swing from side to side with every storm that blew, they at least would never part, for the best or worst doctrine in Christendom, with their riches and estates. The Bible and Book of Common Prayer were abolished; the Statute of Heretics was revived; Cardinal Pole returned to England in a Catholic triumph, and both Houses of Parliament bent upon the knee before him and received the absolution of the Pope; a Bill for the reconciliation of England to the Holy See swept away every reform of Cranmer under her father's and her brother's reign; married priests were placed in the dilemma of renouncing their wives or their livings; and now, instead of the milder persecution of More and Cranmer in the reign of Henry, which only asked for silence, and did not seek for victims, the very spirit of the Spanish Inquisition found a home in this freedomloving England. Persecution ceased to be political, and became the offspring of religious fanaticism. When Thomas Cranmer, the old friend of King Henry, the author of all the moderate reforms of the last twenty years, the noblest and most truthful of priests, the venerable representative of all that was best or safest in the Church of England, the man whose figure was known in every country parish as that which had its place with those of Cromwell and the mighty King on the frontispiece of the English Bible, when he fell at the stake in Oxford, the hearts of thousands were embittered by the iniquity, and on every hand humble men and women, and even children, were eager to win the crown of martyrdom. When the trial of their faith came, the Protestants were divided into five classes: those like Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, who felt it their duty to God and to the nation to stand on English ground, and meekly suffer the consequences of the work they had chiefly promoted; the exiles; the political Reformers, such as Cecil, who could "bide their time;" the zealots, who rushed furiously upon the officers who carried out the commands of their superiors, and often hindered the Christian cause by ribaldry and violence; lastly, those avaricious and unscrupulous statesmen,-the Arundels, the Russells, the Pembrokes,—who had no certain creed but their own interest. It is to these last, and to the "bloody Mary," more than to the learned Gardiner and the vulgar Bonner, that we must charge the abominable wrongs and murders of this the blackest period of English history.

SIR JOHN CHEke.

One of the saddest stories is that of the learned tutor of Queen Elizabeth, the brotherin-law of the more renowned Cecil. Having obtained his release by the sacrifice of all his landed property, he received permission

to travel for a few years. He was tempted to Rome because of its classical associations, but far from its religious atmosphere exerting any influence upon his faith, he wrote to Cecil, on his way homeward, to "take heed how he did in the least warp or strain his conscience by any compliance for his worldly security." Fine advice in the fair weather of exile! Soon after penning this epistle, he was seized by King Philip's orders, between Brussels and Antwerp, when on his way to England, bound hand and foot, thrown into a cart, conveyed across the Channel in a sailing vessel, and sent to the Tower. He had either to comply or burn. It was not sufficient that the timid man of learning should subscribe his assent to the doctrine of the Real Presence and the whole list of Romish articles, but with that refined spirit of cruelty which demanded not only profession but evidence of sincerity, he was compelled to pronounce two recantations, one before the Queen, and one before the Cardinal. Even after he had undergone several acts of penance, he was not yet released; and when this mercy was granted, it was only to set him on the bench with Bonner to assist at the trial of the martyrs. His heart was broken, and in a few months he died in the hospitable home of an old friend, "a prey to shame, remorse, and melancholy."

ROGERS, RIDLEY, LATIMER, ETC.

It is scarcely necessary, even for the youngest, that we should recite the many and monotonous stories of the Marian martyrs, for are they not all written in that famous book by John Foxe, himself an exile, entitled "The Book of Martyrs"? There we read how good John Rogers, known as the proto-martyr, was lodged in Newgate among thieves, how on the way to Smithfield he met his wife and eleven children,-"one sucking on her breast,"-and yet died constantly and cheerfully, unmoved by this "sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood;" how Miles Coverdale, to whom England owed a translation of the Bible, was begged from the jaws of the lions by the King of Denmark; how good Rowland Taylor knelt in the dark morning with his wife and children on the unlit streets of London, walked to the quiet Suffolk parish where he had often preached with faith and fervour, saying at the stake, "I am even at home," and gently replying to a wretch who threw a faggot at his face, "O friend, I have harm enough, what needed that?

One of the first among the men who fell when the persecution began in deadly earnest in 1555, was the Puritanic bishop, John Hooper, taunted by two opponents on the bishops' bench as "hypocrite" and "beast." The latter he was not, although a married priest, like the sage Cranmer, for he was

"spare of diet, sparer of words, and sparest of time," and his life was "so pure and good that no kind of slander could fasten any fault upon him." He was condemned to execution for having a wife and rejecting the Romish doctrine of the Real Presence.

At Oxford there perished, within sight of Cranmer, who rushed to the housetop to catch a glimpse of his beloved fellow-labourers, the two bishops, meek Ridley and vehement Latimer. "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley," cried Latimer, as the flames scorched his aged frame; "play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."

The light was not extinguished. From bishops the Inquisition descended to humbler victims, to men like the old lame painter, Hugh Laverock, of Barking, who when he was chained, cast away his crutch, exclaiming to the blind martyr beside him, " My Lord of London is our good physician; he will heal us both shortly; to women like those of Guernsey, one of whom gave birth to an infant at the stake, which was tossed into the flames, and like brave Mrs. Cicely Ormes, of Norwich, who kissed the stake with the words, "Welcome the sweet Cross of Christ," and perished waving her arms till the sinews were stiffened with the flames.

Cambridge and Canterbury, Lewes and Lichfield, Rochester and Stratford-le-Bow, and many other spots, have their hallowed memories of the heroic men, women, and children who gladly laid their lives down at the stake for what they held to be the truth of God; but there is no place more sadly dear in England than the market-square of Smithfield, London. We forget the horsefair and the noisy mirth and "ruffian" duels of the days of Shakespeare, and think only of the grim tragedies enacted opposite the entrance to the church of St. Bartholomew, where some strong oak posts and martyrs' bones were discovered a little over thirty years ago. It was there that Bayfield and Baynham fell; that the noble Frith smiled at the brutal parson who declared he was no more worth praying for than a dog; that John Lambert raised his mangled hands and shouted to the people "None but Christ!" In that often mirthful mart, Barnes, Rogers, the Scottish exile Rough-group after group of plain, "godly, and innocent" men and women from the fields of Islington and other places were sacrificed like cattle to the insane fanaticism of the "Bloody Mary" and the cowardly submission of Gardiner, Bonner, and other weak-kneed priests. It is true

the Protestants of London hanged a cat in Cheapside "apparelled like a priest to say mass," that they decapitated the image of À Becket in that same thoroughfare, and that Marian exiles like Bale sent provoking Islanders from their Continental bowers of peace; but no plea on earth will suffice to wipe away the horror of Mary's hand, or lessen our indignation against her monstrous instruments-such as that Dr. Stover, who boasted in the first parliament of Good Queen Bess: "I wish that I had done more than I did. . . . I threw a faggot in the face of an earwig at Uxbridge as he was singing a psalm, and set a bushel of thorns under his feet."

THE RECOVERY.

This wholesale butchery carried in itself the death of the policy of Mary. The fierceness of its barbarism begot universal hate; the exiles of Geneva and Frankfort boldly returned to defy the flames; and when Mary died, it was no wonder that the passion of the people kicked priests in the kennels of London, and made her death a subject of triumph. In the Maiden Queen, who had not herself escaped from the heart-searching tyranny of Mary, the people found a sovereign absolutely untouched by the religious passion of Edward and her sister, eager in the truly English spirit of her father to raise the love of country above the persecuting zeal of creeds. She restored the royal supremacy, and the hateful Statutes of Heresy were abolished. The first Parliament of Elizabeth (1559) may be regarded as having really closed the door for ever against the hope of establishing the supremacy of Rome on English soil, and this result was greatly due to the moderation of its enactments and the temperate prudence with which the Act of Uniformity was carried out.

Gradually the work of reconciliation progressed until the peace and unity of England was firmly established; not, indeed, without much serious rebellion among the Catholics, not without a bold attack from Rome by the Bull of Deposition, not without a vigorous repression of the Jesuit priests who crossed from the Continent and laboured hard and boldly to create a Catholic reaction. But before this last attempt the work of the Reformation was practically accomplished. The Bible had been again set free; and in the reign of Good Queen Bess, in the year of our Lord 1563, the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England were established by Convocation.

M. M.

JERUSALEM THE GOLDEN.

N the glow of a July morning, 1099, the advanced guard of the first army of the Crusaders looked upon Jerusalem. At their feet was the deep, dry ravine, through which the brook Kedron had ceased to flow, dried up by the heat of the sun. Before them ! were the massive walls and towers of "the city set upon a hill," and rising above them the dome of the mosque of Omar, reared by infidel hands on the site of the magnificent Temple of Solomon. In that bright light of dawn, the sun, rising beyond the Mount of Olives, made the city beautiful. The minarets of the mosque gleamed in the early sunlight; the flat-roofed houses became picturesque

with light and shade; and the cornfields and fig-trees on the slopes beyond the gates, where the Divine One had walked and talked a thousand years before, wore the beauty of the older time. It was "Jerusalem the Golden," Jerusalem the Sacred, of which dim and uncertain pictures had been presented by pilgrims who had returned to Europe from the far East-which priests and preachers had tried to see through the haze of legend.

Those who had first reached the eminence were speedily followed by others. Fatigue and suffering-and the warriors and pilgrims had endured enough of each-were forgotten now that the goal was reached. Armed knights, with battered armour, frayed plumes,

and dented shields, urged their weary steeds to a last effort; footmen, more lightly armed, pressed forward eagerly; and pilgrims, a motley host, old men, weak women, children even, toiled up the steep ascent and over the rocky ground till they reached the ridges and looked upon the city where David had reigned, and where the Divine Son of David had taught and prayed and died.

Then warriors and pilgrims, noble and baseborn,-Godfrey of Bouillon, Count Raymond of Thoulouse, Robert of Normandy (the Conqueror's eldest son), Robert of Flanders, Tancred, forty thousand knights and men-at-arms,-fell upon their knees, and "poured out their tears on the consecrated soil." Then rose the chant of the monks and priests above the subdued sobbings of suppressed emotion, and the strain floated on the air to the towers and mosques where Saracen sentries watched, and the Moslems prayed with their faces turned to Mecca.

PILGRIMAGES TO THE HOLY LAND. Four years earlier, Western Europe was ablaze with anger and enthusiasm; for intelligence had arrived that pilgrims to the shrines so sacred to Christendom had been cruelly maltreated. For three centuries, although the Mahometan Ahassides and Fatimites had held the city, they had freely permitted Christians to visit Jerusalem, and had even with a stately courtesy set apart nearly one-fourth of the city, including the Church of the Resurrection, the Holy Sepulchre, and the great Latin convent, as a Christian quarter. There is a record, that in one year, 1064, seven thousand pilgrims, old and young, men and women and children, had visited Jerusalem, to pray at the Sepulchre and weep at Calvary. A year later, fierce Turcomans, Mahometans in creed, but very different from the cultured Arabians they displaced, had captured the sacred city, and massacred a large number of the inhabitants. The Christians were cruelly oppressed; those who escaped with life were robbed and insulted; their worship was ridiculed and interrupted, and the priests of the Church of the Sepulchre dragged by the hair of their head to dungeons, and there left to die. Pilgrims as they arrived, all unknowing of what had happened, were plundered, imprisoned, and ill-treated. Some, indeed, were allowed to visit the shrine of the Sepulchre if they could pay broad pieces of gold for the privilege; if they could not, they were driven from the city to starve in the wilderness. A few reached the coast and contrived to return to Europe, in some instances many years after they had set out on the pilgrimage, helped by the charity of ship-masters and the people of the countries through which they made their way.

PETER THE HERMIT.

Among those who had made the journey and witnessed the cruelties to which the Christians were subjected in Jerusalem, was one of those remarkable men who have now and again made their mark on history, and been raised by their marvellous power of exciting popular enthusiasm to leadership. A man of gentle birth, a native of Amiens, educated in Paris and in Italy, Peterknown to all time as Peter the Hermit, no other surname or title is on record-had been a soldier, but retired from the army, married, and had children. His wife died; and sorrow, it may be, quickening natural inclination for a life of religious contemplation and work, he became a monk, and afterwards a hermit. After a time he quitted his retreat, and, perhaps alone, living on such alms as were seldom refused to "holy men," perhaps in the company of a pilgrim band, to whom he was the spiritual guide and leader, he passed through southern Europe, and crossed the seas of the Levant to Syria; then, by the way of many a scene of sacred story, he reached Jerusalem, only to find how Christians were maltreated. His soul, once tranquil and devout, was fired with indignation and a new-born zeal to avenge the insult to his Master. Small in body, mean in aspect, this energetic man, roused to heroic ardour and almost superhuman strength, regardless of all dangers and all sufferings, holding his life as nothing in comparison with the work he had to do, returned to the Western world, made his way to Rome, and there, at the feet of Pope Urban II., told his terrible story. It was listened to; and the Pope authorized him to appeal to Christendom to form an armed confederation to rescue Sion from the spoiler, and the sacred Calvary from the cruel and insulting infidel. Thus sanctioned, Peter traversed Italy and crossed the Alps. the market-places of towns, by the roadside, wherever he could collect an audience, the Hermit no longer a fitting name, for he was a powerful leader, not a lonely recluse-told how Christian men and women, holy priests and pious pilgrims, were tortured and slain by the cruel followers of the accursed false Prophet. No detail, we may be sure, was spared, no incident of horror toned down. Then, with the fervour born of an enthusiasm which from continuous dwelling on one subject had become almost frantic in its excitement, and eloquence, with which he was so strangely gifted, he called upon all to aid in the great work. The noble summoned his retainers, the workman left his anvil and bench, the burghers of the busy towns took down their swords from their resting-place and girded themselves for warfare; women

In

wept hysterically, and beat their breasts in sympathetic anguish when the powerful appeal was made. A Frenchman by birth, an Italian by training, a wanderer in many countries, Peter spoke to all in their native language or patois; and, riding on an ass and holding aloft a cross, was followed by a mighty host shouting to be led to Jerusalem. Where was the holy city they knew not, how many leagues of land and water must be crossed they knew not, but they knew that those who worshipped Christ were being martyred by those who worshipped “Mahound," and they asked to know no more. Peter's preaching, says Milman, "appealed to every passion,-to valour and shame, to indignation and pity, to the pride of the warrior, to the compassion of the man, the religion of the Christian, to the love of the brethren, to the hatred of the unbeliever, aggravated by his insulting tyranny, to reverence for the Redeemer and the saints, to the desire of expiating sin, to the hope of eternal life."

In France especially was indignation mingled with enthusiasm. A council of the Church was held at Clermont, at which Pope Urban himself was present, and delivered a harangue well calculated to fan the flame. All Western Christendom was aroused, and an enormous host, scarcely to be called an army, so rude and undisciplined were the men, assembled from all parts of Europe. Peter himself took the command of one portion; the other had a far abler leader, in a military sense, known as Walter the Penniless, probably one of those daring, experienced soldiers of fortune who abounded in that age. Peter, however, was the ruling spirit. He led the host through Hungary; and the Hungarians were found to be ready to oppose them. Probably, in his zeal, the Hermit had overlooked the necessity of providing food for the half-savage legions who followed him; and they provided it in rough and ready fashion for themselves. The people of the countries south of the Danube objected to the invasion of the pilgrims as they might have objected to a cloud of locusts, and fighting ensued. Peter's followers were defeated at Semlin, but continued their disorderly march, and at length reached Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Empire. The Emperor Alexis, not disposed to "welcome the coming," deemed it expedient to "speed the parting, (guests." He gave Peter and his host (considerably diminished in number by desertions, death in battle, starvation, and sickness) supplies to help them on their way. They crossed the Bosphorus, and near Nice, or Nicæa (famous as the seat of two great Councils of the Church), the modern Isnek, they were encountered by a Mahometan army under Sultan Solyman, and terribly

defeated. The remnant wandered on, 2 mere rabble of enthusiasts, daily diminishing in number from disease, starvation, and the attacks of predatory bands. Peter himself and a few hundreds only of the many thousands who followed him in Italy and Germany, knelt with the army of the Crusaders and returned thanks for having lived to see Jerusalem.

THE FIRST Crusade.

That army, in the ranks of which might be found the ablest warriors, the most renowned nobles of Western Europe, was an outcome of the same enthusiasm which had so wonderfully helped the Hermit; but it was an enthusiasm acting by means of military organization, and directed by statesmen and experienced leaders. Six bodies were collected and equipped, and led by some of the most distinguished warriors of the time,-Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine; Hugh, Count of Vermandois, brother of King Philip of France; Robert, Duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror; Count Robert of Flanders; Bohemund, Prince of Tarentum, son of the more famous Guiscard; and Count Raymond of Toulouse. The place of rendezvous for the allied armies, the first Crusaders (so named for wearing a red cross on the right shoulder), was Constantinople. Crossing into Asia Minor, they captured, on the 24th of June, 1097, Nice, the capital of Sultan Solyman; and then marched, experiencing little opposition, to Antioch, which they besieged and captured after a weary siege of seven months. The valiant Crusaders had little more respect for the quality of mercy than had the grimmest of the Mahometans they encountered; and when they entered the town as conquerors, they celebrated their victory, and revenged themselves for the toil of the long siege, by slaughtering the inhabitants without regard to age or sex.

They were scarcely satiated with their horrid work, the last shrieks of the dying had scarcely died away into silence, when the Crusaders found that they were themselves besieged, for a relieving force of 200,000 Mahometans, sent by the Sultan of Persia, arrived. Soon the Crusaders were in desperate straits. Food was scanty, the most loathsome substances were consumed, and disease broke out, arising from the foul state of the city, in which dead bodies lay in heaps putrefying in the furnace-like heat of a Syrian summer. Thousands of the more fainthearted escaped over the walls in the darkness of night, eluded the enemy, and months afterwards appeared in the great cities of Europe in rags and misery,-how they found their way thither they could scarcely tell,—and told how sorely the Crusaders, the flower of European chivalry,