might be allowed to speak to Sir Lionel, and take leave of Beatrice. Both these favours were refused; but when he asked permission to carry with him his Bible, a ready assent was given, not without a smile of derision at his thus affording evidence against himself, and becoming a party to his own destruction.

his accuser.

Accompanied by this ruffianly escort, Cecil pursued his journey, deeply distressed in mind at being thus suddenly severed from Beatrice, at a moment when he was enjoying the first taste of happiness that he had ever experienced; and bewildered with amazement as to the cause of his arrest and conveyance to London, on which subjects his companions preserved an impenetrable silence, conformably to their instructions, that he might be the less prepared to arrange his own defence, or to recriminate upon Melancholy as was his retrospect of the past, and gloomy as were his apprehensions of the consequences that might follow this violent seizure of his person, he still found consolation from perusing the sacred volume, whenever their occasional stoppages upon the road allowed him to do So. To this solace, considering it a furtherance of their own object, his conductors offered no hindrance, and it sufficed to occupy and tranquillize his mind until their arrival in London, which they reached without any occurrence that needs be recorded. Here they betook themselves in the first instance, to the house of Sir Thomas Cromwell, who immediately ordered the young heretic to be committed to prison; and as all the inferior places of confinement were full, from the great number of offenders implicated under the sanguinary and contradictory statutes at this moment so unrelentingly enforced, Cecil enjoyed the unenviable honour of being imprisoned in the Tower of London.

238

CHAPTER XIII.

Is this the craven idiot boy,
Who never could the rights enjoy
Of Reason's charter?

Behold the love-enlighten'd youth
Offer his life for Christian truth-
A hero-martyr!

In

CECIL had not been long immured, when he learnt by accident the nature of the charge that was registered against him in the Bishop's Court. the same cell with himself was imprisoned an unhappy priest, who had been a grievous sufferer from the cruelty of Sir Thomas More, when Chancellor; by whose orders, and in whose presence, he had not only been tied up to a tree in the garden of Sir Thomas's house at Chelsea, and severely whipped, but afterwards put to the torture in prison; the Chancellor himself superintending the whole horrid process.* By these inflictions he had been induced to abjure his opinions, which were those of the reformed religion, and was accordingly set at liberty; but haunted and stung by remorse for his apostacy, he had fallen into a depression of spirits,

* The furious bigotry of this otherwise amiable and enlightened man, who could cheerfully offer up his own life upon a scruple of conscience, cannot be better illustrated than by his own words:-"That which I professe in my epitaph is that I have been troublesome to hereticks; I have done it with a little ambition, for I so hate them, these kind of men, that I would be their sorest enemy that I could."-How different from Sir Henry Wotton's epitaph, when the world was a hundred years older-"Disputandi Pruritus, Ecclesiæ Scabies!" Sir Thomas More affords an awful example how soon the kindest heart and the clearest head may become utterly perrerted when once tainted with the odium theologicum,

and fits of stupor, which continued for some time, and threatened the total alienation of his reason. At length he suddenly resumed his former cheerfulness, and his friends flattered themselves that his mind had permanently recovered its tone; but this temporary elevation had been occasioned only by his resolution to expiate his offence, to proclaim his old tenets, and die as a martyr to the truth. To this course he felt himself peculiarly impelled at the present moment, when he saw in the King's recent measures every symptom of a total backsliding into all the errors of popery; and he accordingly preached openly against idolatry, desiring the people not to trust for their salvation to pilgrimages, to the cowl of St. Francis, to the prayers of the saints, or to the false miracles that were worked by images. For this offence he was seized, tried in the Bishop's Court as a relapsed and obstinate heretic, and soon after Cecil's arrival in the Tower was condemned to be burnt.

The friends of this man, while searching the books of the Bishop's Court, in order to prepare for his defence, encountered the name of Cecil Hungerford, to whom, on their being admitted into the prison to confer with his companion, they communicated the nature of the charge that was registered against him. Once acquainted with the danger that menaced him, he prepared himself to meet it with a firm and undaunted spirit. Under the spiritual tuition of Father Barnabas, he had learnt little of popery but the Book of Legends,-a compilation which many of the better-informed Catholics disclaimed. So manifest, however, were the general errors and abuses of the system, so deeply did he feel persuaded that the new opinions, as the reformed religion was termed, were calculated to ameliorate, advance, and ennoble the human race— that he disdained the very thought of not proclaiming himself a convert to the tenets of Luther, a pos

sessor and reader of Tindal's Translation of the Scriptures, and a decided opposer of all the old errors and superstitions. That faith must needs be wrong, thought Cecil to himself, which lead its followers to persecute, torture, and destroy those who differ from them. A real Christian cannot even think intolerantly; before he can add cruelty to bigotry,, he must have altogether abjured the religion he professes, and have spurned the precept and example of its Founder, who commanded us to forgive seventy times seven times, and even upon the Cross implored pardon for his murderers, because they were in error and knew not what they

did.

In these sentiments he was corroborated by his companion, who possessed him of all the religious points which were then the subject of general controversy and of present persecution, impressing upon him, at the same time, the imperative duty of laying down his life for the truth, if called upon to do so, and warning him, by his own history, of the agony with which his conscience would be smitten, if he suffered himself to be terrified into a denial of his sentiments, and to apostatize from Christ. Such had been his own remorse, that he declared he should have hung himself like Judas, had he not embraced his present resolution of making atonement, by sacrificing himself for the good cause. So far from being intimidated by the cruel fate that awaited him, his cheerfulness increased as the hour approached, until his growing enthusiasm was kindled into ecstacy and rapture. He saw beatific visions of angels descending from the sky to place the crown of martyrdom upon his head; and in this frame of mind, singing divine hymns, while his face was irradiated with delight, he marched forth to the place of execution, where he embraced the fagots in a transport of joy, as the means of procuring him eternal rest, and endured his horrid pun

ishment with a fortitude that few of the martyrs had surpassed.

Hitherto Cecil's constancy had been fortified by the example and the conversation of his companion; but when left to his own solitary reflections, the dreadful trial which he had to encounter presented itself in more appalling colours, and there was a severe and painful struggle in his soul. Had he been called upon to lay down his life at an earlier period, he could have obeyed, not only without repining, but even with alacrity, for existence presented no attractions to his view. But to be snatched from the world by an agonizing death, at the very moment he was reconciled to it, when it courted him for the first time with a prospect of happiness, when he was restored to his own esteem, when he could contemplate his fellow-creatures as his brethren; and above all, when Beatrice's confession of a reciprocal love had attached him to life by the promise of an ineffable and boundless felicity-this, this was indeed a sacrifice which could not be made without a convulsive effort of the spirit. This struggle however, was made, and he came out of it triumphant. Not only did he consider himself bound to this self-immolation by the religion he had embraced, but feeling that the interests of the whole human race would be incalculably advanced by the establishment of protestantism, which was in no way so likely to be cemented as by the blood of martyrs in its cause, he viewed himself as an offering for the good of his fellowcreatures, under which impression he forgot Cecil Hungerford, and even Beatrice, and awaited his doom with a calm and magnanimous resolution.

To this fortitude of purpose he had just braced his mind, when he was ordered to be brought up for examination at the Bishop's Court, whose reverend judges appeared to be not less surprised at his youthful and interesting appearance, than at the VOL. II.-21