'Mary, honoured with the title of "bloody," appears to me a far more estimable character than her ripping-up sister Elizabeth, who, when Mary, on her death-bed, asked her for a real avowal of her religion, "prayed God" that the earth might open and swallow her up if she was not a true Roman Catholic.' She made the same declaration to the Duke of Ferria, the Spanish Ambassador, who was so deceived that he wrote to Philip, stating no change in religious matters would take place on her accession, and soon afterwards began ripping up the bellies of Catholics. That was quite the fashionable punishment in this and the succeeding reign. I have the account, with names, dates, and reference of no less than 101 more Catholics who were burnt, hung, ripped up, &c., by Elizabeth, and on to Charles the Second's end, than there were Protestants in Mary's, and all the reigns which preceded her, letting lying Fox count all he has got. Elizabeth, too, was by law a bastard, and is to this day; and so soon did her intentions appear of changing the religion, that all the bishops but one refused to crown her; and when this was done, it was by the Catholic ritual. However the Act-of-Parliament religion was set up again; the prayer book of Cranmer was set up again, after sundry alterations: it was altered too, in Edward's reign, yet when first made, it was duly declared to come from the 'Holy Ghost;' so it was after its second polishing under Elizabeth. To refuse the Queen's supremacy was death; it was death to continue in that religion, which, at her coronation she had sworn to firmly believe and defend. It was high treason to admit or harbour, or relieve a priest, and hosts of these were ripped up, for, in the piety of their hearts, risking all to afford the consolations of their religion to the Catholics of England. Victim after victim came to the sacrifice, mostly from the college of Douay. It is really horrible to read of these good and faithful champions of their religion being hung, cut down instantaneously, their bellies ripped up, their hearts cut out, their bodies chopped in pieces with every insult and indignity added to injury, all through this reign, and then to be talked to about 'bloody Mary,' and the 'Good Queen-Bess.' Verily, countrymen, you are vilely deceived. Taking into account the rippings, and burnings, and roastings, and hanging; the racks, whips, fines, imprisonments, and other horrors of the reign of this 'Good Bess,' there was a hundred times more human misery inflicted in her reign than in that of' Bloody Mary.' [82:1]