A day's interval of preparation was allowed him, with a private room. He was in the custody of the sheriff; "and there was this difference observed between the keepers of the bishops' prisons and the keepers of the crown prisons, that the bishops' keepers were ever cruel; the keepers of the crown prisons showed, for the most part, such favour as they might."[446] After a sound night's rest, Hooper rose early, and passed the morning in solitary prayer. In the course of the day, young Sir Anthony Kingston, one of the commissioners appointed to superintend the execution, expressed a wish to see him. Kingston was an old acquaintance, Hooper having been the means of bringing him out of evil ways. He entered the room unannounced. Hooper was on his knees, and, looking round at the intruder, did not at first know him. Kingston told him his name, and then, bursting into tears, said:-- [Footnote 446: Foxe.] "Oh, consider; life is sweet and death is bitter; therefore, seeing life may be had, desire to live, for life hereafter may do good." Hooper answered:-- "I thank you for your counsel, yet it is not so friendly as I could have wished it to be. True it is, alas! Master Kingston, that death is bitter and life is sweet; therefore I have settled myself, through the strength of God's Holy Spirit, patiently to pass through the fire prepared for me, desiring you and others to commend me to God's mercy in your prayers." {p.194} "Well, my Lord," said Kingston, "then there is no remedy, and I will take my leave. I thank God that ever I knew you, for God appointed you to call me, being a lost child. I was both an adulterer and a fornicator, and God, by your good instruction, brought me to the forsaking of the same." They parted, the tears on both their faces. Other friends were admitted afterwards. The queen's orders were little thought of, for Hooper had won the hearts of the guard on his way from London. In the evening the mayor and aldermen came, with the sheriffs, to shake hands with him. "It was a sign of their good will," he said, "and a proof that they had not forgotten the lessons which he used to teach them." He begged the sheriffs that there might be "a quick fire, to make an end shortly;" and for himself he would be as obedient as they could wish. "If you think I do amiss in anything," he said, "hold up your fingers, and I have done; for I am not come hither as one enforced or compelled to die; I might have had my life, as is well known, with worldly gain, if I would have accounted my doctrine falsehood and heresy." In the evening, at his own request, he was left alone. He slept undisturbed the early part of the night. From the time that he awoke till the guard entered, he was on his knees.