Life and Death of the Venerable Edmund Jennings. By his
Brother, John Jennings. (Burns and Oates.)—This is a reprint, with some slight alterations, of a memoir published in 1614,—i.e., twenty- three years after the death of its subject. Edmund Jennings was a priest, executed, with the hideous barbarity common at the time, for the offence of returning to England and saying Mass. He was but a few months over twenty-four. His seems to have been a peculiarly hard case, for his expression used upon the scaffold, "My dear, anointed Princess !" when he was reproached with treason to the Queen, seems to show that he was loyal. Still, in 1570 Pope Pius V. had declared the Queen to be deposed ; two years afterwards, Gregory XIII. had struck a medal to commemorate a massacre because the victims were Protestants. It was only too easy for a ruler with such memories in her head to be vindictive. The Government deliberately declared in a pamphlet, published in 1584, that "the execution of heretics in England [was] not for Religion, but for Treason," and there is no good reason for doubting their sincerity.
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