The first person Gardiner ordered to be burnt alive was one of the clergymen belonging to the great church of St. Paul in London; his name was Rogers. That good man would not do what he thought wrong towards God to please either Gardiner or the queen, so they sent him to the great square called Smithfield, and there had him tied to a stake, and a fire lighted all around him, so as to kill him. As he was going along to be burnt, his wife and his ten little children met him, and kissed him, and took leave of him, for Gardiner would not let them go to him while he kept him in prison before his death. The next was Dr. Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester. He died saying prayers, and preaching to the people round about him, and thanking God for giving him strength to speak the truth, and keep His commandments. Altogether, there were nearly three hundred men and women burnt by Queen Mary’s orders; but I will only tell you the names of three more, for I hate to write about such wicked doings. You remember I mentioned Bishop Latimer among the good men who were Protestants. He had come to be a very old man in Mary’s reign; but she would not spare him, but sent him with another bishop, a friend of his, as good and learned as himself, named Ridley, to Oxford, where they were burned together, only because they were Protestants. At last Mary determined to order the death of the wise and good Archbishop Cranmer. He had always been very gentle and rather fearful, and he wrote to Mary, and tried by every means to get her to allow him to live. They made him hope to be spared if he would give up his religion, and promise to be a Papist. As soon as he had been so weak as to do this, she ordered him to be burned at Oxford. When he was taken to be tied to the stake, he stretched out his right hand that it might burn first, because it had written through fear what he did not mean. He took off all his clothes but his shirt, and with a very cheerful countenance he began to praise God aloud, and to pray for pardon for the faults he might have committed during a long life. His patience in bearing the torment of burning, and his courage in dying, made all the people love him as much as it made them hate the queen and Bonner. Nothing did well in this cruel queen’s reign. She went to war with France to please her husband the king of Spain, and in that war the French took Calais from the English, who had kept it ever since Edward the Third’s reign.[2] Queen Mary died the same year in which she lost Calais, after being queen only five years. FOOTNOTES: [2] Little Arthur should look back, and read the story of the taking of Calais, and of the good Eustace de St. Pierre. CHAPTER XLIV. ELIZABETH.—1558 to 1603. How Queen Elizabeth allowed the people to be Protestants; how they learned many useful things from foreigners who had been persecuted in their own country; how Mary Queen of Scots was driven from her kingdom, and was imprisoned, and at last beheaded by Elizabeth.