the people mused because it was so dark a little time before."
Brentwood lay within a district on which the hand of the Queen fell
heavier than elsewhere. The persecution was mainly confined to the more
active and populous parts of the country, to London, Kent, Sussex, and
the Eastern Counties. Of the two hundred and eighty whom we know to have
suffered during the last three years and a half of Mary's reign more
than forty were burned in London, seventeen in the neighbouring village
of Stratford-le-Bow, four in Islington, two in Southwark, and one each
at Barnet, St. Albans, and Ware. Kent, at that time a home of mining and
manufacturing industry, suffered as heavily as London. Of its sixty
martyrs more than forty were furnished by Canterbury, which was then but
a city of some few thousand inhabitants, and seven by Maidstone. The
remaining eight suffered at Rochester, Ashford, and Dartford. Of the
twenty-five who died in Sussex the little town of Lewes sent seventeen
to the fire. Seventy were contributed by the Eastern Counties, the seat
of the woollen manufacture. Beyond these districts executions were rare.
Westward of Sussex we find the record of but a dozen martyrdoms, six of
which were at Bristol, and four at Salisbury. Chester and Wales
contributed but four sufferers to the list. In the Midland Counties
between Thames and the Humber only twenty-four suffered martyrdom. North
of the Humber we find the names of but two Yorkshiremen burned at
Bedale.

[Sidenote: Failure of the persecution.]

But heavily as the martyrdoms fell on the district within which they
were practically confined, and where as we may conclude Protestantism
was more dominant than elsewhere, the work of terror failed in the very
ends for which it was wrought. The old spirit of insolent defiance, of
outrageous violence, rose into fresh life at the challenge of
persecution. A Protestant hung a string of puddings round a priest's
neck in derision of his beads. The restored images were grossly
insulted. The old scurrilous ballads against the mass and relics were
heard in the streets. Men were goaded to sheer madness by the bloodshed
and violence about them. One miserable wretch, driven to frenzy, stabbed
the priest of St. Margaret's as he stood with the chalice in his hand.
It was a more formidable sign of the times that acts of violence such as
these no longer stirred the people at large to their former resentment.
The horror of the persecution swe