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as their legitimate queen. Challoner calls our attention to the fact, that "in these memoirs he has omitted James Leyburn, Esq., who suffered at Lancaster in 1583, because his case was different from that of all other Catholics who suffered at those times; for both at his arraignment and at his death he denied the queen to be his lawful sovereign." For the same reason he must have omitted the names of Felton, Storey, Plumtree, Woodhouse, and others, who otherwise are as much entitled to the name of martyrs as any others. And how a literal and perfect obedience to the Pope can stand in the way of their being called martyrs, we own we cannot see. The Pope had excommunicated and deposed the queen, declared her rights and title to the crown null and void, and had anathematised all who supported her or obeyed her laws. Those who died in support of this Bull, died in support of the Papal authority. If martyrdom in such a cause is possible, they were martyrs. That the excuse for putting them to death, that in the eyes of politicians and potentates she was justified in treating them as traitors, does not take away from their individual merit. It may detract from the prudence of the act by which they were forced, whether they would or no, into such a position; but this act was not their own, it was the Pope's. If the imprudence of superiors, or other provocation offered to persecutors, is to be a pretext for depriving martyrs of their title, we shall have to examine afresh the titles of almost all the martyrs of the Church. Few have ever laid down their lives except during an excitement which has arisen from other causes than their own enthusiasm for the purity of Christian doctrine and morals. There have been few persecutors who could not allege provocation of various degrees and kinds, dangers accruing to themselves or the laws from the growth of Christianity, -all of them sufficiently palpable in the eyes of politicians to justify them in going to extremities. If the glory of martyrdom is to increase or diminish in the inverse ratio of the strength or weakness of the persecutor's plea in justification of his act, we make martyrdom a purely external matter, the glory of which is not absolutely inherent in the martyr, but is a kind of mathematical function of the relation in which he stands to the persecutor, to be settled rather by political special-pleading than by the examination of virtues, miracles, and the cause for which the victim suffered. We do not blame Dr. Challoner for beginning with Cuthbert Maine. To assert that Leyburn was a martyr, might in those days have brought the biographer within some of those "giant statutes," which, as Donne says, "oped their jaws" to swallow every

body who talked or wrote with too little circumspection. But this is no reason why we should refuse to remember those who fought so bravely; unless we are prepared to say, that then we should take the world's side against the Church. In whenever a battle between the Church and the world is inevitable, if they both remain faithful to their own principles, Elizabeth's case, she was justified by every maxim of the world in keeping her throne. St. Pius V. was justified by every ecclesiastical motive in trying to deprive her of it. Those who lost their lives for no other reason but because they wished to obey the Pope, are so far forth martyrs; unless you prefer to say that the doctrine of the Papal supremacy is one that we are not required to defend with our blood. In such a case, Felton, Storey, and the rest would be rather fanatical fools than martyrs: and the matter would not stop there; it might apply also to Sir Thomas More, to Cardinal Fisher, to Campion, and to all the rest of the "missionary priests," who, if they had chosen to renounce the Pope, would have been welcome to preach and teach all the rest of the Catholic doctrine without very grievous molestation. It might apply to Bobola, and all the confessors and martyrs who have laboured to restore the orthodox East to Catholic unity; and thus it would disorganise the fundamental principles of Christianity. For this reason, in the case of an enlarged and revised edition of the Missionary Priests, the memoirs should begin before 1577, when, indeed, Challoner only says, "the great persecution began, but little blood having been shed before, at least for matters purely religious;" but does not explain why this "little blood" should be excluded from his catalogue. If those who suffered for the northern rebellion are excluded on account of the mixed motives which possibly influenced them, at any rate there can be no reason for omitting Felton, who died for publishing the Pope's Bull; Dr. Storey, of whose martyrdom we gave an account in a former Number of this journal; Plumtree, the priest, who had joined the schism, and had been reconciled by Dr. Morton, and who on his condemnation was offered his life if he would again conform to the religion of the laws, but refused, and was executed about the year 1569; or, again, Woodhouse, the old priest, who was executed June 13, 1573, as we read in Stowe, and of whom Dr. Sanders writes, "Thomas Woodhouse, priest, a man of great charity and piety, who had for several years endured imprisonment, chains, poverty, and almost infinite troubles, till his unconquerable spirit, directed by God's grace, and fired with the hopes of a home in heaven, impelled * Lib. iii. de Schism. Ang.

VOL. X.-NEW SERIES.

him to deny the female papacy of Elizabeth" (which Sanders elsewhere calls "the queen's feigned supremacy, which the devil invented in paradise, when he made Eve Adam's master in God's matters"), "and to assert the supreme authority of the Pope, the true Vicar of Christ upon earth; for which he willingly suffered the worst that the fury of Calvinists could inflict upon him, namely a glorious death."

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Woodhouse had been for some years in prison; and it is hard to say how he could have controverted the queen's supremacy with any effect from his cell. He was committed to the Fleet Prison May 14, 1561, as we learn by a certificate, where his name occurs, with the note, a pore prist," that is, one who could not pay for his keep, but lived on precarious charity like the other pauper prisoners.* Here, or in other prisons, he remained till his martyrdom. In the month before his committal there seems to have been quite a razzia in some counties to catch priests and laymen who attended Mass. Among the laity caught, we find the names of Lord Hastings, Sir Edward and Lady Waldegrave, Sir Thomas Wharton, Lady Hubbleston, and members of the great families of Pole, Pierrepoint, &c., together with several priests, many of whom died in prison, while others were banished. We must not therefore suppose that Woodhouse was hanged as a disturber of the people; he was hanged for what would be now reckoned merely a "privileged communication," a letter written to William Cecil, the Lord-Treasurer Burghley, of which that great man, or those who arranged his papers, thought so little, that it was classed with a series of madmen's letters, such as, we suppose, all public men are used to receive now and then. It may still be seen, the first in a volume, that, with this exception, is entirely made up of such insane rigmaroles, among the Burghley papers in the Lansdowne Mss. in the British Museum. The date of the letter is November 19, 1572; it was written to Burghley, and was doubtless both the occasion of the writer's arraignment, and the evidence on which he was condemned and executed seven months afterwards.

JESUS.

Your lordship will peradventure marvel at my boldness that dare presume to interpell your wisdom, being occupied in so great and weighty affairs touching the state of the whole realm. Howbeit I have conceived that opinion of your lordship's humanity, that ye will not contemn any man's good-will, how simple or mean soever he be; which maketh me bold at this present to communicate † Vol. xcix. fol. 1.

* Harleian Ms. no. 360, fol. 7.

my poor advice, what is very requisite and best for your lordship to do in so great and ponderous affairs. Forasmuch, therefore, as our Lord and God Jesus Christ hath given supreme authority unto his blessed apostle St. Peter, and in him to his successors the Bishops of Rome, to feed, rule, and govern His sheep, that is to say, al Christians, at such time as He said unto the same His apostle thrice Feed my lambs, feed my lambs, feed my sheep,-my poor advice is, that ye humbly and unfeignedly, even from the very bottom of your heart, acknowledge and confess your great iniquity and offence against Almighty God, especially in disobeying that supreme authority and power of the see apostolic, so ordained and established by the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ; and that in all dutiful manner and apparent fruits of penance ye seek to be reconciled unto that your supreme prince and pastor here in earth, appointed and assigned unto you by your Lord God and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Likewise that ye earnestly persuade the Lady Elizabeth (who for her own great disobedience is most justly deposed) to submit herself unto her spiritual prince and father the Pope's Holiness, and with all humility to reconcile herself unto him, that she may be the child of salvation. Now your lordship hath heard my poor advice, which, if your wisdom shall not disdain to follow, I hope it shall turn, through the mercy of God, to the preservation of our dear country, and to a most flourishing and happy state in the Christian commonwealth, and shall also redound unto your eternal salvation, honour, and glory. But if, which God forbid, ye shall contemn or neglect the same, I fear it will be to the great desolation and ruin of our beloved country and people, and to the utter subversion and perishing of you and yours for ever in hell; where is the gnawing worm, where is the unquenchable fire, where is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Dixi.

My lord, for this my poor advice I require no other thing of your lordship but that ye will not molest by any means this bearer, who is wholly ignorant of the contents and a hot Protestant; nor yet the guardian, nor yet the gaolers, who are likewise ignorant of my doings; for they lock me up more closely than I think your honour would they should, and suppose I have neither pen, nor ink, nor messenger.

Your honour's humble and daily beadsman,

THOMAS WOODDUS."

This letter is the only personal monument of Woodhouse. He was evidently a man of education; the handwriting and the composition are both good: and from some expressions, we are inclined to believe that he had more than once been admitted to converse with the lord-treasurer, of whose good-will towards him he seems assured, when he hints that his gaolers treat him worse than Burghley means. But he was mistaken in his man; Burghley was a politician who would "circumvent

God." He did circumvent the Catholics in Mary's time, by showing himself in Wimbledon church every day, "labouring a great pair of beads in his hands;" and in Elizabeth's days, by making them think that he was their secret friend, who moderated the fury of the queen and the hostility of his colleagues at the council-board.

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We have failed to discover any other particulars of this martyr. He seems never to have held a benefice; and that the twelve years which he passed in prison were years of obscurity and of a hidden life, we may gather from the scantiness of the records concerning him. Sanders, who published. his book De Visibili Monarchia in 1571, simply puts his name, "Woddus," in the list of priests" dead, or still living in prison.' In the first edition of his history of the schism, he does not notice him; afterwards he gave the scanty memorial that we have quoted, to which Bridgwater was unable to make any addition in his Concertatio. Lingard refers also to Gonzales; but not having that book at hand, we cannot look whether he gives any more particulars; and as we have small hope of finding more about him, we prefer publishing the little we have to waiting for further materials.

Literary Notices.

The Ballads of Scotland. Edited by W. E. Aytoun, D.C.L., author of "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers." 2 vols. (Blackwood.) No more congenial subject for author, nor author for subject, could be found than Dr. Aytoun for the beautiful ballads of his country. The collection was an easy task; it had been well done by Allan Ramsay, David Herd, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Jamieson, Finlay, Kinloch, Maidment, Sharpe, and Motherwell; but the collation and restoration of the songs handed down only by oral tradition, and varied in various localities, was a task that required the taste of a poet, and the judgment of a critic. These old ballads are models; not exactly in language, for we must confess to a great antipathy for our northern Doric; not for polish or finish; but for telling their story well, for unravelling a long plot in a few stanzas, for hearty nature, for rough majesty, and for unaffected pathos. They have long been a store for "poets'-corner" contributors, who quietly pilfered the material for purposes of transmogrification, and furbished, dressed up, and presented to the public its old favourites as novelties. Dr. Aytoun, while not presuming to blame the "sly appropriator," contends for the preservation, collection, assortment, and arrangement of the originals. His theory about the ballads is not that they grew up naturally, and were found in the mouths of men, nor that they were casual compositions of individuals of rhyming talents; but that they

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