£1500 to bury a nobleman, and £1 16 6, to burn three martyrs! Leaving the Courier and Enquirer, and the “friend, learned in such lore,” to bury or to burn this record, as they please, I turn to another subject, referred to, on the very same page of Strype’s Memorials, and which is not without some little interest, at the present moment.

A prisoner, charged with any terrible offence, innocent or guilty, lies under the surveillance of all eyes and ears. The slightest act, the shortest word, the very breath of his nostrils are carefully reported. The public resolves itself into a committee of anxious inquirers, to ascertain precisely how he eats, and drinks, and sleeps. There are persons of lively fancies, whose imaginations fire up, at the mere sight of his prison walls, and start off, under high pressure, filling the air with rumors, too horribly delightful, to be doubted for an instant.

If the topic were not the terrible thing that it is, it would be difficult to preserve one’s gravity, while listening to some portion of the testimony, upon which, it may be our fortune, one of these days, to be convicted of murder, by the charitable public.

Of the guilt or innocence of John White Webster I know nothing, and I believe nothing. But it has been currently reported, that, since his confinement, he has been detected, in the crime of eating oysters. I doubt, if this ordeal would have been considered entirely satisfactory, even by Dr. Mather, in 1692. Man is a marvellous monster, when sitting, self-placed, in judgment, on his fellow! The very thing, which is a sin, in the commission or observance, is no less a sin, in the omission and the breach—for who will doubt the blood-guiltiness of a man, that, while confined, on a charge of murder, can partake of an oyster pie! And if he cannot do this, who will doubt, that a consciousness of guilt has deprived him of his appetite!

I have heard of a drunken husband, who, while staggering home, after midnight, communed with himself, as follows—“If my wife has gone to bed, before I get home to supper, I’ll beat her,—and if she is sitting up, so late as this, burning my wood and candles, I’ll beat her.”

Good John Strype, ibid. 562, says of Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, while in the prison of Bocardo—“They ate constantly suppers as well as dinners. Their meals amounted to about three or four shillings; seldom exceeding four. Their bread and ale commonly came to two pence or three pence; they had constantly cheese and pears for their last dish, both at dinner and supper; and always wine.” It is not uninteresting to note the prices, paid for certain articles of their diet, in those days, 1555. While describing the provant of these martyrs, Strype annexes the prices, “it being an extraordinary dear time.—A goose, 14d. A pig, 12 oz. 13d. A cony, 6d. A woodcock, 3d. and sometimes 5d. A couple of chickens, 6d. Three plovers, 10d. Half a dozen larks, 3d. A dozen of larks and 2 plovers, 10d. A breast of veal, 11d. A shoulder of mutton, 10d. Roast beef, 12d.” He presents one of Cranmer’s bills of fare:—

“Bread and ale,2.d.
Item oisters,1.d.
Item butter,2.d.
Item eggs,2.d.
Item lyng,8.d.
Item a piece of fresh salmon,10.d.
Wine,3.d.
Cheese and pears,2.d.”

Two bailiffs, Wells and Winkle, upon their own responsibility, furnished the table of these martyrs, and appear never to have been reimbursed. Strype says, ibid. 563, that they expended £63 10s. 2d., and never received but £20, which they obtained from Sir William Petre, Secretary of State. Ten years after, a petition was presented to the successor of Cranmer, that these poor bailiffs might receive some recompense.

After the pile had burnt down, in the case of Cranmer, upon raking among the embers, his heart was found entire. Upon this incident, Strype exclaims—“Methinks it is a pity, that his heart, that remained sound in the fire, and was found unconsumed in his ashes, was not preserved in some urn; which, when the better times of Queen Elizabeth came, might, in memory of this truly good and great Thomas of Canterbury, have been placed among his predecessors, in his church there, as one of the truest glories of that See.”

In 1821, Mr. William Ward, of Serampore, published, in London, his “Farewell Letters.” Mr. Ward was a Baptist missionary; and, at the time of the publication, was preparing to return to Bengal. This work was very favorably reviewed in the Christian Observer, vol. xxi. p. 504. I have never met with a description, so exceedingly minute, of the suttee, the process of burning widows. He thus describes the funeral pile—“The funeral pile consists of a quantity of fagots, laid on the earth, rising, in height, about three feet from the ground, about four feet wide, and six feet in length.” Admitting these fagots to be closely packed, the pile contains seventy-two cubic feet of wood, or fifty-six less than a cord. “A large quantity of fagots are then laid upon the bodies,” says Mr. Ward. As the widow often leaps from the pile, and is chased back again, into the flames, by the benevolent Bramins, the fagots, which are not heaped around the pile, but “laid on the bodies,” cannot be a very oppressive load; and the quantity, thus employed in the suttee, is for the cremation of two bodies, at least, the dead husband, and the living widow.