The other sufferer was Elizabeth Gaunt, a person in humble circumstances, and a member of a Baptist Church. The charge against her resembled that brought against Mrs. Lisle--namely, the harbouring of a person supposed to have been concerned in the Rye House conspiracy. This man had professed himself to be a Nonconformist,--certainly he proved himself a worthless villain, by becoming King’s evidence against the woman who, to save his life, had jeopardized her own. It did not appear that she knew that he had any share in the plot, or that his name had been mentioned in any proclamation; want of evidence, however, little affected the issue of a trial in those days, and this poor person, without being permitted to call witnesses in her defence, received a verdict of guilty, and the sentence of death. The miserable favour which had been shown to the sufferer of higher rank reached not so humble an individual; she had to die at the stake. Gathering round her the materials of torture, that she might the sooner expire, she remarked, that charity as well as faith was a part of her religion; that her crime, at worst, was the feeding an enemy; so she hoped she should find her reward in Him, for whose sake she did this service, how unworthy soever the person might be who had made such an ill return for it. She rejoiced that God had honoured her to be the first who suffered by fire in this reign, and that her suffering would prove a martyrdom for that religion which was all love.[147] “Thus,” to use the words of Sir James Mackintosh, “was this poor and uninstructed woman supported under a death of cruel torture, by the lofty consciousness of suffering for righteousness, and by that steadfast faith in the final triumph of justice, which can never visit the last moments of the oppressor.”[148] There have been many martyrs for faith, but these women were martyrs for charity, and their meek heroism in the hour of death seems worthy of the cause for which they suffered. Such examples illustrate that power of endurance, with which the Almighty has inspired the heart of woman. Strong in the midst of apparent feebleness, she bears up under trials sufficient to crush minds of the hardest texture; thus resembling those delicate flowers which grow in Alpine regions-- “Leaning their cheeks against the thick-ribbed ice, And looking up with brilliant eyes to Him Who bids them bloom, unblanched, amid the waste Of desolation.” [Sidenote: PERSECUTION RENEWED.]