an, convinced, conscientious, rather
morbid. But it is true that she was a bad queen; bad for many things,
but especially bad for her own most beloved cause. It is true, when all
is said, that she set herself to burn out "No Popery" and managed to
burn it in. The concentration of her fanaticism into cruelty, especially
its concentration in particular places and in a short time, did remain
like something red-hot in the public memory. It was the first of the
series of great historical accidents that separated a real, if not
universal, public opinion from the old _regime_. It has been summarized
in the death by fire of the three famous martyrs at Oxford; for one of
them at least, Latimer, was a reformer of the more robust and human
type, though another of them, Cranmer, had been so smooth a snob and
coward in the councils of Henry VIII. as to make Thomas Cromwell seem by
comparison a man. But of what may be called the Latimer tradition, the
saner and more genuine Protestantism, I shall speak later. At the time
even the Oxford Martyrs probably produced less pity and revulsion than
the massacre in the flames of many more obscure enthusiasts, whose very
ignorance and poverty made their cause seem more popular than it really
was. But this last ugly feature was brought into sharper relief, and
produced more conscious or unconscious bitterness, because of that other
great fact of which I spoke above, which is the determining test of this
time of transition.

What made all the difference was this: that even in this Catholic reign
the property of the Catholic Church could not be restored. The very fact
that Mary was a fanatic, and yet this act of justice was beyond the
wildest dreams of fanaticism--that is the point. The very fact that she
was angry enough to commit wrongs for the Church, and yet not bold
enough to ask for the rights of the Church--that is the test of the
time. She was allowed to deprive small men of their lives, she was not
allowed to deprive great men of their property--or rather of other
people's property. She could punish heresy, she could not punish
sacrilege. She was forced into the false position of killing men who had
not gone to church, and sparing men who had gone there to steal the
church ornaments. What forced her into it? Not certainly her own
religious attitude, which was almost maniacally sincere; not public
opinion, which had naturally much more sympathy for the religious
humanities which she did n