[Illustration: Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, 1535-39, burnt 1555: from the National Portrait Gallery.] 22. =Death of Cranmer. 1556.=--Cranmer would have accompanied Ridley and Latimer to the stake, but as he alone of the three had been consecrated a bishop in the days when the Pope's authority was accepted in England, it was thought right to await the Pope's authority for the execution of his sentence. In =1556= that authority arrived. Cranmer's heart was as weak as his head was strong, and he six times recanted, hoping to save his life. Mary specially detested him, as having sat in judgment on her mother (see p. 389), and she was resolved that he should die. Finding his recantation useless, he recovered his better mind, and renounced his recantation. "I have written," he said, "many things untrue; and forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall be the first burnt." He was hurried to the stake, and when the flames leapt up around him held his right hand steadily in the midst of them, that it might be 'the first burnt.' 23. =Continuance of the Persecution. 1556-1558.=--Immediately after Cranmer's death Pole became Archbishop of Canterbury. The persecution lasted for two years more. The number of those who suffered has been reckoned at 277. Almost all of these were burnt in the eastern and south-eastern parts of England. It was there that the Protestants were the thickest. New opinions always flourish more in towns than in the country, and on this side of England were those trading towns, from which communication with the Protestants of the Continent was most easy. Sympathy with the sufferers made these parts of the kingdom more strongly Protestant than they had been before.