Remember that the example was not only an admonition to those who saw her death: it was related by the spectators; it was spread through the length and breadth of the land; it was written down by Foxe, in whose hands it certainly lost nothing of eloquence or of dramatic effect, and it has been read ever since by countless people. Not the martyrdom of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and the rest of the bishops, priests and scholars, so much as those of the “very simple” women, the plain craftsmen, built up the Protestant Faith, scattered the Spanish Fleets, and changed the Englishman of the sixteenth century, so that he of the seventeenth became possible. [Illustration: The burning of M. Iohn Rogers, vicar of Saint Pulchers, and Reader of Paules in London.] The bare list of burnings in London alone, not nearly complete, as enumerated by Henry Machyn in his _Diary_ (1550–1563), conveys a sense of the overwhelming horror which filled England during this reign, perhaps clearer than a laboured treatise on the Lives and Deaths of the Martyrs. In reading the list we can see the crowds flocking to Smithfield: all their sympathies are with the sufferer; they see him dragged on his hurdle, undressed to the shirt and tied to the stake; they see that he flinches not nor offers to retract; the faggots are piled about him, Heaven grant they be of dry wood; from the flames and through the smoke they hear the voice of the martyr praising God and praying till the end comes, when his tongue swells up in his mouth and he can speak no more, or is suffocated with the smoke, or with the intensity of his agony his heart stops and merciful Death seizes him. Then the crowd go home again; they dare not speak to each other; but they remember. “1555. The iiij day of Feybruary the bysshope of London went into Nugatt and odur docturs to dysgratt (degrade) Hoper, and Rogers sumtyme vycker of sant Polkers. The sam day was Rogers cared be-twyn x and xj of the cloke into Smythfeld and bornyd, for aronyus opinions, with a grett compene of the gard. 1555. The xvj day of Marche was a veyver (weaver) bornyd in Smyth-feld dwellynge in Sordyche, for herese, by viij of the cloke in the mornyng, ys nam was Tomkins.