It was eight o’clock when they arrived at St. Paul’s.  The people had flocked in crowds before them.  The public seats and benches were filled.  All London had hurried to the spectacle.  A platform was erected in the centre of the nave, on the top of which, enthroned in pomp of purple and gold and splendour, sate the great cardinal, supported on each side with eighteen bishops, mitred abbots, and priors—­six-and-thirty in all; his chaplains and “spiritual doctors” sitting also where they could find place, “in gowns of damask and satin.”  Opposite the platform, over the north door of the cathedral, was a great crucifix—­a famous image, in those days called the Rood of Northen; and at the foot of it, inside a rail, a fire was burning, with the sinful books, the Tracts and Testaments, ranged round it in baskets, waiting for the execution of sentence.

Such was the scene into the midst of which the six prisoners entered.  A second platform stood in a conspicuous place in front of the cardinal’s throne, where they could be seen and heard by the crowd; and there upon their knees, with their fagots on their shoulders, they begged pardon of God and the Holy Catholic Church for their high crimes and offences.  When the confession was finished Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached a sermon:  and the sermon over, Barnes turned to the people, declaring that “he was more charitably handled than he deserved, his heresies were so heinous and detestable.”

There was no other religious service:  mass had perhaps been said previous to the admission into the church of heretics lying under censure; and the knight marshal led the prisoners down from the stage to the fire underneath the crucifix.  They were taken within the rails, and three times led round the blazing pile, casting in their fagots as they passed.  The contents of the baskets were heaped upon the fagots, and the holocaust was complete.  This time, an unbloody sacrifice was deemed sufficient.  The church was satisfied with penance, and Fisher pronounced the prisoners absolved, and received back into communion.[500]

So ended this strange exhibition, designed to work great results on the consciences of the spectators.  It may be supposed, however, that men whom the tragedies of Smithfield failed to terrify, were not likely to be affected deeply by melodrame and blazing paper.

A story follows of far deeper human interest, a story in which the persecution is mirrored with its true lights and shadows, unexaggerated by rhetoric; and which, in its minute simplicity, brings us face to face with that old world, where men like ourselves lived, and worked, and suffered, three centuries ago.