It may be worth while to quote here again from Goodman, the Protestant Bishop of Gloucester, respecting the persecutions of the Catholics in the reign of James.[79] "Now that they saw the times settled, having no hope of better days, but expecting that the uttermost rigour of the law should be executed, they became desperate; finding that by the laws of the kingdom their own lives were not secured, and for the coming over of a priest into England it was no less than high treason. A gentlewoman was hanged only for relieving and harbouring a priest; a citizen was hanged only for being reconciled to the Church of Rome: besides, the penal laws were such and so executed that they should not subsist:--what was usually sold in shops and openly bought, this the pursuivant would take away from them as being popish and superstitious. One knight did affirm that in one term he gave twenty nobles in rewards to the doorkeeper of the attorney-general; another did affirm, that his third part which remained to him of his estate did hardly serve for his expense in law to defend him from other oppressions, besides their children to be taken from home to be brought up in another religion. So they did every way conclude that their estate was desperate, etc." If objection should be taken to Goodman as a witness on the Protestant side, on the ground that he eventually became a Catholic, I would reply that, at the time he wrote what I have quoted, he was, as the editor of his _Court of James the First_ says,[80] "an earnest and zealous supporter of the Church," of England, and of James I., Goodman himself writes[81] in that very book:--"Truly I did never know any man of so great an apprehension, of so great love and affection--a man so truly just, so free from all cruelty and pride, such a lover of the church, and one that had done so much good for the church." Such an admirer of King James might certainly be trusted not to say a word that he could honestly avoid about the ill-treatment endured by any class of his subjects during his reign. [79] _The Court of King James I._, Vol. i. pp. 100-1. [80] Introduction, p. viii. [81] Vol. i. p. 91. CHAPTER V.