ons, no one could trust his
neighbour, and organised resistance was impracticable.

The March morning broke wild and stormy. The sermon intended to be
preached at the stake was adjourned, in consequence of the wet, to St.
Mary's, where a high stage was erected, on which Cranmer was to stand
conspicuous. Peers, knights, {p.253} doctors, students, priests,
men-at-arms, and citizens, thronged the narrow aisles, and through the
midst of them the archbishop was led in by the mayor. As he mounted
the platform many of the spectators were in tears. He knelt and prayed
silently, and Cole, the Provost of Eton, then took his place in the
pulpit.

Although, by a strained interpretation of the law, it could be
pretended that the time of grace had expired with the trial; yet, to
put a man to death at all after recantation was a proceeding so
violent and unusual, that some excuse or some explanation was felt to
be necessary.

Cole therefore first declared why it was expedient that the late
archbishop should suffer, notwithstanding his reconciliation. One
reason was "for that he had been a great causer of all the alterations
in the realm of England; and when the matter of the divorce between
King Henry VIII and Queen Catherine was commenced in the court of
Rome, he, having nothing to do with it, sate upon it as a judge, which
was the entry to all the inconvenients which followed." "Yet in that
Mr. Cole excused him--that he thought he did it, not out of malice,
but by the persuasion and advice of certain learned men."

Another occasion was, "for that he had been the great setter-forth of
all the heresy received into the church in the latter times; had
written in it, had disputed, had continued it even to the last hour;
and it had never been seen in the time of schism that any man
continuing so long had been pardoned, and that it was not to be
remitted for example's sake."

"And other causes," Cole added, "moved the queen and council thereto,
which were not meet and convenient for every one to understand."[544]

[Footnote 544: Narrative of the Execution of Thomas
Cranmer: _MS. Harleian_, 422. Another account gives
among the causes which Cole mentioned, that "it
seemed meet, according to the law of equality,
that, as the death of the Duke of Northumberland of
late made even with Sir Thomas More, Chancellor,