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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833 Excerpt:... do this within seven or eight years after the occurrence of the alleged enor details should be brushed away from its solid mass of facts, enough would still be left td make us at once proud and ashamed of our nature: ashamed of it for its dreadful capacities of evil,--proud of it for its almost superhuman powers of endurance. With whom the persecution originated is sometimes spoken of as a matter of uncertainty: and, in truth, the question is of very trifling importance. It originated, doubtless, in the same dreadful spirit Which, in former times, had erected'the Inquisition, and had desolated the plains of Languedoc, and the valleys of Piedmont. By whose mouth the proposition was first uttered it might be very difficult to pronounce. When Gardiner was charged by th'e Marian protomartyr Rogers as the prime mover of these cruelties, he is said to have affirmed that the queen went before him, and that-the motion was her own. That she, on her part, would be prepared to listen to the suggestions of her inhuman lord, cannot reasonably be doubted: and ft can scarcely be questioned that the legate, Cardinal Pole,, was more inclined to measures.of extreme severity than has sometimes been imagined. The orders issued by him in the preceding year, for the reconciliation of the laity, were well adapted for the purpose of marking out victims for destruction; for he directed that a book should be kept for registering the names of all those who should return to the church in every parish throughout England, in Order that it might be known who was reconciled and who was not; and that proceedings might be taken against those who' obstinately persisted in their alienation. The truth probably is, that the Whole papal party rushed for mities, and with an appeal to living witn...