Series 3 > Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington plot

INTRODUCTION
Ixxi
‘ Tyrrell was carried away on men’s shoulders to the
gaol of Newgate and then to the Counter, the Protestants
crying vengeance upon him, and he weeping bitterly,
knocking his breast, and affirming that he had done nothing
that day but upon mere force and compulsion of his con¬
science.’ In the Counter he was comforted for three
months by a Scotch catholic, Alexander Hamilton, who
managed to speak to him through a chink in the wall,
but after this neighbour had gone, his resolution again
failed. Again he promised to preach a recantation sermon,
and this time, on the feast of the Immaculate Con¬
ception, 8 December 1588, he actually did so, and
received as his reward, two small livings and a wife
(Fall iv.).
But not even this kept him quiescent. At the end
of 1593 he was found to have been abroad, and it was
rumoured that he had changed his faith once more. An
enquiry was ordered, but evaded. It seems that some
negotiation had been going on with a sister, who was a
Bridgettine nun of Sion. They had lately been migrating
from Rouen, and Anthony declared that he wanted to
bring her home. But there were other very ugly features
about this escapade. Tyrrell had to confess that, while
staying in London, he had been leading a very immoral
life. The end of this adventure is not known in
detail.
On 15 June 1602, he repeated before Bancroft the
statement that the exorcisms had been dishonest, and
after that he fades from sight, though more than one
contemporary assures us that, Mortuus est poenitens.1
1 Besides Morris quoted above, and the biography of Tyrrell in
D.N.B., his Confessions at R.O. have lately appeared in Boyd, and his
Recantation, of January 1588, is printed in Bridgewater’s Concevtatio
Ecdesiae Anglicanae.