ion of Hooper:
Burnet's _Collectanea_.]

At five in the evening he arrived at Gloucester. The road, for a mile
outside the town, was lined with people, and the mayor was in
attendance, with an escort, to prevent a rescue. But the feeling was
rather of awe and expectation, and those who loved Hooper best knew
that the highest service which he could render to his faith was to die
for it.

A day's interval of preparation was allowed him, with a private room.
He was in the custody of the sheriff; "and there was this difference
observed between the keepers of the bishops' prisons and the keepers
of the crown prisons, that the bishops' keepers were ever cruel; the
keepers of the crown prisons showed, for the most part, such favour as
they might."[446] After a sound night's rest, Hooper rose early, and
passed the morning in solitary prayer. In the course of the day, young
Sir Anthony Kingston, one of the commissioners appointed to
superintend the execution, expressed a wish to see him. Kingston was
an old acquaintance, Hooper having been the means of bringing him out
of evil ways. He entered the room unannounced. Hooper was on his
knees, and, looking round at the intruder, did not at first know him.
Kingston told him his name, and then, bursting into tears, said:--

[Footnote 446: Foxe.]

"Oh, consider; life is sweet and death is bitter; therefore, seeing
life may be had, desire to live, for life hereafter may do good."

Hooper answered:--

"I thank you for your counsel, yet it is not so friendly as I could
have wished it to be. True it is, alas! Master Kingston, that death is
bitter and life is sweet; therefore I have settled myself, through the
strength of God's Holy Spirit, patiently to pass through the fire
prepared for me, desiring you and others to commend me to God's mercy
in your prayers."

{p.194} "Well, my Lord," said Kingston, "then there is no remedy, and
I will take my leave. I thank God that ever I knew you, for God
appointed you to call me, being a lost child. I was both an adulterer
and a fornicator, and God, by your good instruction, brought me to the
forsaking of the same."

They parted, the tears on both their faces. Other friends were
admitted afterwards. The queen's orders were little thought of, for
Hooper had won the hearts of the guard on his way from London. In the
evening the mayor and aldermen came, with the sheriffs, to shake hands
with him. "It was a