Another instance of recovered courage, and of martyrdom consequent upon it, is that of James Bainham, a barrister of the Middle Temple. This story is noticeable from a very curious circumstance connected with it.
Bainham had challenged suspicion by marrying the widow of Simon Fish, the author of the famous Beggars' Petition, who had died in 1528; and, soon after his marriage, was challenged to give an account of his faith. He was charged with denying transubstantiation, with questioning the value of the confessional, and the power of the keys; and the absence of authoritative The latitudinarian martyr. Protestant dogma had left his mind free to expand to a yet larger belief. He had ventured to assert, that "if a Turk, a Jew, or a Saracen do trust in God and keep his law, he is a good Christian man,"[102]—a conception of Christianity, a conception of Protestantism, which we but feebly dare to whisper even at the present day. The proceedings against him commenced with a demand that he should give up his books, and also the names of other barristers with whom he was suspected to have held intercourse. He refused; and in consequence his wife was imprisoned, and he himself was racked in the Tower by order of Sir Thomas More. Enfeebled by suffering, he was then brought before Stokesley, and terrified by the cold merciless eyes of his On his first trial he recants. judge, he gave way, not about his friends, but about himself: he abjured, and was dismissed heartbroken. This was on the seventeenth of February. He was only able to endure his wretchedness for a month. At the end of it, he appeared at a secret meeting of the Christian Brothers, in "a warehouse in Bow Lane," where he asked forgiveness of God and all the world for what he had done; and then went out to take again upon his shoulders the heavy burden of the cross.
He recovers his courage,
The following Sunday, at the church of St. Augustine, he rose in his seat with the fatal English Testament in his hand, and "declared openly, before all the people, with weeping tears, that he had denied God," praying them all to forgive him, and beware of his weakness; "for if I should not return to the truth," he said, "this Word of God would damn me, body and soul, at the day of judgment." And then he prayed "everybody rather to die than to do as he did, for he would not feel such a hell again as he did feel for all the world's good."[103]
And is arrested again.
Of course but one event was to be looked for: he knew it, and himself wrote to the bishop, telling him what he had done. No mercy was possible: he looked for none, and he found none.
The mercy of the church authorities.
Yet perhaps he found what the wise authorities thought to be some act of mercy. They could not grant him pardon in this world upon any terms; but they would not kill him till they had made an effort for his soul. He was taken to the Bishop of London's coal-cellar at Fulham, the favourite episcopal penance-chamber, where he was ironed and put in the stocks; and there was left for many days, in the chill March weather, to bethink himself. This failing to work conviction, he was carried to Sir Thomas More's house at Chelsea, where for two nights he was chained to a post and whipped; thence, again, he was taken back to Fulham for another week of torture; and finally to the Tower, for a further fortnight, again with ineffectual whippings.
The demands of charity were thus satisfied. The pious bishop and the learned chancellor had exhausted their means of conversion; they had discharged their consciences; and the law was allowed to take its course. The prisoner was brought to trial on the 20th of April, as a relapsed He is burnt April 20, 1532. heretic. Sentence followed; and on the last of the month the drama closed in the usual manner at Smithfield. Before the fire was lighted Bainham made a farewell address to the people, laying his death expressly to More, whom he called his accuser and his judge.[104]
The feelings with which these spectacles were witnessed by the people.