force, while the proposal that Philip himself should be honoured with a solemn coronation was rejected. Altogether, there had been much to remind the King of certain essential differences between monarchy in Spain and monarchy in England. And when on January 16, 1555, the dissolution of Parliament took place, Noailles could note, with malicious satisfaction, the smallness of the retinue which accompanied the sovereigns to the House of Lords and the dissatisfaction shown in the House itself by both Mary and her Consort.
After a painful and ignominious imprisonment extending over more than two years, the three Bishops found themselves in September, 1555, again seated in the Divinity School at Oxford, awaiting their trial for the heresies of which they had already been convicted. The conduct of the proceedings was entrusted to a Commission appointed by the Legate; and Cranmer, the first who was formally summoned, stood with his head covered, pleading at the outset that he had sworn never to admit the authority of the Bishop of Rome in England, and at the same time refusing to recognise that of the Bishop of Gloucester, who had been appointed to preside over the proceedings, as his lawful judge. Fresh charges, among them his marriage, were now brought against him; he was then cited, as a Metropolitan, to appear within eighty days in Rome to answer all accusations, and was finally consigned again to Bocardo. Ridley and Latimer were to be more summarily dealt with. Pole, indeed, sent Fray de Soto, who had been appointed to fill the Hebrew chair at Oxford in the absence of Richard Bruern, to argue with them. But it was of no avail; and both perished at the same stake, "to light," as Latimer himself there expressed it, "such a candle in England as should never be put out." Cranmer, who, from a tower above his prison chamber, witnessed their dying agonies, showed less resolution; and when Fray de Garcia, the newly appointed Regius Professor of Divinity, was sent to ply him with further arguments, he wavered, and admitted that even the papal supremacy, now that it had been recognised by King, Queen, and Parliament, appeared to him in a new light. He was at last induced to sign a recantation, declaratory of his submission to the Pope as Supreme Head of the Catholic Church, and to the reigning sovereigns of his country and their laws. His formal degradation, however, which took place on February 14, opened his eyes to the fact that he had no mercy to look for at the hands of the papal delegates; and as his crozier was wrested from his grasp, and the mock vestments which symbolised his whole ecclesiastical career were successively removed from his person, and the pallium taken away, he resisted forcibly, at the same time producing from his sleeve a document in which he formally appealed from Paul IV to the next General Council. Prior to this ceremony he had for a few weeks been consigned to the care of the Dean of Christ-church and had lived in the enjoyment of every comfort; but he was now once more consigned to Bocardo. There, the terror of death came back,
