Note 354 — Chapter IV

Strype's Whitgift, 414; Neal, 373. Several years before, in 1583, two men called anabaptists, Thacker and Copping, were hanged at the same place on the same statute for denying the queen's ecclesiastical supremacy; the proof of which was their dispersion of Brown's tracts, wherein that was only owned in civil cases. Strype's Annals, iii. 186. This was according to the invariable practice of Tudor times: an oppressive and sanguinary statute was first made; and next, as occasion might serve, a construction was put on it contrary to all common sense, in order to take away men's lives.