for a while at Farnham Castle, at that time her residence, was allowed to abide in her heresy (for she held the reformed faith), with his connivance, and was even protected from the violence of others by his authority. It is pleasant to be able to produce any redeeming incident in these days of horror; for “as the candle in the dark, So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” Isaac Walton exhorts his fisherman, when baiting with a frog, “to put his hook through the mouth and out at his gills, and then with a fine needle and silk to sew the upper part of his leg with only one stitch to the arming wire of the hook, and in so doing to use him as though he loved him.” And in the like compassionate spirit was it required “in the bowels of the Lord Jesus Christ,” of those whose office it was to burn men alive, “that the execution and punishment might be so moderated that the rigour thereof might not be too extreme;”[431] besides which it was the Queen’s particular desire that, both in London and elsewhere, there should be “good sermons” preached at the time of carrying the sentence into effect; so that whatever might be said of the act itself, there was nothing to offend the most fastidious philanthropy in the ceremonial. For a history of that noble army of martyrs of whom it now becomes our duty to speak, we are indebted to John Fox, himself an exile in Mary’s reign, and like most of those who then lived abroad, a friend of the Puritan principles at home. He had access to the archives and registers of the bishops; Grindal, who was himself a great collector of such materials, amongst others supplying him with what he knew; and in many instances to the letters of the martyrs themselves;[432] of all which documents, says Strype, he has been found, by those who have compared his books with his authorities, to have made a faithful use. He lived many years after his first edition was published, which was in 1563, and in the interval laboured to render it still more perfect; suppressing where he found reason to doubt, as in the story of Cranmer’s heart remaining unconsumed when the rest of his body was reduced to ashes;[433] enlarging where he was furnished with fresh matter which he thought trustworthy, as in the story of Gardiner’s being stricken with sickness on the day of Cranmer’s martyrdom;[434] and taking journeys in order to confront witnesses and sift evidence when his facts chanced to be called in question;[435] such was his industry. But, independently of all knowledge of this, his pains-taking, the internal evidence of the book is enough to establish its general good faith. There is a simplicity in the narrative, particularly in many of its minute details, which is beyond all fiction; a homely pathos in the stories which art could not reach. Sometimes an expression casually drops out which suffices to prove the testimony to be that of an eye-witness; thus where the terrible