"But,"

that their courage might have failed, "sent certain doctors and deans" to exhort them and confer with them. said Barrowe, "we showed them how they had neglected the time. We had been well-nigh six years in their prisons; never refused, but always humbly desired of them Christian conference . . . but never could obtain it; that our time now was short in this world." Another week in the dungeon; and again, “early," the daylight struggling with the fog, Barrowe and Greenwood-the two less conspicuous offenders being left behind—are brought forth to die; again they undergo those grim preparations: they are bound to the cart, and "secretly," along the streets not yet astir with traffic, they are "conveyed to the place of execution "-" tied by the necks to the tree," and permitted to speak a few last words. Let Barrowe himself tell us how they speak: "Craving pardon of all men whom we had any way offended, and freely forgiving the whole world, we used prayer for her majesty, the magistrates,' people, and even for our adversaries." Then, at the last moment, when they have tasted again the bitterness of death, there comes another reprieve, and they go back to the dungeon. "Having almost finished our last words," says Barrowe, "behold! one was, even at that instant, come with a reprieve for our lives from her majesty; which was not only thankfully received of us, but with exceeding rejoicing and applause of all the people, both at the place of execution and on the ways, streets, and houses as we returned.”

There was another month of waiting in prison, with "no assured stay or respite." Could the prisoners have been subdued by the twice-encountered terrors of death-could they have been brought, by any method of persuasion, to renounce the truth which it was their mission to maintain— could they have been induced, as Robert Browne had been,

1 Tim. ii., 1, 2: "First of all thority."

for kings, and all that are in au

to dishonor their own testimony by a promise simply of submission to the Church of England-there was no room to doubt that the reprieve would have been made a pardon. But the labor of "doctors and deans," with the gallows in the background of every exhortation and every syllogism, was unsuccessful. Those prisoners had seen the gallows, and had felt the cord around their necks; but they had also seen a truth which the "doctors and deans" could not see, and for that truth they were willing to die.

An explanation of those successive reprieves has been suggested, which is not improbable. It rests on the authority of a contemporaneous document-a letter from a person apparently well-informed to a friend. The first reprieve may have come in consequence of the suggestion in the attorneygeneral's report of the case to the lord-keeper, and its being kept back till the prisoners were "ready to be bound to the cart may have been accidental-as, on the other hand, it may have been intended and arranged for effect. The second is referred to the influence of the Lord Treasurer Burleigh, who conferred with the archbishop, and finding him very peremptory,' gave him and the Bishop of Worcester some round taxing words, and used some speech with the queen, but was not seconded by any." Yet his personal influence was such that the prisoners, as they were ready to be trussed up, were reprieved.”1

66

99.66

A certain bill, designed to make the law more effective against the Separatists, had passed the House of Lords, which might have been called in those days the House of Bishops; but in the House of Commons, where Puritanism was powerful, it had encountered opposition, and had been subjected to amendment. It was about a month since the last reprieve of Barrowe and Greenwood, and they were still lying in jail and in irons, with "no assured stay or respite," when these

1 Letter of Thomas Phelipps to William Sterrell. In the British StatePaper Office, transcribed by Dr. Waddington, and printed by Mr. Hopkins inPuritans and Queen Elizabeth," iii., 516, 517.

proceedings, so distasteful to Elizabeth and her prelates, were had in the House of Commons. The next day, "early in the morning," the twice-reprieved prisoners were brought out once more; their irons were once more smitten off; once more they were bound to the cart, and hastily driven to Ty burn. Again, under the gallows, with the ropes about their necks, they prayed for the queen and for England, spoke their last words to the people gathered around the scaffold; but there came no reprieve, and so they were hanged.1

1 Phelipps, in the letter above cited, adds: "It is plainly said that their execution proceeding [proceeded] of the malice of the bishops to spite the nether house, which hath procured them much hatred among the common people affected that way."

CHAPTER IX.

JOHN PENRY, THE MARTYR FOR EVANGELISM.

EIGHT months before the martyrdom of Barrowe and Greenwood (September, 1592), there came to London, from the north country, a young man of eminent gifts and eminent zeal, who, though he had been hunted out of England into Scotland for his efforts in behalf of reformation, had not yet become a Separatist. Being thrown into association with members of the little persecuted church, he was attracted to them by his sympathy with their afflictions, and soon adopted their distinctive principle of "reformation without tarrying for any." This was John Penry; and the story of his life illustrates the relation between the spirit of evangelism and the principle of voluntary church reformation.

John Penry, or ApHenry, was a Welshman, born in the year of Elizabeth's accession to the throne (1555). At the age of nineteen, he became a student in the University of Cambridge. There his strong religious sensibilities, which at first had been fascinated by the Roman ritualism, were roused and enlightened by the Puritan influences which lingered in that seat of learning. Embracing with his whole heart the Gospel of personal salvation from sin by personal faith in Christ the Redeemer, he seems to have been, from the beginning of his new life, much more intent on a religious reformation, and especially on the evangelization of his benighted countrymen in Wales, than on any questions about vestments and ceremonies or about Church polity. Could he have had the religious liberty which was yet to be achieved for all the subjects of the British crown by ages of conflict, he would have been such a reformer as Whitefield and the Wesleys were in their day-an evangelist flaming with the

love of souls and preaching with a tongue of fire. Little did he care for questions about prelacy and parity in the clerical body still less for questions about clerical costumes. and the other trumperies of the queen's ritual. His soul groaned over the ignorance and the sins of his Welsh countrymen, and his longing was that to the poor the Gospel might be preached. After taking his first degree in arts at Cambridge, he removed to St. Alban's Hall, in Oxford, where there happened to be, just then, more favor for men of Puritan sympathies; and there he proceeded, and became Master of Arts when twenty-five years of age (1586). He declined the offer of ordination "without a call to the ministry by some certain church," and contented himself with such a license to preach as the university could give.

His earliest publication was printed at Oxford in the course of the next year. It was, as he described it in his title-page, "A Treatise containing the Equity of an Humble Supplication, which is to be exhibited to her Gracious Majesty and the High Court of Parliament, in the behalf of the country of Wales, that some order may be taken for the preaching of the Gospel among those people: Wherein is also set down as much of the estate of our people as without offense could be made known, to the end (if it please God) we may be pitied by those who are not of this assembly, and so they may be drawn to labor in our behalf."

In an introductory address "to all that mourn in Zion until they see Jerusalem in perfect beauty, and, namely, to my fathers and brethren of the Church of England," he expressed himself with unaffected humility, yet with the unconscious dignity of one who, bringing a message from God, thinks only of the message. "It hath been the just complaint, beloved in the Lord, of the godly in all ages, that God's eternal and blessed verity, unto whom the very heavens should stoop and give obeisance, hath been of that small reckoning and account in the eyes of the most part of our great men, as they valued it to be but a mere loss of time to yield any at