Replies.
CRANMER'S MARTYRDOM.
(Vol. ix., pp. 392. 547.)
I thank G. W. R. for his courteous remarks on my note on Cranmer. Perhaps I have overstated the effect of pain on the nervous system; certainly I was wrong in making a wider assertion than was required by my case, which is, that no man could hold his hand over unconfined flame till it was "entirely consumed" or "burnt to a coal." "Bruslée à feu de souphre" does not go so far as that, nor is it said at what time of the burning Ravaillac raised his head to look at his hand.
J. H. has mistaken my intention. I have always carefully avoided everything which tended to religious or moral controversy in "N. & Q." I treated Cranmer's case on physiological grounds only. I did not look for "cotemporaneous evidence against that usually received," any more than I should for such evidence that St. Denis did not walk from Paris to Montmartre with his head in his hand. If either case is called a miracle, I have nothing to say upon it here; and for the same reason that I avoid such discussion, I add, that in not noticing J. H.'s opinions on Cranmer, I must not be understood as assenting to or differing from them. J. H. says:
"It would surely be easy to produce facts of almost every week from the evidence given in coroners' inquests, in which persons have had their limbs burnt off—to say nothing of farther injury—without the shock producing death."
If favoured with one such fact, I will do my best to inquire into it. None such has fallen within my observation or reading.
The heart remaining "entire and unconsumed among the ashes," is a minor point. It does not seem impossible to J. H., "in its plain and obvious meaning." Do the words admit two meanings? Burnet says:
"But it was no small matter of astonishment to find his heart entire, and not consumed among the ashes; which, though the reformed would not carry so far as to make a miracle of it, and a clear proof that his heart had continued true, though his hand had erred; yet they objected it to the Papists, that it was certainly such a thing, that if it had fallen out in any of their church, they had made it a miracle."—Vol. ii. p. 429.