-fee; but to the
credit of our English monarchs, none were ever known to attend the
ceremony. Even Philip II. of Spain never honoured any, of the many which
were celebrated by permission of his gentle queen, with his presence,
notwithstanding he could behold the roasting of his own subjects with
infinite self-applause and _sang-froid_. The stone marks the spot, in this
area, on which those cruel exhibitions were executed. Here our martyr
_Latimer_ preached patience to friar _Forest_, agonizing under the torture
of a slow fire, for denying the king's supremacy; and to this place our
martyr _Cranmer_ compelled the amiable _Edward_, by forcing his reluctant
hand to the warrant, to send _Joan Bocher_, a silly woman, to the stake.
Yet _Latimer_ never thought of his own conduct in his last moments; nor
did _Cranmer_ thrust his hand into the fire for a real crime, but for one
which was venial, through the frailty of human nature. Our gracious
Elizabeth could likewise burn people for religion. Two Dutchmen,
Anabaptists, suffered in this place in 1675, and died, as Holinshed sagely
remarks, with "roring and crieing." But let me say, (says Pennant,) that
this was the only instance we have of her exerting the blessed prerogative
of the writ _De Haeretico comburendo_. Her highness preferred the halter;
her sullen sister faggot and fire. Not that we will deny but Elizabeth
made a very free use of the terrible act of her 27th year. One hundred and
sixty-eight suffered in her reign, at London, York, in Lancashire, and
several other parts of the kingdom, convicted of being priests, of
harbouring priests, or of becoming converts. But still there is a balance
of 109 against us in the article persecution, and that by the agonizing
death of fire; for the smallest number estimated to have suffered under
the savage Mary, amounts, in her short reign, to 277. The last person who
suffered at the stake in England was Bartholomew Logatt, who was burnt
here in 1611, as a blasphemous heretic, according to the sentence
pronounced by John King, bishop of London. The bishop consigned him to the
secular of our monarch James, who took care to give the sentence full
effect. This place, as well as Tybourn, was called _The Elms_, and used
for the execution of malefactors even before the year 1219. In the year
1530, there was a most severe and singular punishment inflicted here on
one John Roose, a cook, who had poisoned 17 persons of the Bishop of
Rochester'