DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

( ) eminent of her Protestant subjects were hunted down, imprisoned, tortured, and burnt at the stake. Horrible as the religious persecutions now appear to us to have been in England during the sixteenth century, we almost feel tempted to rejoice over their comparative mildness when we turn to the wholesale massacres on the Continent. We shudder when we read of the Smithfield martyrs under Mary Tudor and the executions under Elizabeth. During the five years of Mary’s reign, 193 Protestants, or here- tics as they were called, were burnt to death. I do not think Elizabeth ever sent any one to the stake. She hanged and beheaded about 130 Papists during the forty-five years of her reign. Now let us turn to France. Where in one week alone—it was in the year 1572 —about 80,000 Protestants fell under the blows of Catholic assassins, who acted under the direct orders of their king; in Flanders the Protestant executions by the gallows and by the stake have to be counted by tens of thousands. For upwards of twenty years France was devastated by civil wars between the Protestants and Catholics, and the best blood of that kingdom was spilt and wasted in fighting for the cause of religious principles. It was the exceptional station of most of the English victims, their royal birth, the position they held in the Church and in the nobility, and generally also