The Marian persecution lasted for nearly four years. During that time, the number of victims fell little if at all short of three hundred, of whom one-fourth perished in the first year. The striking feature of the year is the distinction of the sufferers. One only of high position went to the stake after Gardiner's death--which took place only a few days after the burning of Ridley and Latimer, in November--that one, the highest of all, the whilom head (under the King) of the English Church. And he had then already been doomed. These facts point to the definite policy pursued by the Chancellor--the application of the principles which had proved so effective under Henry and Cromwell. Every prominent leader of the Reformation party who had not elected to conform was either dead or doomed or in exile within a twelve-month of the revival of the Heresy acts. After his time there was no process of selection; the victims were simply taken as they came. To find a sort of excuse in the conviction of an imperative duty to crush out the poison of heresy at any cost is in some degree possible. The attempt to explain the matter as in fact a crusade against Anabaptism [Footnote: _Cf._ Moore, P. 220.] as a social and political crime makes the thing not better but incomparably worse; while the endeavour to compare it with any other persecution in England is absurd. Henry before and Elizabeth afterwards could be ruthless; but while one reigned thirty-eight years and the other forty-five, yet in neither reign was the aggregate of burnings or executions for religion so great as in these four years of Mary's. [Sidenote: Some characteristics]