or who might wish ill to the cause of the Reformation, and take such means to scandalize it.  London, says Latimer, was never so full of ill; charity was waxen cold in it.  “Oh, London, London,” cries this earnest old man, “repent! repent! for I think God more displeased with London, than he ever was with the city of Nebo."[9] Such was the profligacy of its youth, that he marvels the earth gaped not to swallow it up.  There were many that denied the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a heaven or a hell.[10] Manly sports and pastimes had been exchanged for the gaming-table.  Divorces, even amongst the inferior classes of society, were become common; for marriage being declared no sacrament, probably many chose to interpret the declaration to mean that it was no bond.[11] The elementary bread of the eucharist was expressed by base and indecent nicknames.[12] The alehouses were filled with profane disputants upon the mysteries of our faith, and the dissolute scoffers made songs upon them:[13] “Green Sleeves,” “Maggy Lauder,” and “John Anderson my Jo,” with numbers more, were all of this class of compositions; and psalms (in this instance, perhaps, without any intentional levity) were set to hornpipes.  To crown all, a multitude of disaffected persons were at large in the country, speaking evil of dignities, and exciting the idle, the hungry, and the aggrieved, to riot and rebellion; bearding the government with audacious demands of changes, both civil and ecclesiastical, to be made at their pleasure, couched in language the most imperative and insolent; “such,” Cranmer observes in his answer to them, “as was not at any time used of subjects to their prince since the beginning of the world."[14]

    [4] Some Account of Shrewsbury, p. 128.

    [5] See the Petition of the Inhabitants of Holm Cultram, in
        Cumberland, to Cromwell, praying for the preservation of the
        abbey church there A.D. 1538.  Ellis’s Original Letters, ii. 89.

    [6] Spelman, Hist. and Fate of Sacrilege, p. 202.  The extract is
        from a letter of John Bale to Leland.

    [7] Homily on keeping clean of Churches.

    [8] Strype’s Cranmer, 177.

[9] Latimer’s Sermons, i.60, 61.—­Id. i. 176.

[10] Id. i. 167.

[11] Latimer’s Sermons, i; 176, 220.

[12] Strype’s Cranmer, 175.

[13] Fox, 1048.  Percy’s Reliques of English Poetry, ii 291. 
Shakspeare’s Winter’s Tale, act iv. sc. 2.

[14] Strype, Append, 88.

Fox’s Book of Martyrs.

For a history of that noble army of martyrs of whom it now becomes our business to speak, we are indebted to John Fox, himself an exile in Mary’s reign, and like most of those who then lived abroad, a friend of the Puritan principles at home.  He had access to the archives and registers of the bishops; Grindal, who was himself a great collector of such materials, amongst others, supplying him with what he knew; and