Foxe - The Book of Martyrs

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
by his friends, and he took this step in revenge for their conduct to him. After being there
sixteen years, Lord Hamilton, earl of Arran, taking a liking to him, the archbishop of St.
Andrew's induced the provincial of the house to dispense with his habit and order; and he thus
became the earl's chaplain. He remained in this spiritual employment a year, and in that time
God wrought in him a saving knowledge of the truth; for which reason the earl sent him to
preach in the freedom of Ayr, where he remained four years; but finding danger there from
the religious complexion of the times, and learning that there was much Gospel freedom in
England, he travelled up to the duke of Somerset, then Lord Protector of England, who gave
him a yearly salary of twenty pounds, and authorised him, to preach at Carlisle, Berwick, and
Newcastle, where he married. He was afterward removed to a benefice at Hull, in which he
remained until the death of Edward VI.
In consequence of the tide of persecution then setting in, he fled with his wife to Friesland,
and at Nordon they followed the occupation of knitting hose, caps, etc., for subsistence.
Impeded in his business by the want of yarn, he came over to England to procure a quantity,
and on November 10, arrived in London, where he soon heard of a secret society of the
faithful, to whom he joined himself, and was in a short time elected their minister, in which
occupation he strengthened them in every good resolution.
On December 12, through the information of one Taylor, a member of the society, Mr.
Rough, with Cuthbert Symson and others, was taken up in the Saracen's Head, Islington,
where, under the pretext of coming to see a play, their religious exercises were holden. The
queen's vice-chamberlain conducted Rough and Symson before the Council, in whose
presence they were charged with meeting to celebrate the Communion. The Council wrote to
Bonner and he lost no time in this affair of blood. In three days he had him up, and on the
next (the twentieth) resolved to condemn him. The charges laid against him were, that he,
being a priest, was married, and that he had rejected the service in the Latin tongue. Rough
wanted not arguments to reply to these flimsy tenets. In short, he was degraded and
condemned.
Mr. Rough, it should be noticed, when in the north, in Edward VI's reign, had saved Dr.
Watson's life, who afterward sat with Bishop Bonner on the bench. This ungrateful prelate, in
return for the kind act he had received, boldly accused Mr. Rough of being the most pernicious
heretic in the country. The godly minister reproved him for his malicious spirit; he affirmed
that, during the thirty years he had lived, he had never bowed the knee to Baal; and that twice
at Rome he had seen the pope born about on men's shoulders with the false-named Sacrament
carried before him, presenting a true picture of the very Antichrist; yet was more reverence
shown to him than to the wafer, which they accounted to be their God. "Ah?" said Bonner,
rising, and making towards him, as if he would have torn his garment, "Hast thou been at
Rome, and seen our holy father the pope, and dost thou blaspheme him after this sort?" This
said, he fell upon him, tore off a piece of his beard, and that the day might begin to his own
satisfaction, he ordered the object of his rage to be burnt by half-past five the following
morning.
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