"Now are you lord no longer!" cried Bonnor when the ceremony was finished. "All this needed not," the Archbishop replied; "I myself had done with this gear long ago." Cranmer had been three years in prison; he was an old man, and his nerve may well have been upset by the prolonged delay and fear of death and the recent degradation which he had undergone. There is no authentic account of what happened to him during the next few hours. But Protestant tradition relates that he was taken from the Cathedral to the Deanery of Christ Church, where he was entertained at his ease and exposed to the arguments and exhortations of Soto, the Spanish friar. He was warned at the same time that the Queen's mind was so set, that she would either have Cranmer a Catholic or else no Cranmer at all. He was taken back to his cell that night, and there his constancy at last gave way. He signed a series of recantations. But the Queen refused to relent; she had humiliated her enemy, and now he must die. She fixed the 25th of March for the day of his execution. But first he was called upon to make a public confession of his recantation. It was a foul and rainy day when he was brought out of Bocardo to S. Mary's Church. Peers, knights, doctors, students, priests, men-at-arms and citizens thronged the narrow aisles, and through their midst passed the mayor and next the aldermen in their place and degree; after them came Cranmer between two Spanish friars, who, on entering the church, chanted the _Nunc Dimittis_. A stage was set over against the pulpit--the ledge cut for it may still be seen in the pillar to the left of the Vice-Chancellor's chair--and here Cranmer was made to stand in his bare and ragged gown, and old square cap, whilst Dr Cole, the Warden of New College, preached his funeral sermon, and justified the sentence that had been passed, by which, even though he had recanted, he was condemned to die. Cole gave this reason and that, and added that there were others which had moved the Queen and Council "which were not meet and convenient for every one to understand." He congratulated the Archbishop on his conversion, and promised him that a dirge should be sung for him in every church in Oxford. Finally, he called upon the whole congregation to kneel where they were and to pray for him. When the prayer was finished the preacher called upon the Archbishop to make the public confession of his faith. "Brethren," cried he, "lest any man should doubt of this man's earnest conversion and repentance, you shall hear him speak before you." But the spirit of revenge had overreached itself. Cranmer's enemies had hoped to humiliate him to the uttermost; instead, they gave him the opportunity of redeeming his fame and adding his name to the roll of martyrs. "The tongues of dying men Enforce attention, like deep harmony.... More are men's ends marked than their lives before."