In Foxe's Book of Martyrs we read this of this incident:
Instantly the troops seized the gates and avenues of the cities, and placing guards in all the passages, entered with sword in hand, crying, "Die, or be catholics!" In short, they practised every wickedness and horror they could devise, to force them to change their religion.
They hung both men and women by their hair or their feet, and smoked them with hay till they were nearly dead; and if they still refused to sign a recantation, they hung them up again and repeated their barbarities, till, wearied out with torments without death, they forced many to yield to them.
Others, they plucked off all the hair of their heads and beards with pincers. Others they threw on great fires, and pulled them out again, repeating it till they extorted a promise to recant.
Some they stripped naked, and after offering them the most infamous insults, they stuck them with pins from head to foot, and lanced them with penknives; and sometimes with red-hot pincers they dragged them by the nose till they promised to turn.
Multitudes they imprisoned in the most noisome dungeons, where they practised all sorts of torments in secret.
Their wives and children they shut up in monasteries.
Such as endeavoured to escape by flight were pursued in the woods and hunted in the fields, and shot at like wild beasts; nor did any condition or quality screen them from the ferocity of these infernal dragoons: even the members of parliament and military officers, though on actual service, were ordered to quit their posts, and repair directly to their houses to suffer the like storm. Such as complained to the king were sent to the Bastile, where they drank of the same cup. The bishops and the intendants marched at the head of the dragoons, with a troop of missionaries, monks, and other ecclesiastics, to animate the soldiers to an execution so agreeable to their holy church, and so glorious to their demon god and their tyrant king.
John Bunyan understood this kind of barbarity. In Pilgrim's progress he writes of a court case where Faithful is abused by a crowd in this same way.
Overwhelmed by a biased court, with a case against him that was impossible to win, Faithful conducts himself in an honourable way. He conducts himself as Christ conducted Himself at the cross. Faithful was about to die, but that death would not be the end. Rather, that death was the end of the misery of fallen human life, and the beginning of glory unspeakable! For Faithful, the struggle was over, joy had come. Bunyan rightly encourages believers who face death for the name of Jesus, that they are far better off than believers who must continue to live in this world and endure the rigors of a hostile world.
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