Madam, so please you, these be heated men,
Who may not be convinced, and will not bend.”
He has better hopes of Cranmer; but his gentle earnestness is lost upon him no less.
Here be it remembered that it was the secular, and not the ecclesiastical, arm which inflicted the death-penalty for obdurate heresy. This penalty was the law in those days—days when every kind of felony was more severely punished than now. Whatever we moderns may think of this law, we must not forget that heresy is the greatest and most pernicious of crimes; and, again, that it was only formal and aggressive heresy that got itself arraigned and condemned. Moreover, what made the civil power so severe upon it was the fact that it was always coupled with sedition and treason.
But before we close our remarks upon the executions in Mary’s reign, let us look for a moment on the beautiful scene which intervenes between the one we have been examining and the prison-scene at Oxford—the last of the fourth Act.
Mary and Reginald are closeted together. The holy priest seeks to comfort his cousin.
“Poor soul!
Be to yourself more charitable. Think
That One there is who answers for your faults
And multiplies your merits.