of the conversion of Ethelbert, by St. Austin, at the close of the sixth centur, to the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Henry, embracing the space of nearly ONE THOUSAND YEARS. Harry, it is true, could not be said to be himself a Protestant, but the germe of Protestantism took root through this monarch's disposition, injustice, and oppression. The first measure we shall notice was the suppression of forty monasteries at the instigation, and to gratify the ambition, of cardinal Wolsey. This proud churchman also first put into the king's head the scruples respecting his marriage with Catharine, his rightful queen, which led to the king's claiming the spiritual authority of the church of England. Wolsey soon after fell under the displeasure of Henry, was stripped of his possessions, and died a beggar of a broken heart. Catharine was divorced, but maintained her honour and character with dignified courage and fortitude, whilst Anne Boleyn was raised to her place. This latter lady was looked upon by Cranmer, who was promoted to the primate's chair of England, as the prop of the Protestant interest. She was an adulteress, being with child by the king before a divorce ensued between him and Catharine, and was actually married to her privately, previous to the public separation being announced between Harry and his lawful wife. But a short time elapsed however before this prop of the Protestant cause, this Anne Boleyn, was accused of adultery and incest, and her days were shortened by the axe; the last of which was the bridal day of her royal master to another bed-fellow. The memory of this Protestant lady is still stained with dishonour, her innocence not being clearly established. Here let us note, that before the marriage of Anne, and while the king was dallying with her, a sweating sickness appeared among her female attendants, and spread among the gentlemen of the king's privy chamber. So great was the progress of the disease, that public business was suspended, and numbers were carried off by it in all parts of the kingdom.- -Another measure acted upon by this monarch was the further suppression of monasteries for his own use. Cromwell, a blacksmith's son, was chosen to be the instrument to carry this act of pillage and injustice into effect. He was made secretary of state and vicar general, a new office never before known in the kingdom. Cromwell executed his office with remorseless cruelty and oppression, and he soon met a violent death, being condemned without a trial and beheaded. Another of Harry's Protestant queens was ripped open to give birth to a son, who afterwards succeeded his father to the throne. A fourth was divorced-his fifth was executed for adultery-and the sixth had nearly experienced the same fate, but had the good luck to escape. When Henry came to the throne, his exchequer was well filled; the destruction of the monasteries yielded him more money than all his predecessors for five centuries had received; yet at the latter end of his reign he was compelled to issue a base coinage, not only of tin and copper, but even of leather. In short, to accomplish his views he corrupted parliament, the members of which a return passed bloody laws and created new treasons, thus placing the lives of the people at the sole disposal of the king; he beheaded and burned without distinction those who opposed his will; his life after assuming the spiritual supremacy was one of disquietude and vexation, his death without the con

solation of religion, and his name is never mentioned without his crimes, which excite universal execration,

Edward VI, who was ripped from his mother's womb, succeeded his father at the age of nine years, and was proclaimed head of the Church of England, His uncle Somerset was declared protector of the realm; the principal measures of whose administration were the destruction of church property and innovation in religion, to the enriching of himself and his favourites. He caused the death of his own brother, and was afterwards executed himself. The young king was compelled by Cranmer and Latimer to sign the death warrants of Boucher and Von Paris, who were burned for heresy, and in two years after the king was carried off by death, not without suspicion of being poisoned. During his sway general discontent pervaded the kingdom; a law was passed in the first year of his reign by which two justices of the peace might order the letter V to be burnt on the breast of every poor man, who should be found loitering about three days for want of employ, and adjudge him to become the slave of the informer, who might fix an iron ring round his neck, arm, or leg, and make him "labour at any work, however vile it might be, by beating, chaining, "or otherwise." If the poor fellow absented himself a fortnight from his occupation, the letter S was to be burnt on his cheek or forehead, and he became a slave for life. (See Stat. 1 Ed. VI. 3.) This infamous law under "Protestant ascendency" was in force two years, when it was repealed. Insurrections broke out in Oxfordshire, Devonshire, and Norfolk, in consequence of the extension of inclosures and a new mode of letting rack rents, and the want of that relief formerly distributed at the gates of the monasteries. "In his fifth year;" says Baker, in his, Chronicle, a sweating sickness infested first Shrewsbury, and then "the north parts, and afterwards grew most extreme in London, so as, in the first week there died eight hundred persons; and was so violent that it took men away in four and twenty hours, sometimes in twelve, and sometimes in less. Amongst others of account that died "of this sickness, were the two sons of Charles Brandon, duke of Suf"folk, who died within an hour after one another, in such order that both of them died dukes. This disease was proper to the English nation, for it followed the English wheresoever they were in foreign. parts, but seized upon none of any other country." As to the national morals, if we may judge from the portraits drawn by the reformed preachers themselves, they were at the lowest ebb. Strype has collected several passages from the old preachers on this point. "They "assert," writes Dr. Lingard, "that the sufferings of the indigent were viewed with indifference by the hard heartedness of the rich; that "in the pursuit of gain the most barefaced frauds were avowed and justified; that robbers and murderers escaped punishment by the partiality "of juries, and the corruption of judges; that church livings were given to laymen, or converted to the use of the patrons; that marriages were "repeatedly dissolved by private authority; and that the haunts of pros"titution were multiplied beyond measure."

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Mary the eldest daughter of Henry, succeeded her brother, after a feeble attempt to supplant her in the throne on the part of "Protestant ascendency." She promised liberty of conscience on assuming the

sceptre, being a Roman Catholic, and during the first two years of her reign not an individual suffered for religious opinions. This is a fact; that deserves particular notice, and we shall take occasion to establish it beyond contradiction, when we come to expose the lies of John Fox in this queen's reign. During the above space, however, Mary was disturbed by insurrections, conspiracies, and seditions, and her council at length determined to try the force of persecution. In her fourth year, Baker says, the people were afflicted with hot-burning agues, and other strange diseases, of which no less than seven aldermen of London died. Calais was taken by the French, and after a short reign of five years Mary died of a broken heart.

Her sister Elizabeth next mounted the throne, and she in her turn persecuted the Catholics with the most relentless fury. Her reign, which is usually represented by interested writers as glorious to the nation, was one of blood, rapine, and proscription. Her court was the most lewd and licentious ever seen before in England. Her deeds were marked by despotism, and her ministers the most profligate and mercenary that ever cursed a people. She beheaded a female sovereign, the beautiful Mary Stuart, and cut off the head of her own paramour Essex. She established domiciliary researches, made new treasons, encouraged informers, and created the star chamber. The courts of justice were corrupted by her connivance, imprisonment exercised at her pleasure, and loans raised by force and exaction. Torture was used to extort confession, and her whole reign in short was one of arbitrariness and cruelty. Such a succession of unchristian proceedings could not go unpunished; Baker in his Chronicle relates that in her third year the spire of St. Paul's cathedral was destroyed by lightning. Many strange births also happened. In her sixth year the pestilence was brought into England, of which there died in London 21,500 persons in one year. In her thirteenth year a prodigious earthquake occurred in the east parts of Herefordshire. In her sixteenth year there was a great dearth. In the year following, the river Thames ebbed and flowed twice within the hour, and in the month of November the heavens seemed to be all on fire. 66 On the 24th of February," in the succeeding year, the same Chronicler writes, “being a great frost, after a great flood, there came down the river Severn such a swarm of flies and beetles, that they were judged to be above a hundred quarters ; "the mills thereabouts were dammed up by them for the space of four days, and were then cleaned by digging them out with shovels." In her nineteenth year, it is related by Mr. Anthony Wood, the Protestant historian of Oxford, that on the 4th of July, Mr. Roland Jinks, a Catholic bookseller in Oxford, for having in his shop the pope's bulls and Catholic papers, was cast into prison, and most unjustly condemned to lose all his property, to have both his ears nailed to the pillory, and to deliver himself by cutting them off with his own hands; but no sooner was the sentence passed, than a most dreadful disease burst forth in the midst of the court, and seized upon all there present. Great numbers dropped down dead on the spot; others rushed out of the court half suffocated, and died a few hours afterwards. In the space of two days, nearly all the witnesses died; and in the first night about 600 lost their lives, and the next day it seized upon 100 in the nearest streets.

The disease was a kind of fury; for the sick leaped out of bed, and beat with their sticks all those who came to assist them; some ran through the court and streets, like madmen; and others threw themselves down headlong into deep waters. Every hall, every college, every house had their dead; and what is more remarkable, all the grand jury, except one or two, died as soon as they had left Oxford. (Hist. Anti. Univ. Oxon. 1. p. 294.) "In her two and twentieth year," writes Baker, “a strange apparition happened in Somersetshire, threescore personages "all clothed in black, a furlong in distance from those that beheld “them; after their appearing, and a little while tarrying, they va"nished away, but immediately another strange company in like manner, colour, and number, appeared in the same place; and they en""countered one another, and so vanished away: and a third time appeared that number again, all in bright armour, and encountered one "another, and so vanished away: This was examined before sir George “Norton, and sworn by four honest men that saw it to be true. In her "three and twentieth year, in the beginning of April, about six o'clock "after noon, happened an earthquake not far from York, which in some places struck the very stones out of buildings, and made the bells in "churches to jangle. The night following the earth trembled once or "twice in Kent, and again the first day of May." In her twenty-sixth year, (A. D. 1588.) a similar earthquake happened in Dorsetshire as had taken place in Herefordshire in 1571. In her thirty-fifth year there was such a drought that the springs were dried up and cattle died for want of water: the Thames was so low that a man on horseback might ride over it at London bridge. The year following there was a great plague in London and the suburbs, of which there died, besides the Lord Mayor and three aldermen, 17,890 persons. In her thirty-eighth year, Lord Hundsdon, being sick to death, saw six of his companions, already dead, come to him one after the other. The first was, Dudley, earl of Leicester, all in fire; the second was secretary Walsingham, also in fire and flame; the third, Pickering, so cold and frozen, that touching Hundsdon's hand, he thought he should die of cold; the fourth, Hatton, lord chancellor; the fifth, Henneage; and the sixth, Knolles. three last were also on fire: they told him that sir William Cecil, one of their companions yet living, was to prepare himself to come shortly to them. All this was affirmed upon oath by the said Lord Hundsdon, who a few days after died suddenly. This is recorded by Fr. Costerus, in Compendio veteris Orthodoxa Fidei; and also by Philip D'Oultreman, in his book entitled Pedegogue Chretienne, p. 186. It is stated by F. Parsons in his Discussion of Barlow's Answer, printed in 1612, p. 218, that queen Elizabeth, in the beginning of her last sickness, told two of her ladies that she saw one night, as she lay in bed, her own body exceeding lean and fearful, in a light of fire. Camden, the panegyrist of this queen, and the writer of her history, gives this account of her last sickness. "In the beginning of her sickness, the almonds of her "throat swelled, but soon abated again; then her appetite failed her by degrees; and withal she gave herself over to melancholy, and seem"ed to be much troubled with a peculiar grief, for some reason or "other; whether it were through the violence of her disease, or for "want of Essex, &c. She looked upon herself as a miserable forlorn wo

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"man, and her grief and indignation extorted from her such speeches as these: They have yoked my neck. I have none whom I can trust. My "condition is strangely turned upside down." (See Cambd. Hist. lib. v, pp. 659, 660.) F. Parsons in his Discussion beforementioned, says, that "she sat two days and three nights upon her stool ready dressed, and "could never be brought by any of her council to go to bed, or to eat or drink, only the lord admiral persuaded her to take a little broth: "she told him if he knew what she had seen in her bed, he would not persuade her as he did. Shaking her head, she said with a pitiful voice, My lord, I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck; I am tied, " and the case is altered with me."

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Dr. Lingard, in his recently published History of England, thus relates her conduct during her illness.- "Sir John Harrington, her godson, "who visited the court about seven months after the death of Essex, "has described in a private letter, the state he found the queen. She 66 was altered in her features and reduced to a skeleton. Her food was nothing but manchet bread and succory pottage. Her taste for dress was gone: she had not changed her clothes for many days. Nothing "could please her: she was the torment of the ladies who waited upon "her person. She stamped with her feet and swore violently at the objects of her anger. For her protection she had ordered a sword to "be placed by her table, which she often took in her hand, and thrust "with violence into the tapestry of her chamber. About a year later "he returned to the palace, and was admitted to her presence. I found her,' he says, 'in a most pitiable state. She bad the archbishop ask me, if I had seen Tyrone. I replied, with reverence, that I had seen "him with the lord deputy. She looked up with much choler and grief in her countenance, and said, "O now it mindeth me, that you 66 was one who saw this man elsewhere;' and hereat she dropped a tear, "and smote her bosom. She held in her hand a golden cup, which she "often put to her lips: but, in truth, her heart seemed too full to "need more filling. In January she was troubled with a cold, and "about the end of the month removed, on a wet stormy day, from "Westminster to Richmond. Her indisposition increased: but, with "her characteristic obstinacy, she refused the advice of her physicians. "Loss of appetite was accompanied with lowness of spirits, and to add "to her distress, it chanced that her intimate friend, the countess of Nottingham, died. Elizabeth now spent her days and nights in sighs " and tears: or, if she condescended to speak, she always chose some "unpleasant and irritating subject: the treason and execution of Essex, or the pretensions of Arabella Stuart, or the war in Ireland, and the 66 pardon of Tyrone. At last she fell into a state of stupor, and for r some hours lay as dead. As soon as she recovered, she ordered cushions to be brought and spread on the floor. On these she seated herself, under a strange notion, that if she were once to lie down in bed, she should never rise again. No prayers of the secretary, or "the archbishop, or the physicians, could induce her to remove, or to cc take any medicine. For ten days she sat on the cushions, generally "with her finger in her mouth, and her eyes wide open, and fixed on "the ground. Her strength rapidly decayed: it was evident she had "but a short time to live." (Vol. v. pp. 610, 611, 4to. edit.)

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