1555.]
THE MARTYRS.
559
tricacies of speculative opinion will be punished not with the brief agony of a painful death, but with tortures to which there shall be no end.
But martyrdom was often but a relief from more barbarous atrocities. In the sad winter months which were approaching, the poor men and women, who, untried and uncondemned, were crowded into the bishops' prisons, experienced such miseries as the very dogs could scarcely suffer and survive. They were beaten, they were starved, they were flung into dark fetid dens, where rotting straw was their bed, their feet were fettered in the stocks, and their clothes were their only covering, while the wretches who died in their misery were flung out into the fields where none might bury them.[1]
- ↑ Foxe, vols. vii. viii., passim, especially vol. vii. p. 605. Philpot's Petition, Ibid. p. 682; and an account of the Prisons at Canterbury, vol. viii. p. 255. At Canterbury, after Pole became archbishop, his archdeacon, Harpsfeld, had fifteen prisoners confined together, of whom five were starved to death; the other ten were burnt. But before they suffered, and while one of those who died of hunger still survived, they left on record the following account of their treatment, and threw it out of a window of the castle:—'Be it known to all men that shall read, or hear read, these our letters, that we, the poor prisoners of the castle of Canterbury, for God's truth, are kept and lie in cold irons, and our keeper will not suffer any meat to be brought to us to comfort us. And if any man do bring in anything—as bread, butter, cheese, or any other food the said keeper will charge them that so bring us anything (except money or raiment), to carry it thence again; or else, if he do receive any food of any for us, he doth keep it for himself, and he and his servants do spend it; so that we have nothing thereof: and thus the keeper keepeth away our victuals from us; insomuch that there are four of us prisoners there for God's truth famished already, and thus it is his mind to famish us all. And we think he is appointed thereto by the bishops and priests, and also of the justices, so to famish us; and not only us of the said castle, but also all other prisoners
