Dr. Lingard says of those who were executed between 1588, and the queen's death, "The butchery, with a few exceptions, was performed on the victim while he was in full possession of his senses." Vol. viii. p. 356. I should be glad to think that the few exceptions were the other way. Much would depend on the humanity of the sheriff, which one might hope to be stronger in an English gentleman than his zeal against popery. But I cannot help acknowledging that there is reason to believe the disgusting cruelties of the legal sentence to have been frequently inflicted. In an anonymous memorial among Lord Burleigh's papers, written about 1586, it is recommended that priests persisting in their treasonable opinion should be hanged, "and the manner of drawing and quartering forborne." Strype, iii. 620. This seems to imply that it had been usually practised on the living. And Lord Bacon, in his observations on a libel written against Lord Burleigh in 1592, does not deny the "bowellings" of catholics; but makes a sort of apology for it, as "less cruel than the wheel or forcipation, or even simple burning." Bacon's Works, vol. i. p. 534. [259] Burnet, ii. 418. [260] "Though no papists were in this reign put to death purely on account of their religion, as numberless protestants had been in the woeful days of Queen Mary, yet many were executed for treason." Churton's _Life of Nowell_, p. 147. Mr. Southey, whose abandonment of the oppressed side I sincerely regret, holds the same language; and a later writer, Mr. Townsend, in his _Accusations of History against the Church of Rome_, has laboured to defend the capital, as well as other, punishments of catholics under Elizabeth, on the same pretence of their treason. Treason, by the law of England, and according to the common use of language, is the crime of rebellion or conspiracy against the government. If a statute is made, by which the celebration of certain religious rites is subjected to the same penalties as rebellion or conspiracy, would any man, free from prejudice, and not designing to impose upon the uninformed, speak of persons convicted on such a statute as guilty of treason, without expressing in what sense he uses the words, or deny that they were as truly punished for their religion, as if they had been convicted of heresy? A man is punished for religion, when he incurs a penalty for its profession or exercise, to which he was not liable on any other account.