persecution. Both are excellent specimens of their Church, because
according to that Church they are absolutely blameless. Punctilious
in the discharge of all religious duties, they were chaste, sober,
frugal, and honest. They made long prayers. They tithed mint, and
anise, and cummin. They made clean the outside of the cup and
platter. They firmly believed that they were pleasing the Deity they
worshipped when they deluged England with blood. The spirit of the
Marian martyrs is one of the noblest tributes to the power of true
religion that the annals of Christendom contain. Henry' s victims
were few and conspicuous. Their crime, or alleged crime, was
treason. Mary's were obscure, and numbered by the hundred. Many of
them were artisans and mechanics, who, as Burghley afterwards said,
knew no faith except that they were called upon to abjure. They went
to the stake without a murmur, sustained against the terrors of
demonology by their own English hearts, by the love of their
friends, and by the grace of God. Tennyson, in his play of Queen
Mary, has put into the mouth of Pole some highly edifying sentiments
on the want of true faith which prompts persecution. Pole's example
was very different from these precepts. For the wretched Mary there
may be some excuse; she was perhaps not wholly sane. Her fixed idea,
that if she killed Protestants enough Heaven would give her a son,
was the conviction of a lunatic. Her own husband fled from her, and
left her with no earthly consolation save the stake. But Pole was
sane enough when he burnt better Christians than himself. The true
story of Mary's reign deserved to be told as Froude could tell it.
The tale has two sides, and is a warning which has been taken to
heart. Mary's subjects could not rebel. Her Spanish husband had
behind him the military strength of a great Power. But never again,
except during the brief and disastrous period which led to the
expulsion of the second James, has England endured a Catholic