Taylor of Hadley, William Hunter, and Stephen Harwood, ferreting out all suspected of heresy, and confining them in the foulest jails,—­burning even little children.  Mary even takes measures to introduce the Inquisition and restore the monasteries.  Everywhere are scaffolds and burnings.  In three years nearly three hundred people were burned alive, often with green wood,—­a small number compared with those who were executed and assassinated in France, about this time, by Catherine de’ Medicis, the Guises, and Charles IX.

In those dreadful persecutions which began with the accession of Mary, it was impossible that Cranmer should escape.  In spite of his dignity, rank, age, and services, he could hope for no favor or indulgence from that morose woman in whose sapless bosom no compassion for the Protestants ever found admission, and still less from those cruel, mercenary, bigoted prelates whom she selected for her ministers.  It was not customary in that age for the Roman Church to spare heretics, whether high or low.  Would it forgive him who had overturned the consecrated altars, displaced the ritual of a thousand years, and revolted from the authority of the supreme head of the Christian world?  Would Mary suffer him to pass unpunished who had displaced her mother from the nuptial bed, and pronounced her own birth to be stained with an ignominious blot, and who had exalted a rival to the throne?  And Gardiner and Bonner, too, those bigoted prelates and ministers who would have sent to the flames an unoffending woman if she denied the authority of the Pope, were not the men to suffer him to escape who had not only overturned the papal power in England, but had deprived them of their sees and sent them to the Tower.  No matter how decent the forms of law or respectful the agents of the crown, Cranmer had not the shadow of a hope; and hence he was certainly weak, to say the least, to trust to any deceitful promises made to him.  What his enemies were bent upon was his recantation, as preliminary to his execution; and he should have been firm, both for his cause, and because his martyrdom was sure.  In an evil hour he listened to the voice of the seducer.  Both life and dignities were promised if he would recant.  “Confounded, heart-broken, old,” the love of life and the fear of death were stronger for a time than the power of conscience or dignity of character.  Six several times was he induced to recant the doctrines he had preached, and profess an allegiance which could only be a solemn mockery.

True, Cranmer came to himself; he perceived that he was mocked, and felt both grief and shame in view of his apostasy.  His last hours were glorious.  Never did a good man more splendidly redeem his memory from shame.  Being permitted to address the people before his execution,—­with the hope on the part of his tormentors that he would publicly confirm his recantation,—­he first supplicated the mercy and forgiveness of Almighty God, and concluded