him learn more in one little dark corner of the all these wrongs; a young woman, with a sound Tower, than in all his many travels. constitution, and its concomitant-a light and cheerful spirit, might have forgotten them gradually in the full sunshine of prosperity; but Mary was thirty-seven years old, an age at which it is difficult to erase any deep impressions; and partly through the effects of long years of grief and fear, and partly through the defects of her original formation, her constitution was shattered, and the ill-humour and moroseness of the confirmed valetudinarian were superadded to the other fertile causes which were to make her a curse to the nation. This unhappy woman, with an unhealthy mind in an unsound body, had all along considered Cranmer as the greatest enemy of her mother, whose divorce he had pronounced. After being left at large from the day of her entrance into London to the 14th or 15th of September, the archbishop was suddenly arrested and committed to the Tower, with Latimer and some others. There is an immediate cause assigned by some writers for his arrest at this moment. Men remembered Cranmer's conduct in the days of King Henry, when he sat at the head of tribunals which sentenced Protestants to the flames; he was generally believed to be deficient in that extreme courage which braves torture and death; and it was reported of him, that, in order to pay court to this most Catholic queen, he had engaged On the day after these executions, Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was made chancellor; and, on the Sunday following, the old Catholic service was sung in Latin in St. Paul's Church. It was fully expected that the active Gardiner, would proceed at once to extremities against the Protestant party; but for a short time there was an awful pause. The Emperor Charles, whom she consulted on all affairs of importance, strongly advised the queen to proceed in everything with the utmost caution-to wait the effect of time and example on the religious faith of her people | -to punish only her principal enemies, and to quiet the apprehensions of the rest, who might be driven to desperation by over-severity. Mary replied, “God, who has protected me in all my misfortunes, is my trust. I will not show him my gratitude ardily and in secret, but immediately and openly." She was fain, however, to issue a public declaration that she would constrain nobody in religious matters, but must only insist that her people should refrain from the offensive expressions of "Papist" and "heretic." But the spirit of the zealot was not to be wholly repressed by any considerations of political expediency. It was only nine days after the issuing of the proclamation that she had caused mass to be sung in the first church in the city of London; and she proceeded to establish a most rigo-to restore the rites of the old church, and to offirous censorship of the press, and to prohibit all persons from speaking against herself or her council, because all that they did, or might do, was for the honour of God and the welfare of her subjects' immortal souls. There can be no doubt that Mary was sincere in her convictions: she was an honest fanatic, but her fanaticism was only the more dangerous from her honesty, and the persuasion which she held in common with other zealots, that all her plans were for the service of the Almighty. Even the darkest and fiercest passions were in her case masked by religion, and by filial piety; and it appeared to her a sacred duty to avenge on the reforming party the wrongs and sufferings of her mother Catherine: Mary's youth had been passed in gloom and intlemen and knights, then judges, then doctors, storms; her father had alternately threatened to make her a nun and to take off her head; he and his ministers had forced her to sign a paper in which she formally acknowledged that the church she adored was a cheat, and that the mother who bore her had never been her father's lawful wife. From the time of the marriage of Anne Boleyn she had been persecuted, insulted, and driven from place to place, almost like a common criminal and vagabond. A woman of an angelic tem-lished such a bold manifesto. Some accounts seem to say that per might, by miraculous exertion, have forgiven certain declarations of his were treacherously put into the queen's hands. But Mary wanted no additional provocation to hun 'Ambassades de Renaud, quoted by Raumer. him to infamy and death. 2 Ibid. ciate personally in them. He had certainly never shown such courage before, and he could not be blind to the great risk he was running; but, being assisted by the learned Peter Martyr, he wrote and published (it is said) a manifesto of his entire Protestant faith, and his abhorrence of masses and all other abominations of the Popish super stition. A few days after his arrest, Queen Mary went to the Tower by water, accompanied by the Princess Elizabeth and other ladies. This was preparatory to the coronation. On the last day of September the queen rode in great state from the Tower, through the city of London, towards Westminster, sitting in a chariot covered with cloth of gold. Before her rode a number of gen then bishops, then lords, then the council: after whom followed the knights of the Bath in their robes; the Bishop of Winchester, lord-chancellor; the Marquis of Winchester, lord high-treasurer; the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Oxford, bearing the sword of state; and the lordmayor of London, bearing the sceptre of gold. After the queen's chariot Sir Edward Hastings 3 It is certainly by no means clear that Cranmer ever pub led her horse in hand; and after her horse came another chariot covered all over with white silver cloth, wherein sat side by side, with smiling faces, the Princess Elizabeth and our old faircomplexioned and contented friend THE LADY ANNE OF CLEVES! On the morrow the queen went by water from Whitehall to the old palace of Westminster, and there remained till about noon, and then walked on foot upon blue cloth, which was railed on each side, to St. Peter's Church, where she was solemnly crowned and anointed by Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who took good care not to omit any of the an cient rites.' Five days after the coronation a parliament assembled at Westminster, and both lords and commons soon gave melancholy proofs that they had made up their minds to float with the prevailing current, and to make no efforts for the protection of anything except the estates of the church that had fallen into their own hands. As there was scarcely a member in the upper house but had shared in the spoil in the time of Henry and Ed ward, and as it was known that their only anxiety was for the preservation of what they had gotten, no apprehension was entertained of any serious opposition on the part of the peers; and as for the commons, they had long been timid Edward III., and every species of felony not set down in the statute-book previously to the first year of Henry VIII. They next declared the queen to be legitimate, and annulled the divorce of her mother pronounced by Cranmer, greatly blaming the archbishop for that deed. Then, by one vote, they repealed all the statutes of the late reign that in any way regarded religion, thus returning to the point at which matters stood in the last year of the reign of Henry VIII., when most of the offices and ceremonies of the Roman church, the doctrine of transubstantiation, the celibacy of the clergy, and other matters odious to Protestants, were fully insisted upon. The queen neither renounced the title of supreme head of the church-a title most odious, frightful, or ridiculous to Catholic ears-nor pressed QUEEN MARY.-After Zucchero. for a restitution of the abbey lands; though, to give proof of her own disinterestedness, she prepared to restore of her own free-will all property of that kind which had been attached to the crown. It was quite certain that the lords, who were so compliant ir matters of doctrine and faith, that concerned their souls, would have offered a vigorous resistance to any bill that touched their estates or their goods and chattels; and Mary had been well warned on this point." Gardiner, who had already dismissed all such and subservient in the extreme, and on the pre- | of the Protestant bishops as would not conform or sent occasion, out of a prudent regard to their personal safety, those who were not Papists had contrived to keep away from parliament. The very first act of the new parliament was decisive: proceedings were opened in each of the houses by celebrating high mass; and the men who, a few years before, had voted the observance to be damnable, all fell on their knees at the elevation of the host. Only Taylor, Bishop of Lincoln, refused to kneel; for which he was harshly treated, and kicked or thrust out of the House of Lords. The first bill that was passed, in imitation of what was done by the Protestant party at the accession of the late king, abolished every species of treason not contained in the statute of enter into a compromise, now summoned the corvocation, to settle once more all doubts and dis putations concerning the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. With the exception of a few words spoken by John Ailmer, Richard Cheney, John Philpot, James Hadden, and Walter Philips, the Papists had it all their own way. Harpsfield, the Bishop of London's chaplain, who opened the convocation with a sermon, set no limits to his exultation; and, in the vehemence of his joy and gratitude, he compared Queen Mary to all the females of greatest celebrity in Holy Writ and the Apocrypha, not even excepting the Virgin Mary. It would scarcely be expected by people of ordinary imagination that it was possible for any one to surpass the hyperbole of Harpsfield; and yet this feat seems fairly to have been performed by Weston, the prolocutor. 2 Parl. Jour.; Despatches of Noailles: Burnet. 113 After these orations the convocation proceeded | preaching at Paul's Cross in defence of Queen to business, and in some matters came to impor- Jane's title, and for "heretical pravity;" Poynet, tant decisions without waiting for the authority who had held the bishopric of Winchester during either of the queen or the parliament, being sure Gardiner's deprivation and imprisonment, was of the one and entertaining a well-merited con- also committed to prison for being married. tempt for the other. They declared the Book Taylor, Bishop of Lincoln, who had refused to of Common Prayer to be an abomination; they kneel at the elevation of the host in the House called for the immediate suppression of the re- of Lords, was deprived "for thinking amiss conformed English Catechism; they recommended cerning the eucharist;" Hooper, Bishop of Worthe most violent measures against all such of the cester and Gloucester, for having a wife, and clergy as would not forthwith dismiss their other demerits; Harley, Bishop of Hereford, for wives, and adopt the Catholic opinion as to the wedlock and heresy; Ferrar, Bishop of St. David's, real presence. In London and the great cities, for the same offences; Bird, Bishop of Chester, where the Protestant doctrine had taken deeper for marriage. Coverdale of Exeter, the transroot, the change, though rapid, was somewhat lator of the Bible, was also ejected and thrown less sudden; but in the rural districts generally, into prison, where he lay two years, not without where the population had never been properly danger of being burned. Barlow of Bath and converted, the mass re-appeared at once, and Wells, and Bush of Bristol, voluntarily resigned every part of the Reformed service was thrown their sees.2 aside even before any express orders to that effect from court or from convocation. Hosts of priests, and particularly the residue of the abbeys and monasteries, who had conformed to save their lives or to obtain the means of supporting themselves, declared that they had acted under compulsion, and joyfully returned to their Latin masses, their confessions, their holy water, and the rest. Many again, who really preferred the Reformed religion, were fain to conform to what they disapproved of, just as their opponents had done in the preceding reign, and from the same worldly motives. But still there were many married priests who would on no account part with their wives, or receive, as the rules of salvation, tenets which, for years, they had condemned as the inventions of the devil. Some, also, there were who had made to themselves, by their intolerance in the days of their prosperity, bitter enemies among those who were now in the ascendent. The prisons began to fill with Protestant clergymen of these classes; and others of them, being deprived of their livings, were thrown upon the highways to beg or starve, as the monks had been in the days of Henry VIII., their condition being so much the worse as they had wives and children. About half of the English bishops, bending to the storm, conformed, in all outward appearances, with the triumphant sect.' Those who did not, or who were peculiarly obnoxious to the dominant party, were deprived of their sees and whatever they possessed, and cast into prison. We have already seen Cranmer and Latimer sent to the Tower. Shortly after, Holgate, Archbishop of York, was committed to the same state prison for marriage; and Ridley, Bishop of London, for In this number were some who were really Catholics all along, and who had strained their consciences by conformity in the Just reigns. Insincere then, they were sincere now. On the 13th of November Cranmer was brought to trial for high treason, together with the Lady Jane Grey, her youthful husband Lord Guildford Dudley, and his brother Lord Ambrose Dudley. They were all condemned to suffer death as traitors, by the very men who a short time before had acted with them, and had sworn allegiance to Jane; but the youth of three of these victims to the ambition and imbecility of others excited a lively sympathy in the nation, and the queen sent them back to the Tower, apparently with no intention of ever bringing them to the block. Even the fourth victim, Cranmer, was respited, and was pardoned of his treason; but he was sent back to the Tower on the equally perilous charge of heresy. He was strongly advised by his friends, both before his apprehension and also now, to attempt to escape out of the king. dom, but he is said to have replied, that his trust was in God, and in his holy word, and that he had resolved to show a constancy worthy of a Christian prelate. He repeatedly professed to have a great desire to be admitted to a private audience of the queen; but Mary had no inclination to receive the man who had sealed her mother's dishonour, and the party about her seconded this strong and natural feeling of aversion. Before parliament was dissolved the attainder of the old Duke of Norfolk was legally reversed, it being declared, with some reason, that no special matter had been proved either against him or his son the Earl of Surrey, except the wearing of part of a coat-of-arms. On the 21st of December, a few days after the dissolution of parliament, the church service began to be performed in Latin throughout England. At the same time the Lady Jane had the liberty of the Tower granted her, being allowed to walk in the 2 Strupe: Collier: Soames, Hist. Reform.: Blunt. queen's garden and on the hill; the Lord Guildford Dudley and his brother were treated more leniently than they had been; and the Marquis of Northampton was set at liberty altogether. This moderation was a matter of marvel in those days, nor did the queen fail in making a favourable impression by remitting the subsidy voted to her brother by the preceding parliament: but other circumstances sufficiently indicated that Mary was determined not only to re-establish the Roman church, but to prevent the teaching and preaching of the Reformed doctrine. There was scarcely by this time a pulpit in the kingdom that was not silenced; and Gardiner, Bonner, Tonstal, Day, Heath, Vesey, and others of the now restored Catholic bishops, were not likely to permit them to be eloquent again. The men of Suffolk, whose loyalty had placed her on the throne, ventured to recal to her mind her solemn promises given to them on that occasion, that she would not change the Reformed religion as established under her brother. One of these remonstrants, who was bolder than the rest, was set in the pillory; the others were brow-beaten and insulted. Judge Hales, who had defended the queen's title with a most rare courage, was arbitrarily arrested and thrown into a noisome prison as soon as he showed an opposition to these illegal, rash, and dangerous proceedings. The upright judge was treated with such severity that his body and mind became alike disordered -he fell into a frenzy, and attempted suicide by cutting his throat. He was at length liberated, but it was too late; insanity had taken a firm hold of him, and he terminated his life by drowning himself.' Mary, who had been affianced in her infancy to the Emperor Charles, to the French king, to the dauphin, and who, in the course of the last two reigns, had been disappointed of several other husbands, now determined to marry, in order, it appears, to make sure of a Catholic succession. It should seem, however, that she was not wholly devoid of the tender passion, for it is said, on good authority, that she conceived an affection for the son of the Marquis of Exeter-murdered in her father's days-the handsome and accomplished young Edward Courtenay, whom she had liberated from the Tower on her first coming to London. Upon this kinsman, whose flourishing youth and courteous and pleasant disposition delighted the whole court, she lavished many proofs of favour: she hastened to restore to him the title of Earl of Devon, to which she added the whole of those patrimonial estates which his father's attainder had vested in the crown; and when people spoke or whispered of the wisdom and fitness of an English queen marrying a great English nobleman, descended (as she was herself by her grandmother) from the royal house of York, her countenance relaxed instead of increasing its habitual severity. But the accomplished Earl of Devon soon became suspected of indulging in anti-Catholic notions, and, what was almost as bad, he betrayed, as is said, a preference for the queen's half-sister Elizabeth. If there had been little affection between the royal ladies before, this circumstance was not likely to increase it; and a few months after Mary's accession, we find Elizabeth retiring to her house of Ashridge in Buckinghamshire, attended by Sir Thomas Pope and Sir John Gage, who were appointed by the queen to keep a watchful eye over her. The Emperor Charles, who had been solemnly affianced to her himself nearly thirty years before, was now most anxious to secure the hand of Mary for his son, the proud, the bigoted, the crafty, and cruel Philip, who then happened to be a widower. As Mary consulted her mother's nephew in all her difficulties, Charles was enabled to press this suit for his son with good effect. The imperial ambassadors had constant access, by night as well as by day, to the royal but elderly maiden; and one night, within three months after her accession, before any public negotiation had taken place, and without so much as consulting her council, Mary solemnly promised to marry Philip. For some time this engagement was concealed, but when it was whispered abroad it excited almost universal discontent, for the character of Philip, though not yet fully developed in action, was well known; and it was reasonably suspected that the once free kingdom of England would be wholly enslaved and made dependent upon Spain and the emperor. With these views the match was odious even to most of the Catholics, whose patriotism rose triumphantly above their bigotry. In the face of these feelings it was judged prudent to proceed slowly and with caution. The match, however, was spoken of in parliament, and the commons even petitioned against it—a circumstance which is supposed to have hurried on the dissolution. A.D. 1554. Early in January a splendid emthe 14th of the same month, Bishop Gardiner, as bassy arrived from Spain, and, on chancellor, in the presence chamber, made to the lords, nobility, and court gentry, an "oration very eloquent," setting forth that the queen's majesty, partly for old amity, and other weighty conside and Prince of Spain's behalf, determined, with the consent of the council and nobility, to match herself with the said prince "in most godly and lawful matrimony." After this exordium Gardine explained the conditions of the treaty, rations, had, after much suit on the emperor's men, and forty citizens of good substance, was summoned to court, where Gardiner repeated his oration, desiring them all to behave themselves like good subjects, with humbleness and rejoicOn this same day ing for so happy an event. Robert Dudley, one of the sons of the late Duke of Northumberland, was condemned as a traitor, the Earl of Sussex pronouncing sentence that he was to be drawn, hanged, bowelled, and quar tered.2 STEPHEN GARDINER, Bishop of Winchester.-After Holbein. which, to disarm opposition in England, had been made wonderfully mild, moderate, and generous on the part of Philip, who, of course, would reserve to himself the right of altering it thereafter as he should see occasion and find means for so doing. It was agreed that though Philip should have the honour and title of King of England, the government should rest wholly with the queen, he (Philip) aiding her highness in the happy administration of her realms and dominions; that no Spaniard or other foreigner should enjoy any office in the kingdom; that no innovations should be made in the national laws, customs, and privileges; that the queen should never be carried abroad without her free consent, nor any of the children she might have, without consent of the nobility (there was no mention made of the commons, nor indeed of the parliament). It was further agreed that Philip, in the unlikely case of Mary's surviving him, should settle upon her a jointure of £60,000 a-year; that the male issue of this marriage should inherit both Burgundy and the Low Countries; and that if Don Carlos, Philip's son by his former marriage, should die and leave no issue, the queen's issue, whether male or female, should inherit Spain, Sicily, Milan, and other dominions attached to the Spanish monarchy! On the next day the lordmayor of London, with his brethren the alder Rymer. But if the treaty of marriage had been tenfold more brilliant in promises, it would have failed in satisfying the English people. Within five days the court was startled by intelligence that Sir Peter Carew was up in arms in Devonshire, resolute to resist the Prince of Spain's coming, and that he had taken the city and castle of Exeter. This news was followed, on the 25th, by intelligence that Sir Thomas Wyatt had taken the field with the same determination in Kent; and the mayor and aldermen, who had so recently been commanded to rejoice and make glad, were now told to shut the gates of the city, and keep good watch and ward, lest the rebels should enter. Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet of that name, who has been associated in glory with the Earl of Surrey, was a very loyal knight of Kent, and, apparently, a Papist; but he had conceived a frightful notion of the cruel bigotry and grasping ambition of the Spanish court. Although connected by blood with the Dudleys, he had refused to co-operate with the Duke of Northumberland in the plot for giving the crown to Lady Jane Grey, and had even been forward to proclaim Queen Mary in the town of Maidstone, before knowing that she had been proclaimed elsewhere. Wyatt appears to have been a brave and honest, but rash man; and the majority of those who had engaged to co-operate with him, from different parts of the kingdom, were either scoundrels without faith, or cowards. The highest name of all was both: this was the Duke of Suffolk, Lady Jane Grey's father, who, to the astonishment of most men, had been liberated from the Tower, and pardoned by Queen Mary. On the 25th of January, the very day on which it was known that Sir Thomas Wyatt had risen in Kent, this duke fled into Warwickshire, where, with his brothers the Lord John Grey and the Lord Leonard Grey, he made proclamation against the queen's marriage, and called the people to arms; "but the people inclined not to him." The plan of the conspirators seems to have been, that Wyatt should endeavour to seize the Tower, where Lady Jane and her husband lay, and get possession of the 2 Store. 3 He was a commander at Henry VIII.'s siege of Boulogne, and made himself conspicuous by his daring. |