Let us now pass on to speak of certain Martyrs and Confessors. It is by this time needless to point out that the constancy shown by a Ridley and a Latimer for the Protestant form of doctrine was fully equalled by that of those who passed through the way of fire for the ancient faith. There was, however, this difference, that the Catholic martyrs were monks, priests, and men of mark like Fisher and More, while the Protestants included a vast number of men and women from the lower ranks—from the uneducated, who yet dared to hold a belief of their own based, as they thought, on private judgment,—really on the training of the sermons that they had heard. [Illustration: Twenty two PROTESTANTS _taken into Custody on account of their Religion and brought in one Band with Cords round their Arms, from Colchester to London, by order of Bloody Queen Mary_.] The case of Dr. Forest, Confessor to Queen Katherine, must not be forgotten when one speaks of the martyrs of this time. Forest, an old man, was committed to gaol, where he lay for two years among the common malefactors, because he refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the King. After two years of Newgate, two years in a close, stifling, and noisome prison, the venerable priest was informed that he was to be hanged over a fire and so slowly done to death. No more terrible form of death was known in England, where the horrors of the French and German capital punishments were never practised. It was the same punishment as had been meted out to Oldcastle, and it was inflicted on Forest for the same reason: to show the hatred and abhorrence of the judges for the doctrines he taught. When the unfortunate Katherine heard of the sentence she wrote to him. The letter, too long for reproduction in these pages, together with Forest’s reply, may be found in _The Antiquities of the English Franciscans_: they are probably genuine and are very pitiful. The Queen, however, was spared the misery of hearing of her Confessor’s torturing death: he was respited and continued to lie in prison. Two years after the Queen’s death, and when he had been confined in Newgate for four years, Forest was brought out for execution. [Illustration: HUGH LATIMER (1485(?)-1555) From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London.]