Whether the same end could have been attained by gentler methods is a question which many persons suppose they can easily answer in the affirmative. Some diffidence of judgment, however, ought to be taught by the recollection that the same end was purchased in every other country which had the happiness to attain to it at all, only by years of bloodshed, a single day or week of which caused larger human misery than the whole period of the administration of Cromwell. Be this as it will, his aim was noble. For his actions he paid with his life; and he followed his victims by the same road which they had trodden before him, to the high tribunal, where it may be that great natures who on earth have lived in mortal enmity may learn at last to understand each other. [Sidenote: July 30. Double execution of Protestants and Romanists.] Two days after, Barnes, Garret, and Jerome died bravely at the stake, their weakness and want of wisdom all atoned for, and serving their Great Master in their deaths better than they had served Him in their lives. With them perished, not as heretics, but as traitors, the three Romanizing priests. The united executions were designed as an evidence of the even hand of the council. The execution of traitors was not to imply an indulgence of heresy; the punishment of heretics should give no hope to those who were disloyal to their king and country. But scenes of such a kind were not repeated. The effect was to shock, not to edify.[625] The narrow theory could be carried out to both its cruel extremes only where a special purpose was working upon passions specially excited. END OF VOL. III. FOOTNOTES: [1] He told Sir Gregory Cassalis that he had been compelled by external pressure to issue threats, "quæ tamen nunquam in animo habuit ad exitum perducere."--Sir Gregory Cassalis to Henry VIII.: _MS. Cotton. Vitellius_, B 14, fol. 215. [2] Richard Ebbes to Cromwell: _MS. Cotton. Vespasian_, B 7, fol. 87. [3] "There be here both Englishmen and Irishmen many that doth daily invent slander to the realm of England, with as many naughty Popish practices as they can and may do, and specially Irishmen."--Ibid. [4] "L'Empéreur a deux fois qu'il avoit parlè audit Evesque luy avoit faict un discours long et plein de grande passion de la cruelle guerre qu'il entendoit faire contre le dit Roy d'Angleterre, au cas qu'il ne reprinst et restituast en ses honneurs la Reyne Catherine sa tante, et luy avoit declarè les moyens qu'il avoit executer vivement icelle guerre, et principalement au moyen de la bonne intelligence ce qu'il disoit avoir avec le Roy d'Ecosse." Martin du Bellay: _Memoirs_, p. 110. [5] Reginald Pole states that the issue was only prevented by the news of Queen Catherine's death.--Pole to Prioli: _Epistles_, Vol. I. p. 442. [6] Sleidan. [7] Du Bellay's _Memoirs_, p. 135.