Note (Back to Main Text) — Chapter VI · DEATH OF MARY.

Cranmer alone hitherto had suffered after recantation; to others, pardon had continued to be offered to the last moment. But this poor mercy was now extinguished. A man in Hampshire, named Bembridge, exclaimed at the point of execution that he would submit; a form was produced on the spot, which Bembridge signed, and the sheriff, Sir Richard Pexall, reprieved him by his own authority. But a letter of council came instantly to Pexall, that "the queen's majesty could not but find it very strange" that he had saved from punishment a man condemned for heresy: the execution was to proceed out of hand; and "if the prisoner continued in the Catholic faith, as he pretended," "some discreet and learned man might be present with him in his death, for the aiding of him to die God's servant."[649] Bembridge was accordingly burnt, and the sheriff, for the lenity which he had dare to show, was committed to the Fleet. Whole detachments of men and women were again slaughtered in London; and the queen, exasperated at the determination with which the populace cheered the sufferers with their sympathy, sent out a proclamation forbidding her subjects to approach, touch, speak to, or comfort heretics on their way to execution, under pain of death. Shortly after, a congregation of Protestants were detected at a prayer-meeting in a field near the city; thirteen were taken as prisoners before Bonner, and seven were burnt at Smithfield together on the 28th of June. The people replied to the queen's menaces by crowding about the stake with passionate demonstrations of affection, and Thomas Bentham, a friend of Lever the preacher, when the faggots were lighted, stood out in the presence of the throng, and cried: