Note (Back to Main Text) — Chapter V · CALAIS.

On the 20th of August, twenty-three men and women were brought to London from Colchester, tied in a string with ropes to furnish another holocaust. A thousand people cheered them through the streets as they entered the city; and the symptoms of disorder were so significant and threatening, that Bonner wrote to Pole for instructions how he should proceed. The government was alarmed; "the council, not without good consideration," decided that it would be dangerous to go on with the executions; and Pole, checking Bonner's zeal, allowed the prisoners to escape for the time, under an easy form of submission which they could conscientiously make. They were dismissed to their homes, only, however, for several of them to be slaughtered afterwards, under fresh pretexts, in detail;[575] and Pole took an occasion, as will be presently seen, of reprimanding the citizens of London for their unnatural sympathy with God's enemies. That he had no objection to these large massacres, when they could be ventured safely, he showed himself in the following year, when fourteen heretics, of both sexes, were burnt in two days at Canterbury and Maidstone.[576]