relations so intimately, that it appears necessary to notice them in this place. One of these is the arbitrary character of the proceedings instituted against heretics.
Burnet[1] prints the original letter of Philip and Mary to the justices of Norfolk, ordering them in the plainest terms to make investigation into the behaviour of private persons, to employ informers, to call before them such as may 'probably be suspected,' and compel them to give an account of themselves. That this letter is but a sample is further proved by another, addressed to Bishop Bonner, and expatiating upon his slackness and want of zeal, in which their Majesties speak of having sent letters similar to the above to 'the justices of the peace within every of the counties in this our realm.' This seems to have been the completest instance on record of the introduction into England of the practical methods of the Inquisition, which Gardiner,[2] as we are told, had been anxious, still earlier in the reign, to set up in England; and it is worthy of notice that it was now introduced apparently on direct royal authority alone. Instances are to be found of remonstrance against Mary's policy of persecution from even the most unlikely quarters—from Charles V.,[3] from Renard, from Philip II.[4] (at least, indirectly), and even from Gardiner[5] himself—but they all seem to have
- ↑ Burnet, vol. v. pp. 427 and 429.
- ↑ Renard as quoted by Froude, vol. vi. p. 197.
- ↑ At the beginning of her reign, as we have seen, and again after the burning of Hooper. See also Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. pp. 393, 402.
- ↑ Philip had made Alphonsus à Castro (!) preach a sermon before him, in February 1555, against taking away men's lives for religion. Burnet, vol. ii. p. 490.
- ↑ Gardiner, followed by her other bishops, sitting to try Rogers, shifted the responsibility for the persecution from their own shoulders to the Queen's (Burnet, vol. ii. p. 484). Also Pole's instructions to the bishops
