25. The Islington Martyrs
Explanatory Notes
231 confessors: individuals who openly avow religious conviction.
232 espies: spies.
Jew: a Roman Catholic (Protestant innuendo).
233 'Quo . . . fames': 'To what do you not drive human hearts, accursed thirst for gold!' Virgil, Aeneid, 3. 56.
council: the Privy Council.
Duke of Somerset: Edward Seymour.
234 hurdle: a frame on a sledge on which condemned individuals were dragged to execution.
he was turned off the ladder: Potto pushed him off the ladder in order to hang him by the neck until he died.
between two thieves: Luke 23: 39 – 43.
flout: a mockery.
235 hackle: hack.
236 George Eagles . . . St Rouse's: it was the fate of condemned traitors to be hung by the neck, cut down while still alive, have their intestines drawn out and burned, and then to be cut in quarters that were displayed at city gates as a warning to potential malefactors.
glass: a mirror (in the figurative sense of prophetic reflection).
237 watchet: light blue.
25. THE ISLINGTON MARTYRS
238 back close: an enclosed portion of a field, adjacent to houses. It is the site of an out-of-door gathering of Protestants who engaged in the study of the Bible and other books. Many of them were among the last individuals to die for heresy prior to the death of Mary I.
239 recorder: an official charged with keeping track of legal proceedings, precedents, and customs of a city such as London.
240 Harpsfield and Cole: John Harpsfield (see Glossary of Persons) and Henry Cole, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral.
scant for anger being able to speak: almost unable to speak because he was so angry.
242 capper: a maker of caps.
flirting him: striking him sharply or suddenly.
243 crept to the cross: they observed a Good Friday ritual whereby parishioners crawled to a cross prior to its placement in a wooden chest symbolic of the tomb in which Jesus' body was placed following the crucifixion.
Forbidden at the end of Henry VIII's reign, this practice was restored after the accession of Mary I.
King Edward's service in English: see Introduction.