United States or United States Minor Outlying Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Wives were abused in the arms of their husbands, daughters at the feet of their parents; and the defenceless sex exposed to the double sacrifice of virtue and life. No situation, however obscure, or however sacred, escaped the rapacity of the enemy. In a single church fifty-three women were found beheaded.

"Did she ask what had happened, when all Pomerania rung with it? when nobles were beheaded before her face as if they were nothing more than beggars' brats? when the delicate and high-born Lady Sidonia, who had been entrusted to her care by Duke Barnim himself, was turned out of the castle in the middle of the night as if she were a street-girl, because, forsooth, she would not learn her catechism?

Becoming a soldier in Diocletian's army he was made a tribune or colonel. The Emperor showed him marks of especial favour, but when the imperial forces were turned against the Christians, George remonstrated and refused. He was therefore beheaded. For broad comedy the picture of S. Jerome and the lion on the right wall is the best.

Outside, two hundred Hospitallers and Templars were beheaded on the field of battle; by one account I have read because Saladin disliked them, and by another because they were Christian priests. There is a strong bias against the Christians and in favour of the Moslems and the Jews in most of the Victorian historical works, especially historical novels.

The blood of the ram abode and congealed. The third day he came and showed him to Nero, saying: Command my blood to be washed away, for lo I am he that was beheaded, and as I promised I have risen again the third day. Whom Nero seeing, was abashed and trowed verily that he had been the son of God. All this saith Leo.

From Strasburg and Nuremberg they were expelled, in Zurich their leaders were drowned, in Augsburg they were beheaded, in Austria, Wittenberg, Bavaria, and the Palatinate they were burned at the stake. In 1534 their sect was brought into sudden and fatal prominence by the revolt in Munster and its vicinity.

Now, Grebel, the father of Conrad, the leader of the Anabaptists, is beheaded. He, who stood in the highest consideration amongst us, had received from the Emperor, the King of France and the Pope more than 1000 gold-florins under pretence of benefits bestowed on his son. Several escaped, for the gates were negligently guarded; one on a cart, concealed under a load of rubbish and dung.

"If a dozen different individuals, all men of known sense and integrity, should each independently of the other pledge their everlasting weal on the truth, that they saw a man beheaded and quartered, and that on a certain person's prayer or bidding, the quarters reunited, and then a new head grew on and from out of the stump of the neck: and should the man himself assure you of the same, shew you the junctures, and identify himself to you by some indelible mark, with which you had been previously acquainted, could you withstand this evidence?"

Bedford found for the moment an able and vigorous successor in the Duke of York. Richard of York was the son of the Earl of Cambridge who had been beheaded by Henry the Fifth; his mother was Anne, the heiress of the Mortimers and of their claim to the English crown as representatives of the third son of Edward the Third, Lionel of Clarence.

It is remarkable how many of the verses among his few poetical remains are asserted in the manuscripts or by tradition to have been "made by Sir Walter Raleigh the night before he was beheaded." Of one such poem the assertion is probably true namely, the lines "found in his Bible in the gate-house at Westminster."