The scene of the suffering of these two good Protestant men was in the
City ditch, near Baliol College. On coming to the dreadful spot, they
kissed the stakes, and then embraced each other. And then a learned
doctor got up into a pulpit which was placed there, and preached a
sermon from the text, ‘Though I give my body to be burned, and have not
charity, it profiteth me nothing.’ When you think of the charity of
burning men alive, you may imagine that this learned doctor had a
rather brazen face. Ridley would have answered his sermon when it came
to an end, but was not allowed. When Latimer was stripped, it appeared
that he had dressed himself under his other clothes, in a new shroud;
and, as he stood in it before all the people, it was noted of him, and
long remembered, that, whereas he had been stooping and feeble but a
few minutes before, he now stood upright and handsome, in the knowledge
that he was dying for a just and a great cause. Ridley’s brother-in-law
was there with bags of gunpowder; and when they were both chained up,
he tied them round their bodies. Then, a light was thrown upon the pile
to fire it. ‘Be of good comfort, Master Ridley,’ said Latimer, at that
awful moment, ‘and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle,
by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’ And
then he was seen to make motions with his hands as if he were washing
them in the flames, and to stroke his aged face with them, and was
heard to cry, ‘Father of Heaven, receive my soul!’ He died quickly, but
the fire, after having burned the legs of Ridley, sunk. There he
lingered, chained to the iron post, and crying, ‘O! I cannot burn! O!
for Christ’s sake let the fire come unto me!’ And still, when his
brother-in-law had heaped on more wood, he was heard through the
blinding smoke, still dismally crying, ‘O! I cannot burn, I cannot
burn!’ At last, the gunpowder caught fire, and ended his miseries.
Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to his tremendous
account before God, for the cruelties he had so much assisted in
committing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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