Or, to take the case of Cicely Ormes. She was a very simple woman,
the wife of a worsted weaver who lived in Norwich. She was present at
the martyrdom of Simon Miller and Elizabeth Cooper, and there, being
affected with their constancy, she declared that she would pledge them
with the same cup from which they drank:—
“She was burnt the 23d day of September, between seven and eight of
the clock in the morning, the said two sheriffs being there, and of
people to the number of two hundred. When she came to the stake,
she kneeled down, and made her prayers to God; that being done, she
rose up and said:—
‘Good people! I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the
Holy Ghost, three persons and one God. This do I not, nor will I
recant; but I recant utterly from the bottom of my heart the doings
of the Pope of Rome, and all his popish priests and shavelings. I
utterly refuse and never will have to do with them again, by God’s
grace. And, good people! I would you should not report of me that
I believe to be saved in that I offer myself here unto the death
for the Lord’s cause, but I believe to be saved by the death and
passion of Christ; and this my death is and shall be a witness of
my faith unto you all here present. Good people! as many of you as
believe as I believe, pray for me.’
Then she came to the stake, and laid her hand on it, and said,
‘Welcome the cross of Christ.’ Which being done, she, looking on
her hand, and seeing it blacked with the stake, wiped it upon her
smock; for she was burnt at the same stake that Simon Miller and
Elizabeth Cooper was burnt at. Then, after she had touched it with
her hand, she came and kissed it, and said, ‘Welcome the sweet
cross of Christ’; and so gave herself to be bound thereto. After
the tormentors had kindled the fire to her, she said, ‘My soul doth
magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoiceth in God my Saviour.’ And
in so saying, she set her hands together right against her breast,
casting her eyes and head upward; and so stood, heaving up her
hands by little and little, till the very sinews of her arms did
brast in sonder, and then they fell. But she yielded her life unto
the Lord as quietly as if she had been in a slumber, or as one
feeling no pain; so wonderfully did the Lord work with her: His
name therefore be praised for evermore.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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