in these days was to order a man to be hanged for sheep-stealing, notwithstanding the alteration of the law, because hanging was the ancient traditionary treatment to which sheep-stealers were liable.[1] Ridley reasoned with Joan the day before her execution: 'it was not long ago,' she said, 'since you burnt Anne Askew for a piece of bread, yet came yourselves to believe the doctrine for which you burnt her; and now you will burn me for a piece of flesh, and in the end you will believe this also.'[2] She would not recant, and so she died, being one of the very few victims of the ancient hatred of heresy with which the Reformed Church of England has to charge itself. Yet, although Protestants were instinctively more susceptible of the altered feelings which the progress of time and of the world brings with it—although earlier than Catholics they awoke to a wiser judgment of the nature of theological errors—the doctrine of persecution is nevertheless an essential part of all dogmatic systems, and the causes which first compelled the Reformed Churches to toleration, have acted more slowly, but with equal
- ↑ The panegyrists of Edward VI. have described his pathetic agony at signing the death warrant. The entry in his Journal on the subject shows no particular emotion. It is a notice of the punishment of a criminal for an offence for which he certainly had no sympathy.'Joan Bocher, otherwise called Joan of Kent, was burnt for holding that Christ was not incarnate of the Virgin Mary, being condemned the year before, but kept in hope of conversion—the 30th April the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Ely were to persuade her. but she withstood them, and reviled the preacher that preached at her death.'—Edward's Journal: Burnet's Collectanea, p. 208.
- ↑ Strype, Memorials, vol. iii.
