English government was induced to discover its hostility to heretical opinions by an act which has brought severe and just opprobrium upon the Reformation. Joan Bocher, the unfortunate woman who had been condemned twelve months before, for holding heretical opinions respecting the Incarnation, had lingered in prison with her wild imaginations unchanged. On the 27th of April it was determined, at the council-board, that the savage law, provided in Romish times, for the extirpation of heresy, should be carried into execution upon this unimportant female. Archbishop Cranmer was not present in council, on the day rendered ignominiously memorable by this determination. Bishop Goodrich, of Ely,

some Romish casuists have maintained, that the end justifies the means. To men who had imbibed this moral poison, the act mentioned above would appear defensible. A remarkable instance of a similar kind is recorded by Archbishop Tenison, in his address to the parishioners of St. Martin's and St. James's, prefixed to A True Account of a Conference held about Religion, at London, September 29, 1687, between A. Pulton, Jesuit, and Tho. Tenison, D.D. He says, "My father being turned out of his living of Mondesley, in Norfolk, as an adherer to King Charles the Martyr; a person, one of whose names was Gubbard, recommending himself to the committee at Norwich as a man who had a zeal for the same cause in which they were engaged, took possession of the living, and received all the profits, but restored nothing; and with Mondesley he held the living of Knapton also. After a few years he began to throw off part of his disguise, and he preached up purgatory, and other points, in so open a manner, that the same committee who had put him in, turned him out again; and in a little time, he, as it were, vanished away."

At the stake, she addressed the inlowing contemptuous language to Dr. Scort mom whom devolved the little honourani zest of preaching the sermon usual upon such recisons: “ You lie like a rogue: go, read de Scriptures.* In the last reign, she had been employed in dispersing clandestinely, especially to some ladies about the court, Tyndale's Testaments, and among

documents, and contemporary testimony which he has printed. In his unauthenticated relations he may sometimes have filen nto error. That he has done so in his account of Edward's conduer. respecting Joan Bocher, is rendered highly probable by he King's silence. Had the extraordinary dialogue attributed a him and Cranmer ever taken place, it is not easy to account for its omission in the Royal Diary. Of any such dialogue, Sanders appears to have been ignorant, for he has not inserted the least allusion to it; although he has mentioned invidiously, as he was fairly warranted in doing, the burning of the two heretics, and the taunt which Bocher addressed to her judges, on the score of Anne Askew's case. (De Schism. 222.) Of the part which Cranmer really took in the affair of Joan Bocher nothing is known beyond the facts, that he presided judicially at her trial, and that he endeavoured, in company with Ridley, to shake her opinion, in several subsequent interviews, while she was detained at the house in Smithfield, then occupied by Lord Rich, the Chancellor, and lately the priory of St. Bartholomew. His dislike to the shedding of blood must be inferred from the mildness of his disposition, and is rendered undeniable by known facts. (Hist. Ref. under King Henry VIII. II. 333.) Dr. Lingard, in mentioning the burning of Joan Bocher, says, that "Cranmer was compelled to moot the point with the young theologian." (Edward.) He does not, however, attribute to the King the speeches which are in Foxe, and in most other histories. The whole account of this "mooting," is in fact unsupported by evidence, and when all the known circumstances of the case are considered, it appears by no means probable.

VOL. ITI

her acquaintances had been the martyred Anne Askew. To this female's case she referred on her condemnation, saying to her judges," It is a goodly matter to consider your ignorance. It was not long ago since you burned Anne Askew for a piece of bread, and yet ye came yourselves soon after to believe and profess the same doctrine for which you burned her. And now, forsooth, you will needs burn me for a piece of flesh, and in the end ye will come to believe this also, when you have read the Scriptures, and understand them." In April, 1551, this disgraceful spirit of persecution again revived, and an unfortunate Hollander, named George Van Parr, settled in London as a surgeon, after being excommunicated by the congregation of his own countrymen ̊, was condemned to the stake for Arianism. fore the end of the month, this iniquitous sentence was carried into execution. The sufferer had led a life of uncommon strictness, and he met his death with admirable resolution, kissing the faggots amidst which he was destined to expire ‘. That the progress of heretical and antisocial opinions, the slanders of the Romanists, and the disgust of Protestants in being confounded with religionists whose tenets they abhorred, supplied to those who advised these horrid executions a justification sufficiently plausible in their own eyes,

C

b Strype, Eccl. Mem. II. 335.

Be

King Edward's Journal. Burnet, Hist. Ref. Records, II. 36. d Burnet, Hist. Ref. II. 180.

there can be no doubt. Nor is it to be denied, that the unsettled state of the public mind as to religion occasioned serious difficulties to the government throughout King Edward's reign. Such considerations, however, although they may account for the two frightful ebullitions of intolerance which disgrace that period, will by no means excuse those who recommended them. At the same time, it is fair to observe, that the triumphant manner of the Romanists in appealing to the melancholy cases of Bocher and Van Parr, is rather unreasonable. The law which sentenced these oppressed individuals to the stake was of Romish growth, and was enforced by men who had received a Romish education. The victims held tenets at variance with Scripture, condemned by the earliest and most respectable councils, and proscribed by the unanimous voice of the Catholic Church. The judicial murder of two persons under these circumstances, however infamous and intolerable, is surely much less so, than the burning of hundreds who obediently listened to the voice of Scripture, and of ecclesiastical antiquity, faithfully holding every article of the Catholic faith; and who only rejected such tenets as cannot be established from Holy Writ, nor from the records of primitive times, nor from the decrees of any council unless one comparatively recent in its date, and completely subservient to the Roman Bishop.

In the early part of the year it was determined