1540.]
ANNE OF CLEVES: FALL OF CROMWELL.
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every other country which had the happiness to attain to it at all, only by years of bloodshed, a single day or week of which caused larger human misery than the whole period of the administration of Cromwell. Be this as it will, his aim was noble. For his actions he paid with his life; and he followed his victims by the same road which they had trodden before him, to the high tribunal, where it may be that great natures who on earth have lived in mortal enmity may learn at last to understand each other.
July 30.Two days after, Barnes, Garret, and Jerome died bravely at the stake, their weakness and want of wisdom all atoned for, and serving their Great Master in their deaths better than they had served Him in their lives. With them perished, not as heretics, but as traitors, the three Romanizing priests. The united executions were designed as an evidence of the even hand of the council. The execution of traitors was not to imply an indulgence of heresy; the punishment of heretics should give no hope to those who were disloyal to their King and country. But scenes of such a kind were not repeated. The effect was to shock, not to edify.[1] The narrow theory could be carried out- ↑ The spectacle almost occasioned an outbreak in London, and shocked into momentary emotion the diplomatic indifference of Marillac:—'Your Majesty will have heard of the execution of Master Cromwell and Lord Hungerford. Two days after, six more were put to death, three were hanged as traitors, Fetherstone, Abel, and Cook, late Prior of Doncaster, for having spoken in favour of the Pope; three were burnt as heretics, Garret, Jerome, and Doctor Barnes. It was a strange spectacle to see the adherents of two opposite parties die thus on the same day and at the same hour, and it was equally dis-
