The stories of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, and others high in rank, are familiarly known even to children, in whose limited circle of historical reading the horrors of this period have been suffered to hold too prominent a place. Less known to fame, yet not inferior to any, it should seem, in the qualities of the heart and the understanding, was he whose memorable death we have selected for narration; and in whose rustic simplicity of deportment, and somewhat coarse jocularity, and grotesque contour of person (a circumstance which is to be inferred from various parts of the narrative), we trace a resemblance, slight, and unimportant, yet not uninteresting, to the Athenian philosopher, as well as in his care, retained to the last, for the feelings and welfare of his friends, and his resolute refusal to compromise the goodness of his cause by flight. “Of Rowland Taylor (says Bishop Heber) neither the name nor the misfortunes are obscure. He was distinguished among the divines of the Reformation for his abilities, his learning, and piety; and he suffered death at the stake on Aldham Common, near Hadleigh, in the third year of Queen Mary, amid the blessings and lamentations of his parishioners, and with a courageous and kindly cheerfulness which has scarcely its parallel, even in those days of religious heroism.” “There is nothing indeed more beautiful, in the whole beautiful Book of Martyrs, than the account which Fox has given of Rowland Taylor, whether in the discharge of his duty as a parish priest, or in the more arduous moments when he was called on to bear his cross in the cause of religion. His warmth of heart, his simplicity of manners, the total absence of the false stimulants of enthusiasm or pride, and the abundant overflow of better and holier feelings, are delineated, no less than his courage in death, and the buoyant cheerfulness with which he encountered it, with a spirit only inferior to the eloquence and dignity of the Phædon. Something, indeed, must be allowed for the manners of the age, before we can be reconciled to the coarse vigour of his pleasantry, his jocose menace to Bonner, and his jests with the Sheriff on his own stature and corpulency. But nothing can be more delightfully told than his refusal to fly from the Lord Chancellor’s officers; his dignified yet modest determination to await death in the discharge of his duty; and his affectionate and courageous parting with his wife and children. His recollection, when led to the stake, of ‘the blind man and woman,’ his pensioners, is of the same delightful character; nor has Plato anything more touching than the lamentation of his parishioners over his dishonoured head and long white beard, and his own meek rebuke to the wretch who drew blood from that venerable countenance. Let not my readers blame me for this digression. They will have cause to thank me, if it induces them to refer to a history which few men have ever read without its making them ‘sadder and