Laurence Saunders was burnt to death on the 8th of February, where he had been minister, and highly esteemed, at Coventry. Dr. Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, was carried to suffer at the stake in that city, on the 9th of February. Dr. Taylor was sent to suffer in like manner, in his own parish, at Hadleigh, in Suffolk, on the 9th of February. Dr. Farrar, bishop of St. David’s, was carried to seal the truth of the Gospel with his blood, and he triumphed in martyrdom, March 30th, at Carmarthen. Terrible as were these enormities, they did not satisfy the sanguinary queen nor her bigoted chancellor, Bishop Gardiner. They determined to extirpate heresy, and therefore employed local inquisitors. Bishop Burnet states, therefore, “Instructions were given, in March, 1555, to the justices of peace, to have one or more honest men in every parish, secretly instructed on oath to give information of the behaviour of the inhabitants among them. Here was a great step made towards an Inquisition; this being the settled method of that court, to have sworn spies and informers every where, upon whose secret advertisements persons are taken up; and the first step in their examination is to know of them, for what reason they are brought before them; upon which they are tortured till they tell, as much as the inquisitors desire to know, either against themselves or others. But they are not suffered to know, neither what is informed against them, nor who are the informers. Arbitrary torture, and now secret informers, seem to be two great steps made to prepare the nation for an Inquisition.” John Bradford, a prebendary of St. Paul’s, London, a powerful and popular preacher, was burnt in Smithfield, July 15th; Bishops Latimer and Ridley were sacrificed in the flames at Oxford, on the 16th of October; and Archbishop Cranmer was executed at the stake, in the same place, March 24, 1556. Particulars of the sufferings and triumphs of these and the other martyrs for Christ, during the short reign of Mary, cannot here be detailed. _Four_, _five_, _six_, _seven_, and on one occasion, _thirteen_ persons, were seen murdered in one fire! Neither sex nor age, the lame nor blind, being spared, if they refused conformity to the imposition of the Romish prelates. Barbarities so shocking terrified the whole nation. Petitions to the Queen against them were transmitted from the Protestant exiles abroad; so that even King Philip was so ashamed, that he caused a Spanish divine, of high celebrity, to preach against the cruelties, though the same things were transacted under his direct sanction, in his own dominions in the Netherlands and Spain.