1829.] a Tale of the Reign of Mary. 385 



of care, and a cheerfulness^ to which she had long been a stranger, took 

 possession of her soul. But those who marvelled at her joy knew, not 

 how deeply hidden was its spring, knew not that the stream, whose 

 healing waters had brought consolation to the persecuted widow, had its 

 fountain in heaven. 



The day at length arrived when the fate of Esther was to be decided, 

 and arranging the soiled garments of herself and her child with all the 

 neatness in her power, she prepared to stand before her judge with 

 meekness, but resolution. 



In those times of terrible persecution, when, though the Inquisition 

 was not actually establihsed in England, its horrors were surpassed by 

 the cruelty of the sovereign and her minions, the established forms of 

 trial were entirely laid aside. Even the bishops' arbitrary courts were 

 not thought sufficient, and a commission was appointed for the extirpa- 

 tion of heresy ; summary powers of the most odious description were 

 granted to the magistrates ; the torture was everywhere made use of; 

 and the possession of heretical books was esteemed a crime deserving 

 death. 



Three of the royal commissioners, one of whom was the infamous 

 Bonner himself, acted as her jury and judges; and she was not sur- 

 prised to find that not a single witness was brought forward against hpr. 

 A written accusation was read by an inferior officer, charging her with 

 denying the real Presence, with absenting herself from mass, and all 

 religious processions, and lastly, and most heinously, possessing and 

 perusing an English bible and other heretical books, and instilling their 

 principles into the mind of her child. 



She offered neither defence nor denial in reply ; and it was not till 

 the fatal bible, her husband had given to TMrs. Paine, was brought for- 

 ward in confirmation of the last charge, that she evinced the smallest 

 interest in the proceeding. At that spectacle her first suspicions of her 

 husband rushed again with horror on her remembrance, and faintly 

 exclaiming, " Is he so lost !" she pressed her hands for an instant before 

 her eyes, as if to shut the frightful certainty from her mind. 



No other sign of consciousness could be extracted from her, till, 

 impatient of further delay, the commissioners ordered the torture to be 

 applied. The fearful scream of her boy, who, at this terrible sentence, 

 clung wildly around her, the thick drops gathering on his brow, and 

 his cheeks pale with agony, at length awoke her to a sense of her 

 situation. 



" Gentlemen," she said, when she had soothed the terrors of her child, 

 " I am grieved to deprive you of the pleasure of witnessing my pangs. 

 If you desire the confession of my faith, there is no need of tortures to 

 wring it from my lips. That book is mine, and from its pages have I 

 drank mercies that no earthly persecution can obliterate from my soul. 

 I heed no more the upbraidings of men than the voice of the winds that 

 passeth and harmeth me not. But what are your hopes, poor, lost, 

 degraded beings," she continued, " who, closing your ears against the 

 voice which speaks through all creation, and rejecting the gifts of His 

 mercy, live on in the darkness of ignorance and crime .'' In the applause 

 of men you find your only reward, in their opinions you place yoiu- sole 

 eternity, and to the words of mortals, as perishable as yourselves, you 

 trust for salvation. But awake ere it is too late, and if you would 

 escape perdition," she continued, pointing to the Bible before her, 



M. M. New Series.— Vol. VIII. No. 46. 3 D 



