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.
Mary had no child, and Philip spent most of his time in the Netherlands, being apparently alienated from his queen. She became dejected, through a sense of his unkindness, and chagrined at the loss of Calais, so that her health declined; while she was the victim of superstition, and a prey to remorse for her dreadful cruelties, and she finished her wretched life, November 7, 1558.
Of the martyrs for Christ in the reign of Mary, victims of the Inquisition, there were reckoned, one archbishop, four bishops, twenty-one clergymen, eight gentlemen, eighty-four tradesmen, a hundred husbandmen, labourers and servants, fifty-five women, and four children! Cooper estimates the number of those who suffered for the Gospel, from February, 1555, to September, 1558, at about 290! According to Bishop Burnet, there were 284. The most accurate account is, probably, that of Lord Burleigh, who, in his treatise called “The Execution of Justice in England,” reckons the number of those who died in the reign of Mary by imprisonment, torments, famine, and fire, to be nearly 400; of whom those who were burnt alive amounted to 290!
Queen Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on the death of her sister Mary. She was a Protestant in profession, and she restored the reformation in England; but her prelates were persecutors, and they were allowed to retain the spirit and power of the Inquisition, but under another name, “The Court of High Commission.”
This Court of High Commission was created in the name of the queen, for the express purpose of searching out and punishing the nonconformists. These commissioners were principally bishops, and they assumed the power of administering an oath ex officio, by which the prisoner was obliged to answer all questions put to him, and even to accuse himself or his dearest friend. Many refused to take the oath, choosing rather to suffer imprisonment, which was determined, not according to any law, but the will of the commissioners. A detail of the miseries endured by conscientious clergymen, under the High Commission Court, would require volumes; their principles, and many of their practices, being precisely those of the execrable Romish Inquisition.
Archbishop Parker continued a cruel persecutor of the nonconformists: and others of the prelates employed the most dishonourable methods to hunt out and imprison them, hiring unprincipled characters as inquisitors and informers, and making new articles, contrary to the laws of England, for the more certain conviction of those brought before the ecclesiastical courts.