ouse with France, and in spite of his pledges Philip's one aim in
marrying Mary was to secure that aid.

[Sidenote: The persecution.]

But whether from without or from within warning was wasted on the fierce
bigotry of the Queen. It was, as Gardiner asserted, not at the counsel
of her ministers but by her own personal will that the laws against
heresy had been laid before Parliament; and now that they were enacted
Mary pressed for their execution. Her resolve was probably quickened by
the action of the Protestant zealots. The failure of Wyatt's revolt was
far from taming the enthusiasm of the wilder reformers. The restoration
of the old worship was followed by outbreaks of bold defiance. A tailor
of St. Giles in the Fields shaved a dog with the priestly tonsure. A cat
was found hanging in the Cheap "with her head shorn, and the likeness of
a vestment cast over her, with her forefeet tied together and a round
piece of paper like a singing cake between them." Yet more galling were
the ballads which were circulated in mockery of the mass, the pamphlets
which came from the exiles over sea, the seditious broadsides dropped in
the streets, the interludes in which the most sacred acts of the old
religion were flouted with ribald mockery. All this defiance only served
to quicken afresh the purpose of the Queen. But it was not till the
opening of 1555, when she had already been a year and a half on the
throne, that the opposition of her councillors was at last mastered and
the persecution began. In February the deprived bishop of Gloucester,
Hooper, was burned in his cathedral city, a London vicar, Lawrence
Saunders, at Coventry, and Rogers, a prebendary of St. Paul's, at
London. Ferrar, the deprived bishop of St. David's, who was burned at
Caermarthen, was one of eight victims who suffered in March. Four
followed in April and May, six in June, eleven in July, eighteen in
August, eleven in September. In October Ridley, the deprived bishop of
London, was drawn with Latimer from their prison at Oxford. "Play the
man, Master Ridley!" cried the old preacher of the Reformation as the
flames shot up around him; "we shall this day light up such a candle by
God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out."

[Sidenote: Rowland Taylor.]

If the Protestants had not known how to govern, indeed, they knew how to
die; and the cause which prosperity had ruined revived in the dark hour
of persecution. The memory of their violence an