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ST. PETER AD VINCULA, OVERLOOKING TOWER GREEN

E. Gardner’s Collection.

Meantime, the people of London—partly exasperated by the sight of these gibbets; partly hating the Spanish marriage; partly hating the break-up of the Reformation—showed their minds in every possible way. They shot at preachers of Papistry; they dressed up a cat like a Roman Priest, and hanged it on a gallows in Cheapside; they found a girl who pretended to receive messages from a spirit. It was called the Spirit in the Wall. When the Eucharist was carried through Smithfield a man tried to knock the holy elements out of the priest’s hands. And on Easter Day a priest saying mass in St. Margaret’s, Westminster, was attacked by a man with a knife.

The Marian Persecution began in January 1555. The Queen issued a proclamation that bonfires should be lit in various places in the City to show the people’s joy and gladness for the abolition of heresies. This was the signal for the martyrdoms. John Rogers, Prebendary of St. Paul’s, was burned, to begin with, at Smithfield; Hooper, at Gloucester; Ferrar at St. David’s; Rowland Taylor at Hadleigh; Lawrence Saunders at Coventry; William Flower at Westminster; John Cardmaker at Smithfield; John Bradford at Smithfield. It is enough to state that the martyrs of this Persecution were two hundred and eighty-eight in number: including five Bishops, twenty-one clergy, fifty-five women, four children, and two hundred and three laymen. Of the laymen, only eight were gentlemen. I will invite consideration of this fact later on.