It is unfortunately impossible to learn the feelings with which these dreadful scenes were witnessed by the people.  There are stories which show that, in some instances, familiarity had produced the usual effect; that the martyrdom of saints was at times of no more moment to an English crowd than the execution of ordinary felons—­that it was a mere spectacle to the idle, the hardened, and the curious.  On the other hand, it is certain that the behaviour of the sufferers was the argument which at last converted the nation; and an effect which in the end was so powerful with the multitude, must have been visible long before in the braver and better natures.  The increasing number of prosecutions in London shows, also, that the leaven was spreading.  There were five executions in Smithfield between 1529 and 1533, besides those in the provinces.  The prisons were crowded with offenders who had abjured and were undergoing sentence; and the list of those who were “troubled” in various ways is so extensive, as to leave no doubt of the sympathy which, in London at least, must have been felt by many, very many, of the spectators of the martyrs’ deaths.  We are left, in this important point, mainly to conjecture; and if we were better furnished with evidence, the language of ordinary narrative would fail to convey any real notion of perplexed and various emotions.  We have glimpses, however, into the inner world of men, here and there of strange interest; and we must regret that they are so few.

A poor boy at Cambridge, John Randall, of Christ’s College, a relation of Foxe the martyrologist, destroyed himself in these years in religious desperation; he was found in his study hanging by his girdle, before an open Bible, with his dead arm and finger stretched pitifully towards a passage on predestination.[553]

A story even more remarkable is connected with Bainham’s execution.  Among the lay officials present at the stake, was “one Pavier,” town clerk of London.  This Pavier was a Catholic fanatic, and as the flames were about to be kindled he burst out into violent and abusive language.  The fire blazed up, and the dying sufferer, as the red flickering tongues licked the flesh from off his bones, turned to him and said, “May God forgive thee, and shew more mercy than thou, angry reviler, shewest to me.”  The scene was soon over; the town clerk went home.  A week after, one morning when his wife had gone to mass, he sent all his servants out of his house on one pretext or another, a single girl only being left, and he withdrew to a garret at the top of the house, which he used as an oratory.  A large crucifix was on the wall, and the girl having some question to ask, went to the room, and found him standing before it “bitterly weeping.”  He told her to take his sword, which was rusty, and clean it.  She went away, and left him; when she returned, a little time after, he was hanging from a beam, dead.  He was a singular person.  Edward Hall, the historian,