RIDLEYS OF WILLIMOTESWICK, NORTHUMBERLAND. 423
and your kinsfolks and mine; so I pray you, good cousin, as my hope and
trust is in you, continue and increase in the maintenance of truth, honesty,
righteousness, and all true godliness, and to the utmost of your power to
withstand falsehood, untruth, unrighteousness, and all ungodliness, which
are condemned by the word and laws of God. Farewell, my young cousin,
Ralph Whitefield. Oh! your time was very short with me. My mind
was to have done you good; but yet you caught in that little time a loss;
but I trust it shall be recompensed as it shall please Almighty God.
Farewell, all my whole kindred and countrymen :-farewell in Christ al-
together.'"
The following poem on the martyrdom of Bishop Ridley, was composed
by Miss Frances-Ridley Havergal, of Leamington, Eng., and is by her
permission given a place in this book:-
"Three hundred years ago was one,
Who held with steadfast hand
That chalice of the truth of God,
And poured its crystal stream abroad
Upon the thirsty land.
"The moderate, the wise, the calm,
The learned, brave, and good,
A guardian of the sacred ark,
A burning light in places dark,
For cruel, changeless Rome a mark,
Our BISHOP RIDLEY stood.
"The vengeance of that foe naught else
But fiery doom could still:
Too surely fell the lightning's stroke
Upon that noble English oak,
Whose acorn-memory survives
In forest ranks of earnest lives,
And martyr souls at will.
"Rome offered life for faith laid down:
Such ransom paid not he!
'As long as breath is in this frame,
My Lord and Saviour, Christ, His name,
And His known truth I'll not deny';
He said (and raised his head on high),
'God's will be done in me.'
"He knelt and prayed, and kissed the stake,
And blessed his Master's name,
That he was called his cross to take,
And counted worthy for His sake
To suffer death and shame.
"Tho' fierce the fire and long the pain,
The martyr's God was nigh;
Till from the awful underglow
Of torture terrible and slow,
Above the weeping round about,
Once more that powerful voice rang out,
His Saviour's own last cry.
"Oh, faithful unto death! the crown
Was shining on thy brow,
Before the ruddy embers paling,
And sobbing aftergusts of wailing,
Had died away, and left in silence,
That truest shrine of British islands,
That spot so sacred now!
