any countenance of submission, but rather persisted in that they be convicted of." Of course it was "so found by the jury," when that jury was expressly instructed from the bench, that whatever was written and published in derogation of the Queen's supremacy over all ecclesiastical questions and affairs, or maintaining that Christian believers in London, under Elizabeth, had the same right of instituting voluntary churches which Christian believers had in Rome, under Nero, was "most maliciously written and published against her Majesty's government." Nothing was more obviously true than that the prisoners were heartily loyal to the person of the Queen, and to her authority as a secular sovereign.

The two less conspicuous confessors were permitted to live; but Barrowe and Greenwood were to die. A letter written by Barrowe to an "honorable lady and countess of his kindred," after his condemnation, shows the spirit of the martyrs:

“Though it be no new or strange doctrine unto you, right honorable Lady, who have been so educated and exercised in the faith and fear of God, that the cross should be joined to the gospel, tribulation and persecution to the faith and profession of Christ; yet this may seem strange unto you, and almost incredible, that in a land professing Christ, such cruelty should be offered unto the servants of Christ, for the truth and gospel's sake,-and that, by the chief ministers of the Church, as they pretend.

....

"For books written more than three years since, after well near six years' imprisonment sustained at their hands, have these prelates, by their vehement suggestions and accusations, caused us to be indicted, arraigned, condemned, for writing and publishing seditious' books upon the statute made the twentythird year of her Majesty's reign."

After rehearsing the various points in the indictment, and showing what his defense was, and that of his brethren, against the charge of sedition, "the matters being merely ecclesiastical, controverted between this clergy and us," he

says:

"But these answers, or whatever else I could say or allege, prevailed nothing. So that I, with my four other brethren, were, the 23d of the third month, condemned and adjudged to suffer death, as felons.”

"Upon the 24th, early in the morning, was preparation made for our execution. We [were] brought out of the limbo, our irons smitten off, and we ready

to be bound to the cart, when her Majesty's most gracious pardon came for our reprieve. After that the bishops sent unto us certain doctors and deans to exhort and confer with us. We showed how they had neglected the time,—we had been well nigh six years in their prisons; never refused but always humbly desired of them Christian conference, but never could obtain it; . . .

that our time now was short in this world. . . . . Upon the last day of the third month [eight days after sentence] my brother Greenwood and I were very early and secretly conveyed to the place of execution, where, being tied by the necks to the tree, we were permitted to speak a few words. . . . . Thus craving pardon of all men whom we had any way offended, and freely forgiving the whole world, we used prayer for her Majesty, the magistrates, people, and even for our adversaries. And having, both of us, almost finished our last words, behold, one was, even at that instant, come with a reprieve for our lives, from her Majesty,which was not only thankfully received of us, but with exceeding rejoicing and applause of all the people, both at the place of execution, and in the ways, streets, and houses, as we returned."

It was only four or five days after so extraordinary an experience, that Barrowe made this appeal to his "right honorable" relative. His letter was dated, "This 4th or 5th of the 4th month, 1593;" and it was written to obtain, if possible, her personal intercession with the Queen in their behalf. He entreated the Countess, "Let not any worldly or politic impediments, or unlikelihoods,-no fleshly fears, diffidence, or delays, stop or hinder you from speaking to her Majesty on our behalf before she go out of this city; lest we, by your default herein, perish in her absence, having no assured stay or respite of our lives, and our malignant adversaries ready to watch any occasion for the shedding of our blood, as we, by these two near and miraculous escapes, have found."*

There was another month of waiting in the prison. Could the prisoners have been subdued by the twice encountered terrors of death-could they have been brought by any method of persuasion to renounce the truth which it was their mission to maintain-could they have been induced, as Robert Browne had been, to dishonor their own testimony by a simple promise of submission to the Church of England,there was no room to doubt that the reprieve would have been made a pardon. But the labor of "doctors and deans,"

* Hanbury, I, 48, 49.

with the gallows in the background of every exhortation and every syllogism, was unsuccessful. Those prisoners had seen the gallows, and had felt the cord around their necks,—but they had also seen a truth which the "doctors and deans" could not see, and for that truth they were willing to die. Accordingly, on the sixth of May, they were once more brought out of the dungeon, and their "irons smitten off;" again they were "bound to the cart;" again they were conveyed along the streets and ways to Tyburn; and there they finished their testimony. After the long delay, the deed was at last done suddenly, that opportunity might not be given for any expression of popular sympathy.

The historian of the Pilgrim colony at Plymouth tells us how those martyrs died. "A famous and godly preacher, having heard and seen Mr. Barrowe's holy speeches and preparations for death, said, 'Barrowe, Barrowe, my soul be with thine."" Such appears to have been the tribute of a Puritan to the Separatist. "The same author also reports that Queen Elizabeth asked learned Dr. Reynolds what he thought of those two men, Mr. Barrowe and Mr. Greenwood; and he answered her Majesty that it could not avail anything to show his judgment concerning them, seeing they were put to death, and being loath to speak his mind further, her Majesty charged him, upon his allegiance, to speak. Whereupon, he answered that he was persuaded, if they had lived, they would have been two as worthy instruments for the church of God as have been raised up in this age. Her Majesty sighed, and said no more. But after that, riding to a park by the place where they were executed, and being willing to take further information concerning them, [she] demanded of the right honorable the Earl of Cumberland, that was present when they suffered, what end they made. He answered, 'A very godly end, and prayed for your Majesty and the State."" Bradford adds to this what some of the Pilgrims had "heard by credible information, that the Queen demanded of the Archbishop what he thought of them in his conscience. He answered, 'he thought they were the ser

6

vants of God, but dangerous to the State.' Alas!' said she, 'shall we put the servants of God to death?""* We may doubt whether Whitgift ever made that answer precisely as the tradition gives it; for he was too hearty a bigot to admit, intentionally, that the men whom he had persecuted to the death for not believing in the Church of England and his primacy, could be in fact, "the servants of God." But the tradition itself, as it existed in the Plymouth church, is evidence of the estimation in which those martyrs were held by Brewster and others, whose personal recollections went back to that time. "And thus much," says Bradford, "we can further affirm from those that well knew him, that he was very comfortable to the poor, and those in distress, in their suffering, and when he saw he must die, he gave a stock for the relief of the poor of the church, which was a good help to them in their banished condition afterwards, yea, and that which some will hardly believe, he did much persuade them to peace, and composed many differences that were grown amongst them whilst he lived, and would have, it is like, prevented more that after fell out, if he had continued." Why, then, was he so much aspersed, not only by the "Pontificals," but by many Puritans in high repute for godliness? "It is not much to be marveled at," replies Bradford; "for he was most plain in discovering the cruelty, fraud, and hypocrisy of the enemies of the truth, and searching into the corruptions of the time,-which made him abhorred of them; and peradventure [he was] something too harsh against the haltings of divers of the preachers and professors that he had to deal with in those times [such as Giffard, and other Puritan adversaries of separation,] who out of fear or weakness, did not come so close up to the truth in their practice, as their doctrines and grounds seemed to hold forth."+

In September, 1592, eight months before the martyrdom of Barrowe and Greenwood, there came to London, from the north, a young man of eminent gifts and eminent zeal, who, though he had been hunted out of England into Scotland, for his efforts in the cause of reformation, had never yet become a

* Bradford's Dialogue in Chronicles of the Pilgrims, 431, 433. Ibid, 434, 435.

Separatist. Being thrown into association with members of the little persecuted church in the metropolis, he was attracted to them by his sympathy with their afflictions, and soon adopted their principle of voluntary "reformation without tarrying for any." This was John Penry, or Ap Henry, a Welshman, who was born in the year of Elizabeth's accession to the throne. At the age of nineteen he became a student in the University of Cambridge. There his strong religious sensibilities, which at first had been fascinated by the Roman ritualism, were roused and enlightened by the Puritan influences which still lingered in that seat of learning, notwithstanding the recent expulsion of Cartwright from his professorship, and the measures used for the suppression of his doctrine. Embracing with his whole heart the gospel of personal salvation from sin by personal faith in Christ the Redeemer, he seems to have been, from the beginning of his Christian life, far more intent on a religious reformation, and especially on the evangelization of his benighted countrymen in Wales, than on any merely ecclesiastical questions. Could he have had the religious liberty which was yet to be achieved for all the subjects of the English crown by ages of conflict, he would have been a reformer of the same class with Whitefield, and the Wesleys-an evangelist, flaming with the love of souls, and preaching with a tongue of fire. Little did he care for questions about prelacy and parity in the clerical body-still less for questions about clerical costumes and the other trumperies of the Queen's ritual. His soul groaned over the ignorance and the sins of his countrymen, and his longing was, that to the poor the gospel might be preached. After taking his first degree in arts at Cambridge, he removed to St. Alban's Hall, in Oxford, where there happened to be, just then, more favor for men of Puritan sympathies; and there he proceeded Master of Arts, in 1586. He declined the offer of ordination without "a call to the ministry by some certain church," and contented himself with the university license to preach.

His first publication was printed at Oxford, in the year 1587. It was, as he described it, in his title-page, "A Treatise, containing the equity of an Humble Supplication, which is to be