Suffolk, and the adjacent maritime counties, had always been the stronghold of protestantism. Their geographical situation occasioned considerable intercourse with the continent, where the reformation still flourished, and whither many were self-exiled for conscience’ sake. At a much earlier period the Lollards appear to have been numerous in Norfolk; they had been multiplied by persecution, and by a comparatively extensive circulation of the writings of the reformers. {24a} Undeterred by the terrible examples of the queen’s severity, the protestants of Suffolk and Essex met privately for religious worship. {24b} Great numbers entirely forsook the public authorized service. At Stoke in Suffolk, there was a congregation of protestants, so considerable in number and so united in their views, that the bishops for some time hesitated to interfere. And at last, when the whole society was required to come to church, they contrived to escape, leaving their angry diocesan first to suspend, and then to excommunicate them. {24c} Every where the protestants had to endure the anxiety attending an exposure to the vengeance of their enemies, or the privations and inconveniences of concealment. Indescribably dreadful as the pains of martyrdom must have been, they were brief in their duration, and their very bitterness kindled the pity of the spectator and the fortitude of the victim. Perhaps the total amount of misery which they occasioned, was overbalanced by the less agonizing, but more protracted and retired, sufferings of the multitudes who “wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens, and in caves of the earth,” and “of whom” (with equal truth it might be affirmed) “the world was not worthy.” The following are, probably, neither rare nor extreme instances. In the parish of St. James, near Bungay, there resided a family named Fisk. Of six brothers, three were protestants. A pursuivant employed to apprehend one of them, gave him, from motives of personal friendship, a private notice of the intention to seize him. Whereupon, the good man first called his family to prayer, and then hastened away to hide himself in a ditch, with his godly wife and her helpless babe. Another of these brothers was, to avoid burning, hid many months in a pile of wood; and afterwards, for half a year, in a cellar, where he diligently employed himself in profitable manufactures by candlelight; but his many hardships brought on an excessive bleeding, which shortened his days, and added unto the cry of the “souls under the altar.” {26a}