or a hope that he might be persuaded to recant, induced them to keep him lingering on through the spring into the summer of 1555. By the end of May, Queen Mary's hopes of a child were disappointed, and all the confident preparations made for its advent proved to have been thrown away. In her sombre and half-insane sorrow, she issued a circular to quicken the anti-heretical zeal of the Bishops, and the execution of Bradford's sentence was ordered among others. He had never shown, and to the last never showed, the slightest sign of willingness to recant: on the contrary, he looked forward to death in such a cause with hope and joy. He spent the day before made during his long life in the religion of his country. Of these Earls it was said by the Jesuit Parsons that they had three religions to use as occasion served-the Catholic, the Protestant, and the Puritan. They were not so inconstant, for their motto was Sans changer.. Earl Edward told George Marsh, the Bolton martyr, that the true religion was the religion which had most good luck. To this article of faith the Stanleys consistently adhered, and through all changes were faithful to the religion of good luck. When the King assumed the supremacy of the Church of England, the Earl of Derby seems to have thought it his duty to imitate, so illustrious an example; for, being King in the Isle of Man, he declared himself supreme head of the Manx Church, and maintained his supremacy with as much determination as his royal master. Although on the accession of Mary he resumed every article of the Catholic faith—except one, which required the restitution of the Church lands, on which matter he was always a sound and thorough Protestant-he became under Elizabeth a great persecutor of Lancashire Catholics." Thus far Dr Halley. Earl Edward seems to have varied in his conduct to Bradford. At first he is represented as denouncing in Parliament the mischief done by the circulation of the letters which Bradford wrote from prison to his friends "out of doors." Latterly, however, he befriended and even interceded for Bradford. "One of the Earl of Derby his men left behind my lord, his master, for the soliciting of my cause, as he said to me,” figures in Bradford's accounts of his prison-conferences with controversialists. Perhaps Lord Derby's very probable dissuasions helped to make the authorities give up their intention of martyring Bradford in his native county.

his martyrdom in looking over his papers (for during his imprisonment he had been ever busy with his pen), in giving directions concerning them, and in "prayer and other good exercises" with half a dozen of his friends.

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He was taken to Newgate late in the night of the 30th of June 1555, when it was thought the city would be in bed, but "in Cheapside and other places between the Compter and Newgate" was a great multitude of people that came to see him, which most gently bade him farewell, praying for him with most lamentable and pitiful tears; and he again as gently bade them farewell, praying most heartily for them and their welfare." At nine o'clock next morning he was brought to Smithfield "with a great company of weaponed men to conduct him thither, as the like was not seen at no man's burning; for in every corner of Smithfield there were some, besides those which stood about the stake," as if an attempt to rescue him were feared. A youth of nineteen, a tallow-chandler's apprentice, John Leaf by name, whose notions respecting "the Real Presence" were not those of Bonner and Gardiner, was condemned to die along with him. Each prostrated himself on either side of the stake and prayed for a minute, when one of the sheriffs interrupted their devotions by saying:-"Arise, and make an end, for the press of the people is great." "At that word," Fox's narrative proceeds, "they both stood up upon their feet; and then Master Bradford took a faggot in his hand and kissed it, and so likewise the stake. And when he had so done, he desired of the sheriffs that his servant might have his raiment; for,' said he, 'I have nothing else to give him, and besides that he is a poor man.' And the sheriff said he should have it. And so forthwith Master Bradford did put off his raiment, and went to the stake; and, holding up his hands and casting his countenance up to heaven, he said thus :-'O England, England, repent

thee of thy sins! Beware of idolatry, beware of false antichrists; take heed they do not deceive you.' And as he was speaking these words, the sheriff bade tie his hands if he would not be quiet. 'O Master Sheriff!' said Master Bradford, 'I am quiet; God forgive you this, Master Sheriff.' And one of the officers which made the fire, hearing Master Bradford so speaking to the sheriff, said, 'If you have no better learning than that, you are but a fool, and it were best to hold your peace.' To which words Master Bradford gave no answer, but asked all the world's forgiveness, and forgave all' the world, and prayed the world to pray for him." His last words on earth were to poor John Leaf:-"Be of good comfort, brother, for we shall have a merry supper with the Lord this night;' and so spake no more that any man did hear, but, embracing the reeds, said thus:-'Straight is the way, and narrow is the gate that leadeth to eternal salvation, and few be they that find it."" "He endured the flame," says quaint

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old Fuller, as a fresh gale of wind in a hot summer's day." According to Fox, the martyr was “of person, a tall man, slender, spare of body, somewhat a faint sanguine colour, with an auburn beard."

More than three centuries have come and gone since Bradford's martyrdom, and the controversy between Popery and Protestantism is not yet ended, though the Smithfield fires have long been quenched for ever. The time must arrive when that controversy, too, will close. But while the English race exists, honour will be paid to the memory of men who preferred death to falsehood.

IN

IV.

JEREMIAH HORROCKS.*

N the course of the parliamentary session of 1869, fifteen thousand pounds were cheerfully voted by the House of Commons to provide the staff and elaborate scientific apparatus required for the due observation of a transit of Venus, which will occur in the December of 1874. The Astronomer Royal furnished a programme for the expenditure of the money, and science hopes for important results from the phenomenon, if carefully observed under favourable conditions. It may bring nearer to accuracy our estimate of the earth's distance from the sun, in the long-accepted computation of which a grave error has of late years been discovered. All must wish for the success of the interesting enterprise, and certainly, if there is to be failure, it will not be due to any lack of forethought, or of scientific apparatus. The chief governments and astronomers of the world are to be associated with those of Great Britain, in the expeditions to the uttermost parts of the earth, planned for the performance of the task. Striking, indeed, is the contrast between this pomp of preparation and the circumstances under which the first

*Jeremiæ Horroccii Opera Posthuma (London, 1673), edited by Wallis, who prefixes an Epistola Nuncupatoria. Joannis Hevelii Mercurius in sole visa, cui annexa est Venus sole pariter visa à Joanne Horroxio nunc primum edita (Dantzic, 1662); Memoir of the Life and Labours of the Rev. Jeremiah Horrox, &c., by the Rev. A. B. Whatton (London, 1859); The Sphere of Marcus Manilius made an English Poem, with annotations and an astronomical appendix, by Edward Sherburne, Esquire (London, 1675), &c., &c.

recorded observation of the transit of Venus was made by a Lancashire youth, poor and obscure, solitary, unaided, and equipped with the scantiest scientific appliances. There are many Lancashire Worthies more celebrated than Jeremiah Horrocks, but of few has his native county more reason to be proud.

He was born in 1619, near Liverpool, at Toxteth Park, then an insignificant village in the vicinity of an unimportant haven, now a wealthy and populous suburb of one of the greatest of sea-ports. Of his family and their circumstances scarcely anything definite is known, but it may be surmised that they were of the middle rank, and of means far from affluent. Respecting his childhood, boyhood, and early education, absolutely nothing can be discovered. After his birth, the first ascertained fact in his biography is that, on the 18th of May 1632, at or about the age of thirteen, he was entered a sizar of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. That he went to the University as a sizar betokens poverty, and in his writings there are several allusions to the obstructions which narrow circumstances interposed to his cultivation of science. Even had it been otherwise, however, Cambridge would have done little for his advancement in what became his favourite pursuit. For the study of the classics the University gave due opportunity and assistance; and it is evident, from his Latin prose and verse, that Horrocks was a fair classical scholar. But physical, and even mathematical, science was then neglected at Cambridge. The year of his admission to Emmanuel was, by a rather curious coincidence, that also of the wellknown Wallis, who afterwards edited the works of Horrocks. In an account of his studies at Cambridge, Wallis speaks of himself as having "diverted" from what he elsewhere calls "the common road of studies then in fashion" " to astronomy and geography as parts of natural philosophy, though," he