Henry, however, was not free from uneasiness. He had openly asserted that he leaned neither to one side nor to the other; that he weighed both parties in a just balance; and now, while he is boasting of his impartiality, every body persists in saying that he gives all the advantage to the papists. What is he to do in order to be just and impartial? Three papists must be found to be put to death at the same time with the evangelicals. Then nobody will venture to assert that the king does not hold the balance even. The measure shall be faultless and one of the glories of his reign. The three papists selected to be placed in the other scale bore the names of Abel, Powel, and Fetherstone. The first two were political pamphleteers who had supported the cause of Catherine of Aragon; and the third was, like them, an opponent of royal supremacy. It seems that in this matter the king also made allowance for the composition of his own council, which comprised both friends and enemies of the Reformation. Amongst the former were the archbishop of Canterbury, the duke of Suffolk, viscounts Beauchamp and Lisle, Russell, Paget, Sadler, and Audley. Amongst the latter were the bishops of Winchester and Durham, the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Southampton, Sir Antony Brown, Paulet, Baker, Richard, and Wingfield. There was therefore a majority of one against the Reformation, just enough to turn the scale. Henry, with a show of impartiality, assigned three victims to each of these parties. Preparations were made at the Tower for carrying out this equitable sentence. In the court-yard were three hurdles, of oblong shape, formed of branches of trees closely intertwined, on which the culprits were to be drawn to the place of execution. Why three only, as there were six condemned? The reason was soon to be seen. When the three prisoners of each side were brought out, they proceeded to lay one evangelical on the first hurdle, and by his side a papist, binding them properly to each other to keep them in this strange coupling. The same process was gone through with the second and the third hurdles;[357] they then set out, and the six prisoners were drawn two and two to Smithfield. Thus, in every street through which the procession passed, Henry VIII. proclaimed by this strange spectacle that his government was impartial, and condemned alike the two classes of divines and of doctrines. [Sidenote: PAPIST AND PROTESTANT MARTYRS.]