hands of Lord Dudley. Lady Jane had great abilities and greater virtues. In learning she was even superior to Edward, who was about her own age, and with whom she had been educated with the most scrupulous care. Proficient in her own language, she also spoke and wrote with equal accuracy and readiness the French, Italian, Latin and Greek. She was also familiar with the Hebrew, Chaldean and Arabic. She was versed in the philosophy of Athens, and preferred Plato and Demosthenes to the pleasures of the park. She was at the same time fond of music, played skillfully on various instruments and sang with a sweetness of voice and a charm of expression rarely equaled. And all this when she was but sixteen years of age and the bride of Lord Dudley. But her crowning excellence was her piety. She had found Christ in his word, and early gave her heart to him in a devotion which never wavered.

For her the throne had no attractions. When it was suggested to her that she might succeed Edward as the sovereign of England, she declared her preference for private life. When Northumberland pressed her to accept the crown, she thrust it from her "A crown," she said, "which hath been violently wrested from Catherine of Arragon, made more unfortunate by the punishment of Anne Boleyn and others that wore it after her; and wherefore should you have me add my blood to theirs, and be the third victim from whom this fatal crown may be ravished with the head that wears it?"

But the importunity of injudicious friends prevailed, and she went to the Tower, from whence she was proclaimed queen. For ten days only did she wear the

crown. Her adherents were far outnumbered by Mary's, and amid warlike demonstrations Lady Jane was displaced by the daughter of the divorced Catherine. Mary's ascension to the throne being announced on Cheapside, the people shouted, "God save the queen!" and the bells of St. Paul's church in joyful pealings sent the tidings far over London, whilst even Protestants, to whom Mary had made pledges of toleration, rejoiced in her enthronement.

When intelligence of all this was conveyed to Lady Jane she answered, "I better brook this message than that of my advancement to royalty." And what followed? Lady Jane's palace became her prison. She was adjudged guilty of high treason and condemned to death. The months went by, and at last this beautiful and godly woman, only nineteen years of age, after the execution of her husband and of others who had proclaimed her queen, was led out to execution on Tower Hill. Having reached the scaffold, she said to the lords and other spectators, "I beseech you all to bear me witness that I here die a true Christian woman, professing and avouching from my soul that I trust to be saved by the blood, passion and merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour only, and by no other means, casting far behind me all the works and merits of mine own actions, as things so short of the true duty I owe that I quake to think how much they may stand against me." She then knelt and repeated the fifty-first Psalm. Afterward she put the bandage over her eyes and felt for the block, saying, "What shall I do? where is it?" When conducted to the block she laid her head upon it and said, "Lord, into thine hands I commend my spirit."

The axe descended, and the next moment a gate unseen by mortal eyes swung noiselessly on its hinges of gold, and Lady Jane Grey, entering the metropolis of the universe, ascended a throne which shall stand for ever.

Thus the reign of Mary was inaugurated with the shedding of blood. Those who died on Tower Hill were charged with high treason, but this was not their only offence; and it was not because of this at all that their execution was urged by Gardiner and others. It was because they were Protestants. They denied the supremacy of the pope. They rejected the real presence or treated it with indifference, and were chargeable with other departures from the Roman faith.

Mary had promised to continue to the Protestants the religious liberties they had enjoyed under Edward, but no sooner had she reached the throne than she

violated her solemn pledge. She determined to reestablish Romanism, cost what it might. She boasted herself “a virgin sent from God to ride and tame the people of England." Gardiner was appointed lord chancellor. Protestant bishops were ejected from their sees for heresy and wedlock, and their places were filled by papists. The marriages of the inferior clergy were pronounced illegal and their children bastards.

It was thought that by severe persecutions, rapidly multiplied, the Protestants would be driven into the Romish fold. Certainly, they would not give all they had, even life itself, for their groundless faith. Let prisons open and holocausts be kindled, and heresy will die before a twelvemonth is passed. At any rate, Mary will make the experiment. The so-called Holy Catholic Church-which the Church of Rome was not and never

had been-bids her Godspeed in her work of demolition and death.

Paul IV., the viceregent of God, spread the shield of St. Peter over the English throne and hurled anathemas at the heads of all heretics. The leaders of the Reformation were threatened and then imprisoned. Many fled to the land of John Knox, and found comparative quiet in its cities or in the seclusion of the Grampian Hills. Some went to the Continent, and at Frankfort-on-the-Main, at Geneva, where Calvin still taught, at Strassburg and Basle these exiles for righteousness' sake dwelt in peace.

Cranmer was urged to flee, but he determined to hold his ground. Perhaps he thought Mary was not forgetful of services he had rendered her when in Henry's day he had shielded her from her father's wrath. But he was imprisoned at Oxford jail, then deposed from his archbishopric and succeeded by Reginald Pole. Submission to the Romish faith was required of all classes; to refuse it was to suffer, and perchance to die.

Cardinal Pole, the pope's legate, professed to prefer milder means, hoping thus to win the erring back to the faith and avoid the reaction severity might produce. Gardiner insisted upon immediate resort to the stake and the headman's axe. Mary approved the chancellor's decision.

Then the Smithfield fires were kindled. John Rogers, who has been styled the proto-martyr of the Marian persecution, was burned February 4, 1555. He had been educated at Cambridge, then went to Antwerp in the capacity of a religious teacher. There he met Tyndale and Coverdale, and through their instructions

came to a knowledge of the truth. He assisted these exiled Protestants in the translation of the Bible into English, and afterward returned to his own country. Edward VI. made him a prebend of St. Paul's, and later he was appointed vicar of St. Sepulchre's church. After Mary's accession he was charged with having uttered heretical sentiments in a sermon preached at St. Paul's cross, and was sent to Newgate prison. The lord chancellor, Gardiner, demanded a full expression of his views, and especially as to the supremacy of the pope. Rogers answered, "I know none other head but Christ of his Catholic Church, neither will I acknowledge the bishop of Rome to have any more authority than any other bishop hath by the word of God and by the doctrine of the old and pure Catholic Church four hundred years after Christ." Such sentiments deserved death. Cursed be the man who denies the supremacy of the Roman pontiff! Rogers lingered in Newgate prison with common thieves until the day appointed for his execution. Then he was led to Smithfield and bound to the stake. He endured the suffering of flames without a murmur, verifying the promise of his Lord: "As thy days thy strength shall be." He lifted his hands toward heaven and calmly waited his deliverance. They who stood by saw only a chariot of fire bearing the spirit of the martyr upward, but there came another, like the Tishbite's, to meet it, and along a path that brightened as it advanced the holy martyr ascended to glory. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints."

A little later John Bradford was condemned for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation, and sent to the