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Updated: June 11, 2025
In former lectures I have passed rapidly and imperfectly over this awful crime, not wishing to stimulate passions which should be buried, and thinking it was more the fault of the age than of Catholic bigots; but I now present it in its naked deformity, to be true to history, and to show how cruel is religious intolerance, confirmed by the history of other inhumanities in the Catholic Church, by the persecution of Dominican monks, by the slaughter of the Albigenses, by inquisitions, gunpowder plots, the cruelties of Alva, and that trail of blood which has marked the fairest portions of Europe by the hostilities of the Church of Borne in its struggles to suppress Protestant opinions.
Both start from the position that religion must be the real truth; and while the former demonstrate that it is not the truth, the latter obstinately maintain that it is; or rather, the former dress up and arrange the allegorical element in such a way, that, in the proper sense of the word, it could be true, but would be, in that case, a platitude; while the latter wish to maintain that it is true in the proper sense of the word, without any further dressing; a belief, which, as we ought to know is only to be enforced by inquisitions and the stake.
Here, he told himself, was a nature cramped and bigoted. Such men had smirched the history of religion with inquisitions and tortures and had retarded the progress of human thought. Tollman's impression was less distinct. He fancied that in the penetrating quality of the other's gaze was an impertinence of prying.
This is Froissart's account of the events, and his dates have been mainly followed. Many writers give a varying narrative, stating that the King and Earl did reach Wales, and were taken there in a wood. Their dates are also about a month later. The inquisitions of the Despensers, as is usual in the case of attainted persons, do not give the date of death.
But I staid vexed in my closet till by and by my cozen Thomas Pepys, of Hatcham, come to see me, and he up to my closet, and there sat talking an hour or two of the sad state of the times, whereof we did talk very freely, and he thinks nothing but a union of religious interests will ever settle us; and I do think that, and the Parliament's taking the whole management of things into their hands, and severe inquisitions into our miscarriages; will help us.
Eleven inquisitions were held, eleven inquiries were made, eleven verdicts were returned. For murder? Manslaughter? Misconduct? No; but that "they died by the visitation of God." A lie a perjury a blasphemy! The visitation of God!
Out of that wretched doctrine and infamous mistake that man's belief could have any effect upon nature grew all these inquisitions, racks and collars of torture, and all the blood that was ever shed by religious persecution. In Europe the country was divided between kings and priests. The king held that he got the power from the unknown; so did the priests.
I have seen the backs of all the other horses, and found most of them covered with dreadful saddle-boils which I know have not been washed or doctored for years. The idea of riding all day long over such ghastly inquisitions of torture is sickening. My horse must be like the others, but I have at least the consolation of not knowing it to be so.
I accepted it in silent suspicion. He came on Saturday noon. That afternoon we attended en masse one of those refined inquisitions commonly known as picnics, and Winthrop lost his pocket-knife. Selphar, of course, kept house at home. When we returned, Winthrop made some careless reference to his loss in her presence, and thought no more of it.
Shelley, whose soul, like his own skylark, was a winged joy he has been damned for many, many years; and Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race, who has done more to elevate mankind than all the priests who ever lived and died he is there; and all the founders of Inquisitions, the builders of dungeons, the makers of chains, the inventors of instruments of torture, tearers, and burners, and branders of human flesh, stealers of babes and sellers of husbands, and wives, and children, the drawers of the swords, of persecution, and they who kept the horizon lurid with the fagot's flame for a thousand years they are in heaven tonight.
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