death. Houses were ransacked, multitudes thrown into prisons, and, of these, many were beheaded, drowned, buried alive or burnt, in all parts of the kingdom. Menno and his followers, the Mennonites, now became conspicuous, and many of them gave evidence of true piety, notwithstanding the deterioration of error in their doctrine, and suffered death with triumphant patience.

When these terrible effects of the last edict had continued for nearly five years, another was issued to revive the persecution (January 27th, 1544), and directed against such as harboured fugitives, or concealed their property. Every departure from absolute obedience to authority was pursued with vengeance; and when the people of Wesel, a Hanse town, in Brabant, published their intention to open a school, because they had not asked permission either of the Emperor or the Pope, another placard (March 7th) made its appearance, forbidding the inhabitants of the neighbouring country to have any dealings with the town, or send their children thither for education. The reason of this expedient for starving out Wesel was that many refugees from England, as well as Holland and Belgium, had taken up their abode there, in hope of enjoying the exercise of their religion. But the town, although nominally free for commerce, was not free for Christianity. At Rotterdam, a congregation of Anabaptists was surprised. Few escaped the men were beheaded, and the women drowned. As always happens, when the government of a country undertakes to rule by force instead of law, the press was dreaded, and placed under severe restrictions. At Ghent, the Emperor's birth-place, a proclamation appeared, of singular interest in the history of printing (December 18th).—" Whoever presumed to print anything without licence," even though it contained nothing of heresy, "should be banished for ever, and forfeit three hundred Carolus guilders." Nor might any one print any kind of book or pamphlet in Italian, Spanish, English, or other language not generally understood, under the same penalties. All printers having obtained privileges, were required to place the contents in the beginning of the book, and to express the name of the secretary from whom they had received the privileges, or be subject to the aforesaid penalties. None were allowed to print, sell, or have in their possession any books without the name of the author, printer, and place of publication, under penalties as aforesaid. Every bookseller discovered to have sold, or to have in his shop, any books without a privilege therein printed, must every time forfeit fifty guilders. No one might have foreign books in his shop more than three days, without delivering a catalogue of them to the officer of the place, under the like penalties. The officer of that place where any books were sold was obliged, twice a year at least, on days appointed, to visit each bookseller's shop, take inventories, and consult learned men about such books as he did not understand, punish transgressors, or lose his place, and become liable to arbitrary correction. Whoever refused to allow an officer to search his house, should forfeit one hundred guilders, and be searched besides. And all this to be done effectually, notwithstanding any privilege, liberty, or exemption to the contrary, or even any difference

of jurisdiction, "which we," says the Emperor, "for the sake of the common good, and for avoiding all dangers and inconveniences, especially considering how much the faith of holy Church may be thereby affected, will not suffer to be maintained or pretended, so as to prevent the execution of this our placard." * The non obstante clause in this decree, like that of Papal Bulls, and the publication of a mock decree of equal date, for the reformation of the Priests, who were said to be ignorant, illiterate, and scandalous, incidentally exemplifies the assimilation of civil to spiritual despotism, where the latter is suffered to prevail.

It cannot be imagined that the operation of such edicts could be uniform, nor that divine truth could be everywhere suppressed. Truth penetrated beneath the surface of society, where the searching eye of inquisition could not detect it; or it aroused men to arduous conflict, too arduous for some, while others were sustained even to the solemn victory of martyrdom. Of both classes history preserves examples. Latomus, a Canon, Doctor and Professor of Theology in the University of Louvain, perceived the truth, and almost attained strength to make a good confession, but suddenly changed, and, having quenched the Spirit of God, did all in his power to suppress it. He not only wrote against Erasmus, but against Luther, Ecolampadius, and Tyndale. This gained him eminence, and he was honoured with a command to preach before the Emperor at Brussels. For the fulfilment of that service he ascended the pulpit, saw the demigod, Charles V., under whose rule all things were expected to give way, and every distinction of jurisdiction, of right, or privilege, or virtue was wont to be confounded. The Doctor's heart failed. To attain honours he had stifled his conscience, and perhaps, when just at the height of his ambition, that conscience stirred again. He was confounded, stared on the congregation, looked abashed and vacant, and strove to speak, but could not utter one intelligible sentence. He became ridiculous, a general burst of laughter drowned his incoherent utterance, and, overwhelmed with shame, he hurried from the place, threw off his robes, returned to Louvain, and there, tormented with consciousness of guilt, deplored and openly confessed that he had fought against the truth. His friends could not persuade him to refrain from that confession; therefore they shut him up in his house, where he languished in despair, continually crying out that he was damned, rejected of God, could not hope for pardon or salvation, had presumptuously fought against God. And so he miserably died. But shortly after him, Peter Brully, a Minister from Strasburg, one who had separated from Popery, and occasionally served the Reformed congregations of the Walloon Netherlanders, having continued steadfast, manfully endured the trial of imprisonment, cheered his fellow-prisoners, encouraged his wife with letters, faced death without dismay, from the midst of a slow fire calling on his Redeemer with unshaken confidence, and peacefully assumed the crown (A.D. 1545). While Brully lay in prison at Tournay, some of his followers were burnt. Two of them recanted, overcome by horror of burning; but * Brandt, Reformation in the Low Countries, book iii. 2 x

VOL. III.

for the surrender of their faith, as the last edict forbade pardon, they were rewarded only by a commutation of punishment from burning to decapitation. Yet, having but the sorry indulgence of sword instead of faggot to offer them, the Priests vexed the prisoners with incessant solicitations to recant, and assailed with brutish clamour those who endeavoured to offer reasons in justification of their refusal. "If you will not hear me," said one of those confessors to a company of noisy Clerks, "send me back to the toads and serpents, my companions in the dungeon; for they do not disturb me when I sing or pray. But you, although you are rational creatures, made after God's image, refuse to hearken, when I mention his eternal word." The reader will observe that, as yet, women were put to death differently from men. They were generally drowned, or buried alive; but to give the burial greater publicity, it was sometimes performed above ground. A coffin, made so near the size of the person to be buried that she would have to be squeezed into it, with no room to struggle, and with a hole in the bottom towards the head, and holes for the insertion of bars, was laid on a scaffold. The woman was then forced into it, and three or four iron bars passed through the sides so as effectually to keep down the body. A cord was passed over her neck through the bottom of the coffin, and held by a man below, who pulled it with his whole weight when those on the scaffold began to throw earth into the coffin. Thus was she buried alive, and the people impressed with fear of the Clergy as they witnessed the barbarous interment. The frequency and atrocity of the executions must have provoked those whom they did not intimidate; and, not improbably, the press refused to render so absolute submission as the last placard had required, for another made known Charles's pleasure that no man should presume to print until he had obtained from himself a licence to exercise the craft of printer,— -a licence which would only be granted to persons who could produce full proof of their "quality, condition, fitness, and good name." The vocation of public schoolmaster was to depend on the permission of the Priests. The penalty of death was to be inflicted on refractory printers, and that of banishment on self-constituted schoolmasters (July 31st, 1546). A prohibitory catalogue followed, containing a specification of no fewer than thirty-nine distinct impressions of Bibles and Testaments, in Latin, Dutch, and French. But Liesvelt, printer of one of them, was beheaded, because of this sentence in a note : "The salvation of mankind proceeds from Christ alone." Pregnant women were kept in irons until the time of delivery, and, after a brief respite, racked, to extort discovery of others. One, because a Latin Testament was found in her house at Leeuwarden, had to suffer torture with thumb-screws and shankscrews before drowning; death being deemed insufficient to expiate the possession of that hated book. While undergoing the torture she was asked whether she expected to be saved by baptism, and admirable was her answer: "No; all the water in the sea cannot save me, nor anything else but that salvation which is in Christ, who has commanded me to love the Lord my God above all things, and my neighbour as myself" (A.D. 1548). The grace of God thus elevated the

CHARLES V. AT BRUSSELS.

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courage of his children to the height of their trial, as appeared, among a thousand instances, in a schoolmaster at Ghent. He had fled from Tournay, come down the Schelde to Ghent, there settled, probably over a private school; and when any of his religion were imprisoned, it was his custom to write letters of earnest remonstrance to the Magistrates, imploring them not to defile their hands with innocent blood, nor, by doing so, expose themselves to the fearful wrath of God. They endured his admonitions for a time, but at length consigned him to the flames. On the road between Tournay and Mons, Master Nicholas, a Reformed Minister from France, returning, with his wife and another woman, from visiting the Christians in the latter town, was arrested and taken back. His wife, to save her life, betrayed those who had entertained him. A company of Monks beset him with questions; but them he baffled with arguments, until they cried out all together, "The devil is in him! To the fire! To the fire with the Lutheran!" To the fire he went, after brushing the dust from his clothes, that he might go clean, as he said, "to the marriage of the Lamb;" and walked through the town exclaiming, "O Charles! Charles! how long will your heart be thus stony?" A timorous woman, condemned to die, thus answered one who exhorted her to save her soul by recantation: "You may easily see that I have a great concern for my soul, since, rather than do anything against my conscience, I would give my body to be burnt. In this I count myself happy, that I do not suffer for a wicked life, but only for the word of Jesus Christ, for which all the martyrs have shed their blood, as I hope to shed mine." And so she did. As it was not the custom of Dutch Priests to burn women, she was laid in a coffin, and a wretch, to show his diligent zeal in the service of the Church, stamped on her till she burst (A.d. 1549).

Over this protracted and most brutal persecution Charles V. thought it his glory to preside; and the more so as the Netherlands, which he was labouring to make a circle of the empire, could not, although his hereditary dominion, be persuaded nor compelled to accept his Interim, that foolish expedient for conciliating the irreconcilable opposites of Romanism and Reform. He was at Brussels. His son Philip, afterwards consort of Mary of England, had attained his twenty-first year, and came from Spain to receive homage as Prince of the Low Countries, and presumptive heir to all his father's dominions. The unlovely Prince witnessed the formal and showy manifestations of that loyalty which the towns saw it their interest to profess, with sullen coolness; gave no hope that his rule would be gentler than that of his inexorable father; and awakened a general emotion of dislike that afterwards found expression in revolt, and rent the Netherlands from Spain. However, he received a ceremonial homage at Dort (September 26th, 1549).

Confiscation, be it observed, was a penalty of heresy; and the prospect of receiving spoils made many a zealot. But to whom did the confiscated estates belong? To the Lords, whose vassals had held them, or to the Emperor? The soul of Charles was not great enough for a purely imperial ambition; and while reddening his sword as

"advocate of the Church," the gains to be derived from the ruin and death of the Reformed were an element in his calculations. But the Lords disputed for possession; and as each spoliation diminished their property, it added to their discontent. However, fancying himself to be omnipotent, he put forth a placard (November 20th), to the following effect :-When the heretic had died in pursuance of an act of the Inquisition,* or spiritual Judges, and continued obstinate to the end, his estate, if holden of the Emperor, should be forfeited to him; but if of a subject, having right of confiscation, then it should fall to him. But if the civil Magistrate had tried and given sentence, "then the forfeited estate was to be divided between the Emperor and such as had the aforesaid right." Some towns pretended that there could be no confiscation or forfeiture of estates within their jurisdiction; but the Emperor, notwithstanding all privileges, &c., to the contrary, ordained, willed, and commanded that, for the future, confiscations should be made in all parts of his dominions.

The practice of persecution was assimilated to that of Spain in another particular, by an edict which expelled all new Christians, or converts from Judaism, with their wives, children, and goods, who had taken refuge in the Netherlands during the six years preceding, revoking permission of residence to all such persons for the future.† Some endeavoured to establish a plea for exemption; but another edict silenced them (May 30th, 1550), and they were all banished. And the edict which intimated the imminent establishment of an

* Mark the cunning. Charles had not yet succeeded in introducing the Inquisition. Limborch, indeed, says that he introduced it into the Netherlands twenty-seven years before; but Limborch is accustomed to consider an appointment of Inquisitors as equivalent with the establishment of the tribunal itself. It was certainly a first step, but no more. Limborch (lib. i., cap. 31) and Brandt (book ii., A.D. 1522) agree as to the fact that Francis vander Hulst and Nicholas van Egmont were appointed to act as Inquisitors; but, although they threw people into prison, Erasmus, whom both these authors quote, understood that in doing so they exceeded their powers, and, after all, could act only as accusers, not Judges. "Primum conjiciunt homines in carcerem, ac post quærunt quæ objiciant." "These things," says Erasmus, "Cæsar knows not. But now his object is to introduce the Inquisition itself, which he names for the first time in an edict, and by naming it, is causing great alarm." And to supply the Lords of feuds with a motive for submitting to this Spanish Inquisition, which was what he wanted to bring in with Philip, he determined that the forfeited estates should only come entire to the Lords when the Inquisition had tried and sentenced the person afterwards put to death; but that if the civil Magistrates continued to try for heresy, one half of such estates should be taken from the Lords. This was one way of forcing them to consent to the tribunal in self-defence.

↑ On the accession of Charles V. to the throne of Spain in 1519, some of the sincere Jews and pretended converts-new Christians-made a last effort to return to that kingdom. They sent a deputation to him in Flanders to represent the wrong they suffered by being coerced into the profession of a religion they did not believe; represented, as with truth they might, their commercial importance, and fidelity to the Sovereign; and offered him 800,000 crowns in gold, for the privilege of religious liberty in Spain. He received the deputies, and heard their proposal graciously. The Council of Flanders advised him to grant their request; and his thoughts seemed to be lingering around the heap of proffered gold. But Cardinal Ximenes-"the liberal"-heard what was going forward, and wrote by an express courier to remind him that Ferdinand had refused to sell Christ to the Jews for 600,000 crowns, even when in his greatest need. Charles yielded to the Spanish Inquisitor-General, and rejected their prayer. (History of the Jews of Spain and Portugal, by E. H. Lindo, chap. 29.) Is it not remarkable that Protestant Christians have never yet earnestly demanded, what the more zealous Jews twice endeavoured to buy,-religious liberty in Spain? Yet such is the humiliating truth. The inqui sitorial decree mentioned in the text was issued in the year 1532.