1558.

congregations, that namely whereof Bentham was at this time AN. REG. 5, minister, there assembled seldom under forty, many times 100, and sometimes 200, but more or less as it stood most with their conveniency and safety. The ministers of which successively were-Mr. Edward Scambler, after Bishop of Peterborough, Mr. Thomas Foule, of whom I find nothing but the name, Mr. John Rough, a Scot by nation, convented and condemned by Bonner, and suffering for the testimony of a good conscience, December 201. After whom followed Mr. Augustine Bernher, a moderate and learned man2; and finally, Mr. Thomas Bentham before mentioned, who continued in that charge till the death of Queen Mary, and was by Queen Elizabeth preferred to the see of Lichfield, anno 15593. By the encouragement and constant preaching of which pious men, the Protestant party did not only stand to their former principle, but were resolved to suffer whatsoever could be laid upon them, rather than forfeit a good conscience or betray the cause. They had not all the opportunity of such holy meetings, but they met frequently enough in smaller companies, to animate and comfort one another in those great extremities1.

12. Nor sped the Queen much better in her proclamation of the sixth of June, concerning the suppression of prohibited books; but, notwithstanding all the care of her Inquisitors, many good books of true Christian consolation and good Protestant doctrine did either find some press in London, or were sent over to their brethren by such learned men as had retired themselves to their several sanctuaries, their places of retreat, which not improperly may be called their cities of refuge, which we have seen already: amongst which I find none but Embden in the Lutheran countries; the rigid professors of which Churches abominated nothing more than an English Protestant, because they concurred not with them in the monstrous doc- the English

1 Fox, viii. 443-450. Rough joined the murderers of Cardinal Beaton, while they held the castle of St. Andrew's, but left them after a time on account of their "godless course of life." Keith, i. 146, ed. Spottisw. Soc. Comp. Maitland on the Reformation, 559–64.

2 He was a Swiss, and had been servant to Latimer, some of whose sermons were published by him. Latimer, ed. Park. Soc. i. pref. p. xvi. 3 Godwin de Præsul. 325. Edd. Heyl. “1589."

4 Fox, viii. 559.

The Luthe

rans un

friendly to

refugees.

1558.

AN.REG.5, trine of ubiquity and their device of consubstantiation. Insomuch that Peter Martyr telleth us of a friend of his in the Dukedom of Saxony, that he was generally hated by the rest of the countrymen, for being hospitable to some few of the English nation who had been forced to abandon their native soil1. And it is further signified by Ph. Melancthon with no small dislike, in an epistle of this year2, that many of those rigid Lutherans could find no other name but "the devil's martyrs" for such as suffered death in England in defence of religion; so that they seemed to act the part of Diotrephes in Saint John, not only "prating against us with malicious. words, and refusing to receive the brethren" in the day of their trouble, but "forbidding" and condemning "them that would3." But John à Lasco and his company had been lately there, where they spoke so reproachfully of Luther, the Augustan Confession, the rites and ceremonies of their churches, as rendered them incapable of any better entertainment than they found amongst them. And by the behaviour of these men, coming then from England, the rigid Lutherans passed their judgment on the Church itself, and consequently on all those who suffered in defence thereof. For stopping the course of which uncharitable censures, it was thought fit by some of the divines in Embden that Archbishop Cranmer's book about the sacrament should be translated into Latin, and forthwith published in print; which was done accordingly. Some of

1 "In summo eum esse odio, quod Anglos profugos hospitio susceperat [susceperit],"&c. P. Mart. Epist. [ad Calvin. Loci Comm. 1097.] Author.

2 "Ubi vociferantur quidam, Martyres Anglicos esse Martyres Diaboli." In epist. Octob. 8. Author. [“Mihi videtur recte hoc scribi, ne videamur fremitus littoris Baltici probare, ubi vociferantur quidam, martyres Anglicos esse martyres diaboli. Nolim hac contumelia afficere Spiritum Sanctum in Latimero, qui annum octogesimum egressus fuit, et in aliis sanctis viris quos novi." Letter to Camerarius, Oct. 8, 1558. (Melancth. &c. Epistolæ, Lond. 1642, col. 959.) Rogers on the XXXIX Articles, p. 86. ed. Lond. 1629, mentions "Westphalus and Marbachius," as having applied the term "Devil's martyrs" to those who suffered under Mary.] 3 Ep. iii. v. 10.

4 P. Martyr mentions in a letter to Calvin, that à Lasco had been very ill received in Denmark and Saxony, p. 1098.

5 Embden, 1557. Tanner, Bibliotheca, 207. See Cranmer, ed. Jenkyns, Vol. 1. Pref. xcviii. Vol. 11. 276. The translation is reprinted in the Parker Society's edition of Cranmer, vol. i. Appendix.

1558.

the Lutherans had given out on the former ground, that the AN. REG.5, English had deservedly suffered the greatest hardships both at home and abroad, because they writ and spake less reverently of the blessed sacrament; and it was hoped that by the publishing of this book they would find the contrary. The like course taken also at Geneva by the English exiles, by publishing in the Latin tongue a discourse writ by Bishop Ridley on the selfsame argument, to the end it might appear unto all the world how much their brethren had been wronged in these odious calumnies1.

1 Ridley's "Brief Declaration of the Lord's Supper," was translated by Whittingham, and published at Geneva, 1556. Tanner, Bibliotheca, 631.

AN.REG. 6, 1558.

ANNO REGNI MAR. 6,

ANNO DOM. 1558'.

Ravages of a

other visita

tions.

fever, and 1. BUT in the midst of all these sorrows I see some hope 81 of comfort coming by the death of Queen Mary, whose 251 reign, polluted with the blood of so many martyrs, unfortunate by the frequent insurrections, and made inglorious by the loss of the town of Calais, was only commendable in the brevity or shortness of it. For now, to bring it to an end, a dangerous and contagious fever began to rage in most parts of the land, insomuch that, if the whole realm had been divided into four parts, three parts of the four would have been found infected with it. So furiously it raged in the month of August that no former plague or pestilence was thought to have destroyed a greater number, so that divers places were left void of justices and men of worth to govern the kingdom. At which time died also so many priests that a great number of parishchurches in divers places were unserved, and no curates could be gotten for money2; much corn was also lost in the field, for want of labourers and workmen to get it in: both which together seemed to threaten not only a spiritual but a temporal famine though God so ordered it, that by the death of so many of the present clergy a door was opened for the preaching of sounder doctrine, with far less envy and displeasure from all sorts of people than it had been otherwise. Nor were the heats of the disease abated by the coldness of the winter, or the malignity of it mitigated by medicinal courses. It took away the physicians as well as the patients, two of the Queen's doctors dying of it not long before her; and spared not more. the prelate than it did the priest, insomuch that within less than the space of a twelvemonth almost the one half of the English bishops had made void their sees; which, with the death of so many of the priests in several places, did much facilitate the way to that Reformation which soon after followed.

2

' Edd. 1, 2, add "1559."

Stow, 634.

3 Ibid.

1558.

2. This terrible disease, together with the sad1 effects AN. REG.6, which followed on it, and the Queen's death, which came along with it, though not caused by it, may seem to have been prognosticated or foretold by a dreadful tempest of thunder, happening on the 11th of July, near the town of Nottingham; which tempest, as it came through two towns, beat down all the houses and churches; the bells were cast to the outside of the church-yard, and some sheets of lead four hundred foot into the field, writhen like a pair of gloves. The river of Trent running between which two towns, the water with the mud in the bottom was carried a quarter of a mile and cast against the trees; the trees plucked up by the roots, and from thence cast twelve-score paces; also a child was taken forth of a man's hand, and by the fury of it carried an hundred foot, two spear's length from the ground, and so fell down, broke its arm, and died. Five or six men thereabouts were slain, and neither flesh nor skin perished; at what time also there fell some hailstones that were fifteen inches about, &c. But neither that terrible disease nor this terrible tempest, nor any other public sign of God's displeasure, abated any thing of the fury of the persecution, till he was pleased to put an end unto it by the death of the Queen. It was upon the 10th day of November that no fewer than five at once were burned at Canterbury, the Cardinal and the Queen both lying on the bed of sickness, and both dying within seven days after. It had been prayed or prophesied by those five martyrs when they were at the stake, that they might be the last who should suffer death in that manner, or on that occasion3; and by God's mercy so it proved, they being the last which suffered death under the severity of this persecution.

the sufferers in this reign.

3. Which persecution, and the carriage of the papists in Number of it, is thus described by Bishop Jewel :-" You have” (saith he) "imprisoned your brethren, you have stript them naked, you have scourged them with rods, you have burnt their hands and arms with flaming torches, you have famished them, you have 82 drowned them, summoned them being dead to appear before 252 you out of their graves, you have ripped up their buried carcases, burnt them, and thrown them out upon the dunghill, you