Then Would They Demand Of Us What We Did Remember Of Ourselves, What Opinions We Had Held Or Had Been

Taught to hold, contrary to the same whiles we were in England; to which we for the safety of our

Lives were constrained to say that we never did believe, nor had been taught otherwise than as before we had said. Then would they charge us that we did not tell them the truth, that we knew to the contrary, and therefore we should call ourselves to remembrance and make them a better answer at the next time or else we should be racked and made to confess the truth whether we would or no. And so coming again before them the next time, we were still demanded of our belief whiles we were in England, and how we had been taught, and also what we thought or did know of such of our company as they did name unto us, so that we could never be free from such demands, and at other times they would promise us that if we would tell them the truth, then should we have favour and be set at liberty, although we very well knew their fair speeches were but means to entrap us to the hazard and loss of our lives; howbeit God so mercifully wrought for us by a secret means that we had that we kept us still to our first answer, and would still say that we had told the truth unto them, and knew no more by ourselves nor any other of our fellows than as we had declared, and that for our sins and offences in England against God and our Lady, or any of His blessed saints, we were heartily sorry for the same, and did cry God mercy, and besought the Inquisitors, for God's sake, considering that we came into those countries by force of weather, and against our wills, and that never in all our lives we had either spoken or done anything contrary to their laws, that therefore they would have mercy on us, yet all this would not serve, for still from time to time we were called upon to confess, and about the space of three months, before they proceeded to their severe Judgment, we were all racked, and some enforced to utter that against themselves which afterwards cost them their lives.

And thus having gotten from our own mouths matter sufficient for them to proceed in judgment against us, they caused a large scaffold to be made in the midst of the market-place in Mexico, right over against the head church, and fourteen or fifteen days before the day of their judgment, with the sound of a trumpet, and the noise of their attabalies, which are a kind of drums, they did assemble the people in all parts of the city, before whom it was then solemnly proclaimed that whosoever would upon such a day, repair to the marketplace, they should hear the sentence of the Holy Inquisition against the English heretic Lutherans, and also see the same put in execution.

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