or subterfuge, chose, with deliberate nobleness, rather to die than to perjure themselves.  This is no place to enter on the great question of the justice or necessity of those executions; but the story of the so-called martyrdoms convulsed the Catholic world.  The Pope shook upon his throne; the shuttle of diplomatic intrigue stood still; diplomatists who had lived so long in lies that the whole life of man seemed but a stage pageant, a thing of show and tinsel, stood aghast at the revelation of English sincerity, and a shudder of great awe ran through Europe.  The fury of party leaves little room for generous emotion, and no pity was felt for these men by the English Protestants.  The Protestants knew well that if these same sufferers could have had their way, they would themselves have been sacrificed by hecatombs; and as they had never experienced mercy, so they were in turn without mercy.  But to the English Catholics, who believed as Fisher believed, but who had not dared to suffer as Fisher suffered, his death and the death of the rest acted as a glimpse of the judgment day.  Their safety became their shame and terror:  and in the radiant example before them of true faithfulness, they saw their own falsehood and their own disgrace.  So it was with Father Forest, who had taught his penitents in confession that they might perjure themselves, and who now sought a cruel death in voluntary expiation; so it was with Whiting, the Abbot of Glastonbury; so with others whose names should be more familiar to us than they are; and here in Woburn we are to see the feeble but genuine penitence of Abbot Hobbes.  He was still unequal to immediate martyrdom, but he did what he knew might drag his death upon him if disclosed to the Government, and surrounded by spies he could have had no hope of concealment.

“At the time,” deposed Robert Salford, “that the monks of the Charter-house, with other traitors, did suffer death, the abbot did call us into the Chapterhouse, and said these words:—­’Brethren, this is a perilous time, such a scourge was never heard since Christ’s passion.  Ye hear how good men suffer the death.  Brethren, this is undoubted for our offences.  Ye read, so long as the children of Israel kept the commandments of God, so long their enemies had no power over them, but God took vengeance of their enemies.  But when they broke God’s commandments, then they were subdued by their enemies, and so be we.  Therefore let us be sorry for our offences.  Undoubted He will take vengeance of our enemies; I mean those heretics that causeth so many good men to suffer thus.  Alas, it is a piteous case that so much Christian blood should be shed.  Therefore, good brethren, for the reverence of God, every one of you devoutly pray, and say this Psalm, “O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem a heap of stones.  The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowls of the air, and the flesh of