himself to set out with his guard before break of day for the scene of his sufferings. There he arrived on the third evening after his departure from London, amidst the tears and salutations of a multitude of persons, who came out to meet him by the way. The evening before his execution he retired early to rest, and having slept one sleep soundly, passed the remainder of the night in prayer. The morrow was market-day--the country people flocked in; the boughs of an elm tree, near which the stake was fixed, were loaded with spectators; and over the college gate, which commanded a view of the spot, stood a company of priests. He had scarcely kneeled down to recommend his soul to God, for the last time on earth, when, by a refinement of cruelty common in those bloody days, a box was brought and laid before him on a stool, containing his pardon if he would still turn in the eleventh hour. But, he crying out again and again, “If you love my soul, away with it,” there remained, it was said, no remedy but to despatch him quickly. Then did he strip himself to the shirt; and a pound of gunpowder being placed between his legs, and another under either arm, he mounted upon a high bench, himself tall, and being bound to the stake by an iron hoop round his middle, he awaited his end. But the faggots were green, and kindled slowly; and the wind, which was high, drove the flame from him, so that he was scorched only, till dry wood was brought, but still in small quantities; and for a long while nothing but the lower extremities was consumed; and he cried out in his protracted agony, “For God’s sake, good people, let me have more fire!” It was not till a third fire had been lighted that the gunpowder exploded: but neither did this end his suffering; for he still continued to pray in a loud voice, “Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me!” At length his tongue became swollen so that he could not articulate; and one of his arms dropped off; and after he had thus lingered three quarters of an hour, in all the bitterness of the bitterest of deaths, he bowed forwards and yielded up his life. None of all the martyrs appear to have died so hardly as Hooper; none, perhaps, to have left a stronger impression upon the minds of their hearers; to which the austerity of his doctrines and severity of his death alike contributed. His scruples and his tenets seem to have been scattered far and wide over the dioceses of Gloucester and Bristol, to come again after many days; for when Cheny some years afterwards was appointed to these sees, he being, as was supposed, a Lutheran, and being certainly a lover of ceremonial, found it impossible to reconcile the sentiments of his clergy with his own; and, fretted by constant conflict, became desirous to resign a charge, of which, indeed, he was eventually deprived by the archbishop, and to return to a life of more privacy and peace.[443]