york00orns

SERMONS PREACHED TO RECUSANTS. 359
" Hallam points out how in every county they rallied
to the standard of the lord-lieutenant, imploring
that they might not be suspected of bartering the
national independence even for their religion itself;
and then he adds, with a justice that must come
home to every unprejudiced mind, ' It would have
been a sign of gratitude if the laws depriving them
of the free exercise of their religion had been, if not
repealed, yet allowed to sleep, after these proofs of
loyalty. But the execution of priests and of other
Catholics became, on the contrary, more frequent,
and the fines for recusancy were exacted as rigorously
as before.' This is indeed only too true, for
in the last six months of 1588 the number of martyrs
for their religion amounts at least to thirty-one, of
whom twenty-one were priests."!
Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign (1599) another
mode of dealing with them was tried at York.
It was almost grotesque in its simplicity. Lord
Burleigh, who was then Lord President of the North,
ordered the prisoners in York Castle, fifty-three in
number, to be brought into the Castle hall once
a week to hear a sermon. The Archbishop himself
preached, as well as some of the higher ecclesiastics
of the diocese. As might have been expected, their
eloquence, however admirable, their arguments, however
cogent, bore no fruit. The prisoners remonstrated,
but in vain. Then they stopped their ears,
which roused the lord president's wrath in no small
degree, and he abused them in no measured terms,
' " Church Quarterly Rev.," viii. p. 120.