Page:Old Castles.djvu/47

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Carlisle Castle.
39

met, and the latter was utterly defeated. It was too late to burn Bibles as they were burnt by the people at Durham; too late to restore the mass in England, though for a century after this hope lingered in the Catholic heart; still, the genuine enthusiasm of many of the leaders of this Rebellion, gives a touch of grandeur to the determinate effort of this desperate band of men, and adds to the regret which spontaneously rises in generous minds in contemplating the fearful severities they suffered. One in every village for sixty miles around, and in many of them many more, was hung, to awe the disaffected. It was a sad time. Anti-progressionists have ever been persistent persecutors, and most of all so in all times when the progression has been one in connection with Religion–the mind of man still confounding its passing forms with its eternal spirit and substance. In the year 1400, a century and a quarter before this, the stake had been set up in England, but the flame only increased the fury of zealots, the unswerving victims of the inquisition, by their noble behaviour, but creating new supplies for its horrid tortures and in conjunction with this the grim age still held its cord and axe, as though sure of the occasion which, in the insecurity of the times, was never wanting. It was the God of the Old Testament, not of the New, the age worshipped–a God of vengeance, not the God of Love; and Shakespeare, yet unborn, had yet to teach men the qualities of mercy, and how

"It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown."

In 1596 we find that famous borderer, Kinmont