brethren, to Andrew Gibbon's mother, and to Mrs Bodie, and all the rest. Serve God, and you cannot do amiss. God comfort you! Jesus save your soul, and send you once to heaven. Farewell, good mother, farewell ten thousand times.

"Out of York Castle, the 10th of March 1583. Your most loving and obedient son,

"WILLIAM HART."

[For further particulars respecting this good man, see Collections Illustrative of the History of the Catholic Religion in Cornewall and Devon," &c. By the Very Rev. George Oliver, D.D. Published by Ch. Dolman, New Bond Street, London, 1857. Also Dr Dod, vol. ii. p. 145.]

THOMAS SHERWOOD was born in London of pious and Catholic parents, and by them brought up in the faith and fear of God. He went over to the English College in the university of Douay, in Flanders, where his name is entered in the diary of the house, as a student, 1576. Not long after this he returned to London in order to settle his affairs, and procure money to help him to carry on his studies.

Whilst in London he frequented the house of Lady Tregony, a virtuous Catholic. Her son Martin's faith and manners were widely distant from those of his mother; and, suspecting that Mass was sometimes privately said in the house, as he imagined, by means of Mr Sherwood, he con

ceived an implacable hatred to him; and one day, meeting him in the street, he cried out, "Stop the traitor!" and caused him to be apprehended. Nothing could be laid to his charge, excepting that Mr Tregony suspected him of being a "Papist ;" and, after examining him as to his religion, the magistrate asked his views concerning the Queen's Church-headship, to which he replied that he did not believe her to be the head of the Church of England, and that this pre-eminence belonged to the Pope. Upon this he was cast into a dungeon in the Tower, and his lodgings were plundered of some £20 or £30, and other valuables. In the Tower he was most cruelly racked, in order to make him discover where he had heard Mass; but he suffered all their tortures with a greatness of soul not unequal to that of the primitive martyrs, and could not be induced to betray, or bring any man into danger.

After this he was thrust into a dark, filthy hole, where he endured very much from hunger, stench, and cold, and the general want of all things, no one being allowed to visit him, nor to bring him any comfort; insomuch that when Mr Roper, sonin-law to Sir Thomas More, had, by means of another prisoner, conveyed to his keeper some money for his use, it was returned next day, the Lieutenant of the Tower not suffering him to have the benefit of it. All he could be prevailed on to do was to lay out sixpence for a little fresh straw for him to lie upon.

After about six months' suffering in this manner, with invincible patience, and gloriously triumphing over chains, dungeons, and torments, during which he often repeated these words—“Lord Jesu! oh, I am not worthy that I should suffer these things for Thee! much less am I worthy of those rewards which Thou hast promised to give to such as confess Thee"-he was brought out to his trial, and condemned to die for denying the Queen's supre

macy.

He was executed according to sentence; being hung, cut down whilst he was yet alive, dismembered, bowelled, and quartered.

He suffered at Tyburn, February 7th, 1578. (See Dod's "Church History of England," vol. ii. p. 156; also, Dr Challoner's "Missionary Priests," vol. i. 51).

In John Stow's "Annales and Chronicles of England," we find, at p. 684, the following entry :

"The 7th of Februarie (1578), one named Sherewood was drawne from the Tower of London to Tyborne, and there hanged, bowelled, and quartered."

And here it may be well to point out the fact, that the atrocities committed upon these good men cannot be laid wholly to the secular power, but that the Church of England, as represented by her clergy and bishops, was not only a consenting party, but aided and abetted the breach of Christ's

great "law of love," and that not by mere hard speeches, but by force of cruel deeds, and the infliction of barbarous bodily torments.

In Froude's "History of England," vol. vii. pp. 418, 419, we find the following evidence in proof of the above statement :

"July 1562. Sir Edward Warner was directed to cause the bishops, now prisoners in the Tower, to be more straitly shut up, as that they might not have such common conference as they used to have. The laws against persons attending Mass were set in force more strictly.

"At the beginning of September, Grindal and Coxe, two prelates, suggested the use of torture as a fitting (?) means of obtaining evidence."

To this statement is appended the following note, on the same page :

"On a search of Lady Carew's house, neither the priest nor any of his auditors, not even the kitchen-maid, would tell anything. Some thought that if the priest were put to some kind of torment, and so driven to confess what he knoweth, he might gain the Queen's Majesty a good mass of money!" (From the Bishop of London and Ely to the Council, September 13. "Burleigh Papers," vol. i.)

Mr THOMAS CLIFTON was a native of Kent, and priest of Douay College; of him Mr Rushton (1, 3," De Schismate," p. 320) writes as follows; that, "he suffered for some months so much by cold,

hunger, and the load of his chains, in a dungeon amongst felons, that his being still alive seemed almost a miracle.

"This man, when, of late, he was led through the streets, loaded with heavy irons, to the bar, in company with thieves-his companions sighing, and almost all the people moved to commiseration, -he alone was cheerful, and dragged his chains along with a smiling countenance. And when one asked him why he, more than the rest, should laugh, he answered-' Because I look for greater gain than they from my sufferings; and it is just they should laugh who win.'

"He was condemned to perpetual imprisonment; and immediately on hearing the sentence, he fell upon his knees, and with hands and eyes lifted up to heaven, said, 'Allelujah, Allelujah!' He was sent back to Newgate, and there had his hands, feet, and neck chained in such sort, that he could neither sit down, nor stir out of his place all the day; and every night he was put down into a horrid and darksome dungeon."-" Douay Diary," 1581.

Mr JOHN COOPER, a hopeful young man of good family, brought up under Dr Nicholas Harpsfield, whom he constantly attended as his amanuensis, designed to leave England for the sake of his religion, and to follow his studies abroad. Having gathered together his money for that purpose, he started, and was stopped at the sea-side on his