rend the air with acclamations. They return through the green fields and down Oldburn Hill, accompanied by the people, whose rejoicings on their behalf awaken a sympathetic response on the part of others who line the streets and lanes to witness this strange spectacle of men brought back from the gates of the grave. The sight harmonizes with the season, and the vernal sun seems to rejoice as he sheds his light on the returning procession. Barrowe, on re-entering his prison, sits down to write to a distinguished relative, describes the scene which has