420 
equally so; but that they were: perse- 
cuted , plundered, and reduced to misery, 
is bilge The cases of Gardiner, and 
Bonner, will hardly be adduced; and as 
to that of Tonstal, it might better have 
been oinitted. He was charged in the 
House of Lords with misprision of trea- 
son, at the instance of the great and am- 
bitious Duke of Northumberland, 
wanted the county palatine of Dewan 
for his own family. A bill was accord- 
ingly brought in for attainting the bishop, 
and it passed the House of Lords, where 
not one of the popish lords or bishops 
spoke or voted in his favour. Cranmer, 
however, the mild and virtuous Cranmer, 
whose name is so. odiously calumniated, 
took up the cause, and spoke against 
this violent measure, with that warmth 
and freedom, which became an honest 
man and a good bishop, in support of 
innocence, but which lost him the friend- 
ship of the Duke of Northumberland 
ever after. And when the Archbishop’s 
arguments could not prevail against the 
interest of this Duke, and the bill against 
Tonstal passed the house, Cranmer, se- 
conded only by the Lord Stourton, pro- 
tested ayainst it; but was not even 
joined in this by the popish lords and 
bishops, who had protested against 
every other act that had passed the House 
of Lords in this aermaer (Warner’s 
Eccles. Hist. vol. i. p. $01.)—In the 
reign of Elizabeth, Potistads it is tr ue, 
was deprived of his bishopric, f for refusing 
the oaths; but in all other respects his 
treatment was gentle. He resided at 
Lambeth, with Archbishop Parker; and 
when he died, his obsequies were cele- 
brated with the respect due to his rank 
and virtues. 
I observe, Mr. Editor, that your cor- 
respondeut 15 willing to excuse, if rot to 
applaud the conduct of Mary, im having 
the “spirit and the power to retaliate 
upon the reformers.” Yes, she retaliated, 
if we may allow him that word, with a 
vengeance. If the popish bishops were 
depriv ed, the protestant ones were burnt. 
If More and Fisher were beheaded, ium- 
bers of the laity, men, women, antl chil- 
dren, were first tortured, and then con- 
signed to the stake. But will this inge- 
nious declaimer condescend to point out 
any acts in the reign of Edward, done by 
the reformers, that could at. all justity the 
sanguinary proceedings of Mary, aud her 
ecclesiastical advisers, upon the ground 
of retaliation? Were any romanists put 
to death m that reign, on account of 
their religion? The two arian cases, al- 
Defence of Bucer and the E nglish Reformation, 
who _ 
[June 1,° 
ready mentioned, though they are not to 
be “palliated, will hardly be adduced ; 
because had those unhappy persons 
vented their nofious under Mary, bishops 
Gardiner and Bonuer, and even the gen- 
tle Cardinal Pole himself, would readily 
have delivered them over to the secular 
arm, 
Tn language as aoa as the whole 
paragraph is false and malicious, Queen. 
Elizabeth is said, “not to have been 
bloody, because she | preferred stifling and 
strangling, to beheading and burning.” 
It is then added, to shew off her mere:ful 
disposition in the most striking manner, 
that “she stopped the , breath of one 
hundred and seventy-five catholic priests, 
and five catholic women, whose crime 
was no other than teaching their here+ 
‘ ditary religion in England.” Really, this 
gentleman writes asif he had never read 
the history of England, or as if he 
‘thought people in general were but su- 
perficially acquainted with it. During 
the first eleven years of Queen Eliza- 
beth’s reign, not a single Roman catholic 
was prosecuted capitaily on account of 
his religion: and it was not till after the 
open rebellion of the Earls of Northum- 
berland and Westmoreland, for restoring, 
as they termed it, the religion of their 
ancestors, that any rigorous measures 
were adopted towards the members of 
that communion. It was, however, the 
bull of Pope Pius V.,—by which the 
Queen was formally excommunicated, 
and pronounced to be deprived of her 
pretended right to the kingdom ; and all _ 
her subjects, of every description, were 
absolved. trem their oath of allegiance to 
her ;—it was, I say, this atrocious and 
abominable act of usurpation, joined 
with the most active and powerful efforts 
to carry it into effect, that provoked 
Elizabeth and the parliament to prose- 
cute the Romish missionaries, with a 
severity which otherwise would not have 
been exercised, nor could possibly be 
justified. But when the Pope, who pos- 
sessed at that time a much more formi- - 
dable power and influence than we at 
present are apt to conceive, took upon 
him to “cut off heretical prmces from 
the unity of the -body of Christ, and to 
declare their thrones vacant,” it was a 
matter of necessity, arising from the - 
principle of self-detence, to guard the » 
lite of the sovereign, and the indepen- 
dence of the kingdom, from the nefarious 
attempts which sucha bull-was mtended 
te produce. And. that it did actually ~ 
produce various plots and censpiracies,) 
