“Whereat the rest began afresh to howle and lament, which doubtlesse was pitifull, to behold five valiant gentlemen, that durst meet in the field five as sturdie champions as could be picked out in a realme, to be so suddenlie terrified with the bare name of a woodden cow, or to fear like lions a sillie cocke his combe, being moved (as commonlie the whole countrie is) with a vaine and fabulous old wives’ dreame. But what blind prophesie soever he read, or heard of anie superstitious beldame touching a cow his bellie, that which he foretold them was found true. For Thomas Fitzgirald the third of Februarie, and these five brethren his uncles were drawne, hanged, and quartered at Tiburne, which was incontinentlie bruted as well in England and Ireland, as in foren soyles.” In the midst of his arrangements for divorce the vengeance of Henry VIII. fell upon a witless girl who was known as “The Holy Maid of Kent.” She had become imbecile from frequent epileptic fits. Masters, the vicar of Addington, and Dr. Bocking, a Canon of Canterbury, tutored her to predict, as it suited their own ends, that Henry VIII. would lose his kingdom and die a violent death if he cast aside Catherine of Arragon, and married Anne Boleyn. The final scene of this diabolical influence of strength over weakness was that the girl and her abettors were hanged and beheaded at Tyburn, her head being set on London Bridge, and those of the men on the City gates. [Illustration: LONDON BRIDGE (Showing heads displayed). _From a Print in Magdalene College, Cambridge._] We have little idea of the tremendous religious antagonism of those days, an antagonism which brought so many poor sufferers to the gibbet at Tyburn. Indeed, so determined were those in power to extirpate all remains of Roman Catholicism, that a search was actually instituted from house to house, and all rosaries and other objects savouring of Romanism were destroyed. That a man was priest, open or disavowed, during that fierce struggle between Henry VIII. and the Church which he had overthrown and despoiled, was sufficient to condemn him to suffer under Tyburn’s fatal tree: “The 8 of October last before passed I. Low, I. Adams, and Richard Dibdale, being before condemned for treason, for being made Priests by authority of the Bishop of Rome, were drawne to Tyborne, and there hanged, bowelled, and quartered. “The 18 of Februarie, Harrington, a seminary priest, was drawne from Newgate to Tyborne, and there hanged, cut downe alive, struggled with the hangman, but was bowelled and quartered.” Elizabeth, too, found the terrors, which the very name of Tyburn instilled into the minds of her subjects, useful in maintaining public order and punishing plotters against her personal welfare. The gibbet, indeed, became a corrector of manners.