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Title: The reign of Mary Tudor

Author: James Anthony Froude

Editor: Ernest Rhys

Release date: September 9, 2007 [eBook #22546]

Language: English

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EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS

HISTORY

FROUDE'S
HISTORY OF ENGLAND

MARY TUDOR · INTRODUCTION

BY W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS

M.P., B.C.L.

THE PUBLISHERS OF EVERYMAN'S
LIBRARY WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND
FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST
OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED
VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED UNDER
THE FOLLOWING THIRTEEN
HEADINGS:

TRAVEL * SCIENCE * FICTION
THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
HISTORY * CLASSICAL
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
ESSAYS * ORATORY
POETRY & DRAMA
BIOGRAPHY
REFERENCE
ROMANCE

IN TWO STYLES OF BINDING, CLOTH,
FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP, AND
LEATHER, ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP.

London: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd.
New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

"CONSIDER
HISTORY
WITH THE
BEGINNINGS OF
IT STRETCHING
DIMLY INTO THE
REMOTE TIME; EMERGING
DARKLY
OUT OF THE
MYSTERIOUS
ETERNITY:

THE TRUE EPIC
POEM AND UNIVERSAL
DIVINE
SCRIPTURE...."

CARLYLE

THE REIGN of
MARY TUDOR
by JAMES
ANTHONY
FROUDE

LONDON: PUBLISHED
by J. M. DENT & SONS LTD
AND IN NEW YORK
BY E. P. DUTTON & CO

INTRODUCTION.

The memory of no English sovereign has been so execrated as that of
Mary Tudor. For generations after her death her name, with its horrid
epithet clinging round it like the shirt of Nessus, was a bugbear in
thousands of Protestant homes. It is true that nearly 300 persons were burnt
at the stake in her short reign. But she herself was more inclined to mercy
than almost any of her predecessors on the throne. Stubbs speaks of her
father's "holocausts" of victims. The persecution of Papists under Edward
was not less rigorous than that of Protestants under Mary. When her record
is compared with that of Philip of Spain, with his Council of Blood in the
Netherlands, or of Charles IX. in France, she appears as an apostle of
toleration. Why, then, has her memory been covered through centuries with
scorn and obloquy?

Froude will have it that it was due to a national detestation of the crimes
which were committed in the name of religion. Those who take a more
detached view of history can find little evidence to support the assumption.
The nation as a whole seemed to acquiesce in the persecution. The
government was weak, there was no standing army, and Mary, like all the
Tudors, rested her authority on popular sanction. Plots against her were few,
and they were all easily suppressed. Parliament met regularly. It was not the
submissive parliament of Henry VIII. It thwarted some of Mary's dearest
projects. For some time it offered opposition to, if it did not actively resist,
the Spanish marriage. It was inexorably opposed to the restitution of church
property. It refused to alter the succession to the Crown as Mary wished.
But it never remonstrated against the persecution of Protestants. It
cheerfully revived the old acts for the burning of Lollard heretics. Froude
suggests that Englishmen were aghast at the use to which they were

afterwards put. But though parliament after parliament was summoned after
the Smithfield fires had been lit, there was no sign of disapproval or of
condemnation. When Edward died, there was an instantaneous return to
Catholicism. When Mary died, Elizabeth had to walk warily in bringing
about innovations in religion. Mary was crowned with the ceremonies of
the Catholic Church. When Elizabeth was crowned, nearly all the bishops,
including the "bloody" Bonner, attended, and the service of the mass was
used. Harpsfield, the notorious Archdeacon of Canterbury, the last man to
condemn heretics to the stake in England, publicly stated, weeks after the
accession of Elizabeth, that there should be no change in religion. Later
generations, judging events and characters by their own standard, have
pitilessly condemned the Marian persecutions. The Englishmen of those
days were not so squeamish or so indifferent.

There can be no doubt that Mary was unpopular among her own
contemporaries. Two reasons probably account for it. The first was her
marriage with Philip of Spain. There is no nation in Europe which has
shown itself more tolerant of alien sovereigns than the English. They
submitted to William of Normandy almost without a struggle after Senlac.
They adopted the Plantagenet as their national line of kings. The Tudors
were Welsh; the Stuarts Scotch; William III. was a Dutchman; the
Hanoverian dynasty was German. But though tolerant of foreign dynasties,
the English have, since the days of John, been excessively jealous of
foreign influences. One of the main causes of Henry III.'s unpopularity was
the overweening influence of his foreign favourites. From Edward I.
downwards the Plantagenets ruled as English sovereigns. Henry VII.,
though he was crowned on the field of battle and claimed the throne by
right of conquest, was too discreet to maintain his power, as Mary was once
tempted to do, by the aid of Welsh guards. The fiercest hostility was evoked
by James I., William III., and the first two Georges, because they
surrounded themselves with favourites from their own countries. Foreigners
might sit on the throne of England, but they had to rule as English
sovereigns and rest their power on the support of the English people. This
intense national jealousy was unhappily aroused by Mary. The strict
limitations which were placed on her husband's powers should have warned
her of her danger. Philip was allowed the empty title of king, but from the
realities of power he was studiously excluded. Philip was careful to

maintain the spirit as well as the letter of his obligations. He made no
attempt to encroach upon the sovereignty of Mary. He advised her, as it was
his duty to do, but he did not interfere with the government of the country.
No Spanish troops were landed in England, even when war had broken out
with France, and the coasts of England were unguarded. Yet the morbid
suspicions of the people were not allayed. The Dudley plot and the Stafford
invasion were justified by their authors, not on the ground of Mary's bloody
persecutions, but because it was feared that Philip was planning a coup
d'état. Mary's popularity began to wane with her marriage; it sunk lower
and lower till it almost disappeared when England was dragged into a war
with France in the interests of Spain. St. Quintin and Gravelines for a time
roused a feeble enthusiasm for the war, but the loss of Calais finally
extinguished the Queens popularity. Mary is reported to have said that if her
body were opened Calais would be found written on her heart. Froude
disbelieves the report. But whether the story be apocryphal or not, there is
no doubt that the loss of Calais was accountable, if not for the death of the
Queen, for the permanent destruction of her fame.

Calais was called the "brightest jewel in the English crown." It was the
last relic of the French possessions of the Plantagenets. It was the Gibraltar
of the sixteenth century. It helped to make of the narrow seas an English
channel. It was a mart for English goods. It afforded a foothold for
Continental enterprises. To some extent it linked England with her
traditional allies, the old Burgundian possessions in the Netherlands. By us,
looking back over the chequered story of the last three centuries, the loss of
Calais is seen to have been a blessing in disguise. England gained by it as
she did by the loss of Normandy under John, and of Hanover at the
accession of Queen Victoria. But to Mary's subjects it was a corroding
humiliation.

"If Spain should rise suddenly into her ancient strength," Froude truly
remarks, "and tear Gibraltar from us, our mortification would be faint,
compared to the anguish of humiliated pride with which the loss of Calais
distracted the subjects of Mary."

It was the galling reflection that Calais was lost to the French in a
Spanish quarrel that crowned the poor Queen's obloquy. She had lost it

through wanton neglect. Had the warnings of Wentworth and Grey been
heeded, Calais might have been saved. Calais need never have been
imperilled had the Queen thought more of English interests and less of the
needs of her Spanish husband.

The odium in which Mary's memory was held was turned to account by
the friends of the new religion. Early in the next reign there appeared one of
the most remarkable books ever written—Foxe's Book of Martyrs. The
authenticity of its narrative has been impugned by Lingard and other
Catholic historians; Froude bears testimony to its trustworthiness wherever
it can be tested, except when it deals with purely hearsay evidence. When
Foxe's narrative of the horrible Guernsey case was challenged by a Catholic
controversialist in the reign of Elizabeth, the matter was inquired into, and
the account was found to be absolutely true. No one will be found, however,
in these days to assert that a book, written by an avowed partisan, in an
uncritical age, recording transactions of which from the very nature of
things he could have had no personal knowledge, was not too highly
coloured in parts and in others absolutely untrustworthy. Few books,
nevertheless, have exercised a more abiding influence on the course of our
national life. Its simplicity, its directness, its poignant style, and its dramatic
power combined to make it an English classic. If it loaded Bonner and
Gardiner with shame and hatred, it fixed for three centuries the popular
estimate of Mary Tudor. Froude used it with extraordinary skill. His relation
of the death of a young Protestant martyr, an apprentice from Essex, taken
as it is almost bodily from Foxe, must thrill even yet the least emotional of
his readers. The permanence of Mary's hideous title and her abiding
unpopularity are more due to the compelling power of a work of genius
than to any outstanding demerits, as judged by contemporary standards, in
the Catholic Queen.

Instead of being condemned to eternal infamy, poor Mary Tudor might
well have expected a juster as well as a more charitable verdict from
posterity. From her girlhood to her grave her story was tragic in its sadness.
When she was in the first bloom of maidenhood, she was taken by her
father to hold her Court of the Welsh Marches at Ludlow in 1525. The title
of Princess of Wales was not conferred upon her, but she was surrounded by
all the pomps and emblems of sovereignty. The Court was the Princess's

Court, as it had been Prince Henry's Court in her father's youth. Three years
later she was degraded from her high estate, and deprived of her Court.
Henceforth, throughout her father's reign, she was known as the Lady, not
the Princess, Mary. She was old enough to feel all the bitterness of her
mother's tragedy. She remembered to her dying day the humiliation of the
Boleyn marriage. She never ceased to resent the birth of her sister
Elizabeth. Her brother Edward was born in lawful wedlock after Queen
Catherine's death, and Mary was always perfectly loyal and obedient to him
as she was to her father. But she looked with cold disfavour, mingled with
morbid jealousy, on the budding promise of Elizabeth. Her very existence
was an insult to Mary's mother and a menace to Mary's religion. If
Elizabeth was legitimate, Catherine of Arragon was rightly divorced, and
Mary herself had no claim to the throne other than by her father's will.
Elizabeth could never be reconciled to Rome without casting an aspersion
on Anne Boleyn's honour.

No woman was ever more lonely or loveless than the ill-starred and ill-
favoured Queen Mary. She had no near relatives in England except
Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, by the irony of fate, was worse than a stranger to
her. The awful solitude of a throne excluded her, even more than her own
ill-health and brooding temper, from the joys of friendship. Philip of Spain
was at once her nearest relation on her mother's side, and the only man she
ever confided in except Cardinal Pole. She lavished all the pent-up affection
of an unloved existence on her husband. She was repaid by cold neglect,
studied indifference, and open and vulgar infidelity. Philip made no
pretence to care for his wife. She was older in years, she was ungainly in
person, she possessed no charm of manner or grace of speech, her very
voice was the deep bass of a man. In the days of her joyous entrance into
London, amid the acclamations of the populace, her high spirit, her kind
heart, and the excitement of adventure lent a passing glow to her sallow
cheeks. But ill-health and disillusion followed. She became morbid and
sullen, sometimes remaining for days in a dull stupor, at other times giving
way to gusts of hysterical passion. But beneath her forbidding exterior there
beat a warm, tender, womanly heart, which yearned for some one to love
and to cherish. Her mother had died when she was yet young, her father
never encouraged her to display her affection for him, and she was verging
on middle age before she saw Philip. He became her hero, her master.

Wifely obedience became to her the greatest of virtues; she held herself and
England at his service. She longed for a son who would bind her husband
more closely to herself and who would save England from the hated
Elizabeth, and still more from Elizabeth's hated religion. When old and ill,
and on the brink of the grave, she still cherished the vain dream of giving
birth to the saviour of England and the champion of the faith.

But Froude dwells with malicious irony on the frustration of the poor
woman's hopes. He covers the incident with a ridicule which must jar on all
sensitive minds. The fact that Cardinal Pole encouraged her belief adds zest
to Froude's satisfaction. No purer soul ever set himself to right the world
than Reginald Pole; no one failed more completely in his cherished plans.
He and Mary died on the same day; the bells that tolled their knell rang out
the order for which they stood. But the utter failure of their hopes roused no
emotion save that of bitter contempt in Froude. He saw no merit in the
"hysterical dreamer" who had sacrificed his all for his religion; he saw no
pathos in the life of that lone woman who was condemned, almost from her
cradle, to a loveless existence and a forlorn death. His final epitaph on her
is that "she had reigned little more than five years, and she descended into
the grave amidst curses deeper than the acclamations which had welcomed
her accession." The only excuse he can find for her is that she was suffering
from "hysterical derangement" akin to insanity, which placed her absolutely
under the domination of Gardiner and Pole. When we remember her
magnanimity towards Lady Jane Grey at her accession, when we contrast
her conduct towards the formidable Elizabeth with Elizabeth's subsequent
conduct towards Mary Queen of Scots, her generosity to the causes she had
at heart with Elizabeth's unfailing parsimony, and her open and
straightforward dealings both in matters of Church and of State with her
sister's mean and tortuous subterfuges, we may well extend not only our
pity to the woman, but some tribute of admiration to the Queen. At least we
may agree with Froude that "few men or women have lived less capable of
doing knowingly a wrong thing."

W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS.
February 3, 1910.

Bibliography

The following is a list of the published works of J. A. Froude—
Life of St. Neot (Lives of the English Saints, edited by J. H. Newman), 1844; Shadows of the
Clouds (Tales), by Zeta (pseud.), 1847; A Sermon (on 2 Cor. vii. 10) preached at St. Mary's Church
on the Death of the Rev. George May Coleridge, 1847; Article on Spinoza (Oxford and Cambridge
Review), 1847; The Nemesis of Faith (Tale), 1849; England's Forgotten Worthies (Westminster
Review), 1852; Book of Job (Westminster Review), 1853; Poems of Matthew Arnold (Westminster
Review), 1854; Suggestions on the Best Means of Teaching English History (Oxford Essays, etc.),
1855; History of England, 12 vols., 1856-70; The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish
Character. 1865; Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. Andrews, March 19, 1869,
1869; Short Studies on Great Subjects, 1867, 2 vols., series 2-4, 1871-83 (articles from Fraser's
Magazine, Westminster Review, etc.); The Cat's Pilgrimage, 1870; Calvinism: Address at St.
Andrews, 1871; The English in Ireland, 3 vols., 1872-74; Bunyan (English Men of Letters), 1878;
Cæsar: a Sketch, 1879; Two Lectures on South Africa, 1880; Thomas Carlyle (a history of the first
forty years of his life, etc.), 2 vols., 1882; Luther: a Short Biography, 1883; Thomas Carlyle (a
history of his life in London, 1834-81), 2 vols., 1884; Oceana, 1886; The English in the West Indies,
1888; Liberty and Property: an Address [1888]; The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, 1889; Lord Beaconsfield
(a Biography), 1890; The Divorce of Catherine of Arragon, 1891; The Spanish Story of the Armada,
1892; Life and Letters of Erasmus, 1894; English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century, 1895; Lectures
on the Council of Trent, 1896; My Relations with Carlyle, 1903.

Edited:—Carlyle's Reminiscences, 1881; Mrs. Carlyle's Letters, 1883.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. Queen Jane and Queen Mary
II. The Spanish Marriage
III. Reconciliation With Rome
IV. The Martyrs
V. Calais
VI. Death of Mary
Index

MARY TUDOR

CHAPTER I.

QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.

On the 7th of July the death of Edward VI. was ushered in with signs and
wonders, as if heaven and earth were in labour with revolution. The hail lay
upon the grass in the London gardens as red as blood. At Middleton Stony
in Oxfordshire, anxious lips reported that a child had been born with one
body, two heads, four feet and hands.[1] About the time when the letters
patent were signed there came a storm such as no living Englishman
remembered. The summer evening grew black as night. Cataracts of water
flooded the houses in the city and turned the streets into rivers; trees were
torn up by the roots and whirled through the air, and a more awful omen—
the forked lightning—struck down the steeple of the church where the
heretic service had been read for the first time.[2]

The king died a little before nine o'clock on Thursday evening. His death
was made a secret; but in the same hour a courier was galloping through the
twilight to Hunsdon to bid Mary mount and fly. Her plans had been for
some days prepared. She had been directed to remain quiet, but to hold
herself ready to be up and away at a moment's warning. The lords who were
to close her in would not be at their posts, and for a few hours the roads
would be open. The Howards were looking for her in Norfolk; and thither
she was to ride at her best speed, proclaiming her accession as she went
along, and sending out her letters calling loyal Englishmen to rise in her
defence.

So Mary's secret friends had instructed her to act as her one chance.
Mary, who, like all the Tudors, was most herself in the moments of greatest

danger, followed a counsel boldly which agreed with her own opinion; and
when Lord Robert Dudley came in the morning with a company of horse to
look for her, she was far away. Relays of horses along the road, and such
other precautions as could be taken without exciting suspicion, had
doubtless not been overlooked.

Far different advice had been sent to her by the new ambassadors of the
emperor. Scheyfne, who understood England and English habits, and who
was sanguine of her success, had agreed to a course which had probably
been arranged in concert with him; but on the 6th, the day of Edward's
death, Renard and M. de Courières arrived from Brussels. To Renard,
accustomed to countries where governments were everything and peoples
nothing, for a single woman to proclaim herself queen in the face of those
who had the armed force of the kingdom in their hands, appeared like
madness. Little confidence could be placed in her supposed friends, since
they had wanted resolution to refuse their signatures to the instrument of
her deposition. The emperor could not move; although he might wish well
to her cause, the alliance of England was of vital importance to him, and he
would not compromise himself with the faction whose success,
notwithstanding Scheyfne's assurance, he looked upon as certain. Renard,
therefore, lost not a moment in entreating the princess not to venture upon a
course from which he anticipated inevitable ruin. If the nobility or the
people desired to have her for queen, they would make her queen. There
was no need for her to stir.[3] The remonstrance agreed fully with the
opinion of Charles himself, who replied to Renard's account of his conduct
with complete approval of it.[4] The emperor's power was no longer equal to
an attitude of menace; he had been taught, by the repeated blunders of
Reginald Pole, to distrust accounts of popular English sentiment; and he
disbelieved entirely in the ability of Mary and her friends to cope with a
conspiracy so broadly contrived, and supported by the countenance of
France.[5] But Mary was probably gone from Hunsdon before advice
arrived, to which she had been lost if she had listened. She had ridden night
and day without a halt for a hundred miles to Keninghal, a castle of the
Howards on the Waveney river. There, in safe hands, she would try the
effect of an appeal to her country. If the nation was mute, she would then
escape to the Low Countries.[6]

In London, during Friday and Saturday, the death of Edward was known
and unknown. Every one talked of it as certain. Yet the Duke of
Northumberland still spoke of him as living, and public business was
carried on in his name. On the 8th of July the mayor and aldermen were
sent for to Greenwich to sign the letters patent. From them the truth could
not be concealed, but they were sworn to secrecy before they were allowed
to leave the palace. The conspirators desired to have Mary under safe
custody in the Tower before the mystery was published to the world, and
another difficulty was not yet got over.

The novelty of a female sovereign, and the supposed constitutional
objection to it, were points in favour of the alteration which
Northumberland was unwilling to relinquish. The "device" had been
changed in favour of Lady Jane; but Lady Jane was not to reign alone:
Northumberland intended to hold the reins tight-grasped in his own hands,
to keep the power in his own family, and to urge the sex of Mary as among
the prominent occasions of her incapacity.[7] England was still to have a
king, and that king was to be Guilford Dudley.

Jane Grey, eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, was nearly of the same
age with Edward. Edward had been precocious to a disease; the activity of
his mind had been a symptom, or a cause, of the weakness of his body. Jane
Grey's accomplishments were as extensive as Edward's; she had acquired a
degree of learning rare in matured men, which she could use gracefully, and
could permit to be seen by others without vanity or consciousness. Her
character had developed with their talents. At fifteen she was learning
Hebrew and could write Greek; at sixteen she corresponded with Bullinger
in Latin at least equal to his own; but the matter of her letters is more
striking than the language, and speaks more for her than the most elaborate
panegyrics of admiring courtiers. She has left a portrait of herself drawn by
her own hand; a portrait of piety, purity, and free, noble innocence,
uncoloured, even to a fault, with the emotional weaknesses of humanity.[8]
While the effects of the Reformation of England had been chiefly visible in
the outward dominion of scoundrels and in the eclipse of the hereditary
virtues of the national character, Lady Jane Grey had lived to show that the
defect was not in the reformed faith, but in the absence of all faith—that the
graces of a St. Elizabeth could be rivalled by the pupil of Cranmer and

Ridley. The Catholic saint had no excellence of which Jane Grey was
without the promise; the distinction was in the freedom of the Protestant
from the hysterical ambition for an unearthly nature, and in the presence,
through a more intelligent creed, of a vigorous and practical understanding.

When married to Guilford Dudley, Jane Lady had entreated that, being
herself so young, and her husband scarcely older, she might continue to
reside with her mother.[9] Lady Northumberland had consented; and the
new-made bride remained at home till a rumour went abroad that Edward
was on the point of death, when she was told that she must remove to her
father-in-law's house, till "God should call the king to his mercy;" her
presence would then be required at the Tower, the king having appointed
her to be the heir to the crown.

This was the first hint which she had received of the fortune which was
in store for her. She believed it to be a jest, and took no notice of the order
to change her residence, till the Duchess of Northumberland came herself to
fetch her. A violent scene ensued with Lady Suffolk. At last the duchess
brought in Guilford Dudley, who commanded Lady Jane, on her allegiance
as a wife, to return with him; and, "not choosing to be disobedient to her
husband," she consented. The duchess carried her off, and kept her for three
or four days a prisoner. Afterwards she was taken to a house of the duke's at
Chelsea, where she remained till Sunday, the 9th of July, when a message
was brought that she was wanted immediately at Sion House, to receive an
order from the king.

She went alone. There was no one at the palace when she arrived; but
immediately after Northumberland came, attended by Pembroke,
Northampton, Huntingdon, and Arundel. The Earl of Pembroke, as he
approached, knelt to kiss her hand. Lady Northumberland and Lady
Northampton entered, and the duke, as President of the Council, rose to
speak.

"The king," he said, "was no more. A godly life had been followed, as a
consolation to their sorrows, by a godly end, and in leaving the world he
had not forgotten his duty to his subjects. His majesty had prayed on his
death-bed that Almighty God would protect the realm from false opinions,
and especially from his unworthy sister; he had reflected that both the Lady

Mary and the Lady Elizabeth had been cut off by act of parliament from the
succession as illegitimate;[10] the Lady Mary had been disobedient to her
father; she had been again disobedient to her brother; she was a capital and
principal enemy of God's word; and both she and her sister were bastards
born; King Henry did not intend that the crown should be worn by either of
them; King Edward, therefore, had, before his death, bequeathed it to his
cousin the Lady Jane; and, should the Lady Jane die without children, to her
younger sister; and he had entreated the council, for their honours' sake and
for the sake of the realm, to see that his will was observed."

Northumberland, as he concluded, dropped on his knees; the four lords
knelt with him, and, doing homage to the Lady Jane as queen, they swore
that they would keep their faith or lose their lives in her defence.

Lady Jane shook, covered her face with her hands, and fell fainting to the
ground. Her first simple grief was for Edward's death; she felt it as the loss
of a dearly loved brother. The weight of her own fortune was still more
agitating; when she came to herself, she cried that it could not be; the crown
was not for her, she could not bear it—she was not fit for it. Then, knowing
nothing of the falsehoods which Northumberland had told her, she clasped
her hands, and, in a revulsion of feeling, she prayed God that if the great
place to which she was called was indeed justly hers, He would give her
grace to govern for his service and for the welfare of his people.[11]

So passed Sunday, the 9th of July, at Sion House. In London, the hope of
first securing Mary being disappointed, the king's death had been publicly
acknowledged; circulars were sent out to the sheriffs, mayors, and
magistrates in the usual style, announcing the accession of Queen Jane, and
the troops were sworn man by man to the new sovereign. Sir William Petre
and Sir John Cheke waited on the emperor's ambassador to express a hope
that the alteration in the succession would not affect the good understanding
between the courts of England and Flanders. The preachers were set to
work to pacify the citizens; and, if Scheyfne is to be believed, a blood
cement was designed to strengthen the new throne; and Gardiner, the Duke
of Norfolk, and Lord Courtenay[12] were directed to prepare for death in
three days.[13] But Northumberland would scarcely have risked an act of
gratuitous tyranny. Norfolk, being under attainder, might have been put to

death without violation of the forms of law, by warrant from the crown; but,
Gardiner was uncondemned, and Courtenay had never been accused of
crime.

The next day, Monday, the 10th of July, the royal barges came down the
Thames from Richmond; and at three o'clock in the afternoon Lady Jane
landed at the broad staircase at the Tower, as queen, in undesired splendour.
A few scattered groups of spectators stood to watch the arrival; but it
appeared, from their silence, that they had been brought together chiefly by
curiosity. As the gates closed, the heralds-at-arms, with a company of the
archers of the guard, rode into the city, and at the cross in Cheapside, Paul's
Cross, and Fleet Street they proclaimed "that the Lady Mary was unlawfully
begotten, and that the Lady Jane Grey was queen." The ill-humour of
London was no secret, and some demonstration had been looked for in
Mary's favour;[14] but here, again, there was only silence. The heralds cried
"God save the queen!" The archers waved their caps and cheered, but the
crowd looked on impassively. One youth only, Gilbert Potter, whose name
for those few days passed into fame's trumpet, ventured to exclaim, "The
Lady Mary has the better title." Gilbert's master, one "Ninian Sanders,"
denounced the boy to the guard, and he was seized. Yet a misfortune,
thought to be providential, in a few hours befell Ninian Sanders. Going
home to his house down the river, in the July evening, he was overturned
and drowned as he was shooting London Bridge in his wherry; the boatmen,
who were the instruments of Providence, escaped.

Nor did the party in the Tower rest their first night there with perfect
satisfaction. In the evening messengers came in from the eastern counties
with news of the Lady Mary, and with letters from herself. She had written
to Renard and Scheyfne to tell them that she was in good hands, and for the
moment was safe. She had proclaimed herself queen. She had sent
addresses to the peers, commanding them on their allegiance to come to
her; and she begged the ambassadors to tell her instantly whether she might
look for assistance from Flanders; on the active support of the emperor, so
far as she could judge, the movements of her friends would depend.

The ambassadors sent a courier to Brussels for instructions; but, pending
Charles's judgment to the contrary, they thought they had better leave

Mary's appeal unanswered till they could see how events would turn. There
was one rumour current indeed that she had from ten to fifteen thousand
men with her; but this they could ill believe. For themselves, they expected
every hour to hear that she had been taken by Lord Warwick and Lord
Robert Dudley, who were gone in pursuit of her, and had been put to death.
[15]

The lords who were with the new queen were not so confident. They
were in late consultation with the Duchess of Northumberland and the
Duchess of Suffolk, when, after nightfall, a letter was brought in to them
from Mary. The lords ordered the messenger into arrest. The seal of the
packet was broken, and the letter read aloud. It was dated the day before,
Sunday, July 9:—

"My lords," wrote Mary, "we greet you well, and have received sure
advertisement that our deceased brother the king, our late Sovereign Lord,
is departed to God's mercy; which news how they be woeful to our heart He
only knoweth to whose will and pleasure we must and do submit us and all
our wills. But in this so lamentable a case that is, to wit, now, after his
majesty's departure and death, concerning the crown and governance of this
realm of England, that which hath been provided by act of parliament and
the testament and last will of our dearest father, you know—the realm and
the whole world knoweth. The rolls and records appear, by the authority of
the king our said father, and the king our said brother, and the subjects of
this realm; so that we verily trust there is no true subject that can pretend to
be ignorant thereof; and of our part we have ourselves caused, and as God
shall aid and strengthen us, shall cause, our right and title in this behalf to
be published and proclaimed accordingly.

"And, albeit, in this so weighty a matter, it seemeth strange that the dying
of our said brother upon Thursday at night last past, we hitherto had no
knowledge from you thereof; yet we consider your wisdom and prudence to
be such, that having eftsoons amongst you debated, pondered, and well-
weighed the present case, with our estate, with your own estate, the
commonwealth, and all our honours, we shall and may conceive great hope
and trust, with much assurance in your loyalty and service; and therefore,
for the time, we interpret and take things not for the worst; and that ye yet

will, like noblemen, work the best. Nevertheless, we are not ignorant of
your consultation to undo the provisions made for our preferment, nor of
the great banded provisions forcible whereunto ye be assembled and
prepared, by whom and to what end God and you know; and nature can fear
some evil. But be it that some consideration politic, or whatsoever thing
else, hath moved you thereunto; yet doubt ye not, my lords, but we can take
all these your doings in gracious part, being also right ready to remit and
also pardon the same, with that freely to eschew bloodshed and vengeance
against all those that can or will intend the same; trusting also assuredly you
will take and accept this grace and virtue in good part as appertaineth, and
that we shall not be enforced to use the service of other our true subjects
and friends which, in this our just and rightful cause, God, in whom our
whole affiance is, shall send us.

"Whereupon, my lords, we require and charge you, and every of you, on
your allegiance, which you owe to God and us, and to none other, that for
our honour and the surety of our realm, only you will employ yourselves;
and forthwith, upon receipt hereof, cause our right and title to the crown
and government of this realm to be proclaimed in our city of London, and
such other places as to your wisdom shall seem good, and as to this cause
appertaineth, not failing hereof, as our very trust is in you; and this our
letter, signed with our own hand, shall be your sufficient warrant."[16]

The lords, when the letter was read to the end, looked uneasily in each
other's faces. The ladies screamed, sobbed, and were carried off in
hysterics. There was yet time to turn back; and had the Reformation been,
as he pretended, the true concern of the Duke of Northumberland, he would
have brought Mary back himself, bound by conditions which, in her present
danger, she would have accepted. But Northumberland cared as little for
religion as for any other good thing. He was a great criminal, throwing a
stake for a crown; and treason is too conscious of its guilt to believe retreat
from the first step to be possible.

Another blow was in store for him that night, before he laid his head
upon his pillow. Lady Jane, knowing nothing of the letter from Mary, had
retired to her apartment, when the Marquis of Winchester came in to wish
her joy. He had brought the crown with him, which she had not sent for; he

desired her to put it on, and see if it required alteration. She said it would do
very well as it was. He then told her that, before her coronation, another
crown was to be made for her husband. Lady Jane started; and it seemed as
if for the first time the dreary suspicion crossed her mind that she was, after
all, but the puppet of the ambition of the duke to raise his family to the
throne. Winchester retired, and she sat indignant[17] till Guilford Dudley
appeared, when she told him that, young as she was, she knew that the
crown of England was not a thing to be trifled with. There was no Dudley in
Edward's will, and, before he could be crowned, the consent of Parliament
must be first asked and obtained. The boy-husband went whining to his
mother, while Jane sent for Arundel and Pembroke, and told them that it
was not for her to appoint kings. She would make her husband a duke if he
desired it; that was within her prerogative; but king she would not make
him. As she was speaking, the Duchess of Northumberland rushed in with
her son, fresh from the agitation of Mary's letter. The mother stormed;
Guilford cried like a spoilt child that he would be no duke, he would be a
king: and, when Jane stood firm, the duchess bade him come away, and not
share the bed of an ungrateful and disobedient wife.[18]

The first experience of royalty had brought small pleasure with it.
Dudley's kingship was set aside for the moment, and was soon forgotten in
more alarming matters. To please his mother, or to pacify his vanity, he was
called "Your Grace." He was allowed to preside in the council, so long as a
council remained, and he dined alone[19]—tinsel distinctions, for which the
poor wretch had to pay dearly.

The next day (July 11) restored the conspirators to their courage. No
authentic accounts came in of disturbances. London was still quiet; so quiet,
that it was thought safe to nail Gilbert Potter by the ears in the pillory, and
after sufficient suffering, to slice them off with a knife. Lord Warwick and
Lord Robert were still absent, and no news had come from them—a proof
that they were still in pursuit. The duke made up his mind that Mary was
watching only for an opportunity to escape to Flanders; and the ships in the
river, with a thousand men-at-arms on board them, were sent to watch the
Essex coast, and to seize her, could they find opportunity. Meanwhile he
himself penned a reply to her letter. "The Lady Jane," he said, "by the
antient laws of the realm," and "by letters patent of the late king," signed by

himself, and countersigned by the nobility, was rightful queen of England.
The divorce of Catherine of Arragon from Henry VIII. had been prescribed
by the laws of God, pronounced by the Church of England, and confirmed
by act of parliament; the daughter of Catherine was, therefore, illegitimate,
and could not inherit; and the duke warned her to forbear, at her peril, from
molesting her lawful sovereign, or turning her people from their allegiance.
If she would submit and accept the position of a subject, she should receive
every reasonable attention which it was in the power of the queen to show
to her.

During the day rumours of all kinds were flying, but Mary's friends in
London saw no reasonable grounds for hope. Lord Robert was supposed by
Renard[20] to be on his way to the Tower with the princess as his prisoner;
and if she was once within the Tower walls, all hope was over. It was not till
Wednesday morning (July 12) that the duke became really alarmed. Then at
once, from all sides, messengers came in with unwelcome tidings. The
Dudleys had come up with Mary the day before, as she was on her way
from Keninghal to Framlingham. They had dashed forward upon her escort,
but their own men turned sharp round, declared for the princess, and
attempted to seize them; they had been saved only by the speed of their
horses.[21] In the false calm of the two preceding days, Lord Bath had stolen
across the country into Norfolk. Lord Mordaunt and Lord Wharton had sent
their sons; Sir William Drury, Sir John Skelton, Sir Henry Bedingfield, and
many more, had gone in the same direction. Lord Sussex had declared also
for Mary; and, worse than all, Lord Derby had risen in Cheshire, and was
reported to be marching south with twenty thousand men.[22] Scarcely were
these news digested, when Sir Edmund Peckham, cofferer of the household,
was found to have gone off with the treasure under his charge. Sir Edward
Hastings, Lord Huntingdon's brother, had called out the musters of
Buckinghamshire in Mary's name, and Peckham had joined him; while Sir
Peter Carew, the very hope and stay of the western Protestants, had
proclaimed Mary in the towns of Devonshire.

Now, when too late, it was seen how large an error had been committed
in permitting the princess's escape. But it was vain to waste time in regrets.
Her hasty levies, at best, could be but rudely armed; the duke had trained
troops and cannon, and, had he been free to act, with no enemies but those

in the field against him, he had still the best of the game. But Suffolk and
Northampton, the least able of the council, were, nevertheless, the only
members of it on whom he could rely. To whom but to himself could he
trust the army which must meet Mary in the field? If he led the army in
person, whom could he leave in charge of London, the Tower, and Lady
Jane? Winchester and Arundel knew his dilemma, and deliberately took
advantage of it. The guard, when first informed that they were to take the
field, refused to march. After a communication with the Marquis of
Winchester, they withdrew their objections, and professed themselves
willing to go. Northumberland, uneasy at their conduct, or requiring a larger
force, issued a proclamation offering tenpence a day to volunteers who
would go to bring in the Lady Mary.[23] The lists were soon filled, but filled
with the retainers and servants of his secret enemies.[24]

The men being thus collected, Suffolk was first thought of to lead them,
or else Lord Grey de Wilton;[25] but Suffolk was inefficient, and his
daughter could not bring herself to part with him; Grey was a good soldier,
but he had been a friend of Somerset, and the duke had tried hard to involve
him with Arundel and Paget in Somerset's ruin.[26] Northampton's truth
could have been depended upon, but Northampton four years before had
been defeated by a mob of Norfolk peasants. Northumberland, the council
said, must go himself—"there was no remedy." No man, on all accounts,
could be so fit as he; "he had achieved the victory in Norfolk once already,
and was so feared, that none durst lift their weapons against him:"[27]
Suffolk in his absence should command the Tower. Had the duke dared, he
would have delayed; but every moment that he remained inactive added to
Mary's strength, and whatever he did he must risk something. He resolved
to go, and as the plot was thickening, he sent Sir Henry Dudley to Paris to
entreat the king to protect Calais against Charles, should the latter move
upon it in his cousin's interest.

Noailles had assured him that this and larger favours would be granted
without difficulty; while, as neither Renard nor his companions had as yet
acknowledged Lady Jane, and were notoriously in correspondence with
Mary, the French ambassador suggested also that he would do wisely to
take the initiative himself, to send Renard his passports, and commit the
country to war with the emperor.[28] Northumberland would not venture the

full length to which Noailles invited him; but he sent Sir John Mason and
Lord Cobham to Renard, with an intimation that the English treason laws
were not to be trifled with. If he and his companions dared to meddle in
matters which did not concern them, their privileges as ambassadors should
not protect them from extremity of punishment.[29]

Newmarket was chosen for the rendezvous of the army. The men were to
go down in companies, in whatever way they could travel most
expeditiously, with the guns and ammunition waggons. The duke himself
intended to set out on Friday at dawn. In his calculations of the chances,
hope still predominated—his cannon would give him the advantage in the
field, and he trusted to the Protestant spirit in London to prevent a
revolution in his absence. But he took the precaution of making the council
entangle themselves more completely by taking out a commission under the
Great Seal, as general of the army, which they were forced to sign; and
before he left the Tower, he made a parting appeal to their good faith. If he
believed they would betray him, he said, he could still provide for his own
safety; but, as they were well aware that Lady Jane was on the throne by no
will of her own, but through his influence and theirs, so he trusted her to
their honours to keep the oaths which they had sworn. "They were all in the
same guilt," one of them answered; "none could excuse themselves."
Arundel especially wished the duke God speed upon his way, and regretted
only that he was not to accompany him to the field.[30]

This was on Thursday evening. Northumberland slept that night at
Whitehall. The following morning he rode out of London, accompanied by
his four sons, Northampton, Grey, and about six hundred men. The streets
were thronged with spectators, but all observed the same ominous silence
with which they had received the heralds' proclamation. "The people press
to see us," the duke said, "but not one saith God speed us."[31]

The principal conspirator was now out of the way; his own particular
creatures—Sir Thomas and Sir Henry Palmer, and Sir John Gates, who had
commanded the Tower guard, had gone with him. Northampton was gone.
The young Dudleys were gone all but Guilford. Suffolk alone remained of
the faction definitely attached to the duke; and the duke was marching to
the destruction which they had prepared for him. But prudence still warned

those who were loyal to Mary to wait before they declared themselves; the
event was still uncertain; and the disposition of the Earl of Pembroke might
not yet, perhaps, have been perfectly ascertained.

Pembroke, in the black volume of appropriations, was the most deeply
compromised. Pembroke, in Wilts and Somerset, where his new lands lay,
was hated for his oppression of the poor, and had much to fear from a
Catholic sovereign, could a Catholic sovereign obtain the reality as well as
the name of power; Pembroke, so said Northumberland, had been the first
to propose the conspiracy to him, while his eldest son had married
Catherine Grey. But, as Northumberland's designs began to ripen, he had
endeavoured to steal from the court; he was a distinguished soldier, yet he
was never named to command the army which was to go against Mary;
Lord Herbert's marriage was outward and nominal merely—a form, which
had not yet become a reality, and never did. Although Pembroke was the
first of the council to do homage to Jane, Northumberland evidently
doubted him. He was acting and would continue to act for his own personal
interests only. With his vast estates and vast hereditary influence in South
Wales and on the Border, he could bring a larger force into the field than
any other single nobleman in England; and he could purchase the secure
possession of his acquisitions by a well-timed assistance to Mary as readily
as by lending his strength to buttress the throne of her rival.

Of the rest of the council, Winchester and Arundel had signed the letters
patent with a deliberate intention of deserting or betraying Northumberland,
whenever a chance should present itself, and of carrying on their secret
measures in Mary's favour[32] with greater security. The other noblemen in
the Tower perhaps imperfectly understood each other. Cranmer had taken
part unwillingly with Lady Jane; but he meant to keep his promise, having
once given it. Bedford had opposed the duke up to the signature, and might
be supposed to adhere to his original opinion; but he was most likely
hesitating, while Lord Russell had been trusted with the command of the
garrison at Windsor. Sir Thomas Cheyne and Shrewsbury might be counted
among Mary's friends; the latter certainly. Of the three secretaries, Cecil's
opposition had put his life in jeopardy; Petre was the friend and confidant of
Paget, and would act as Paget should advise; Cheke, a feeble enthusiast,
was committed to the duke.

The task of bringing the council together was undertaken by Cecil. Cecil
and Winchester worked on Bedford; and Bedford made himself responsible
for his son, for the troops at Windsor, and generally for the western
counties. The first important step was to readmit Paget to the council. Fresh
risings were reported in Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire;[33] Sir John
Williams was proclaiming Mary round Oxford; and on Friday night or
Saturday morning (July 15) news came from the fleet which might be
considered decisive as to the duke's prospects. The vessels, so carefully
equipped, which left the Thames on the 12th, had been driven into
Yarmouth Harbour by stress of weather. Sir Henry Jerningham was in the
town raising men for Mary; and knowing that the crews had been pressed,
and that there had been desertions among the troops before they were
embarked,[34] he ventured boldly among the ships. "Do you want our
captains?" some one said to him. "Yea, marry," was the answer. "Then they
shall go with you," the men shouted, "or they shall go to the bottom."
Officers, sailors, troops, all declared for Queen Mary, and landed with their
arms and artillery. The report was borne upon the winds; it was known in a
few hours in London; it was known in the duke's army, which was now
close to Cambridge, and was the signal for the premeditated mutiny. "The
noblemen's tenants refused to serve their lords against Queen Mary."[35]
Northumberland sent a courier at full speed to the council for
reinforcements. The courier returned "with but a slender answer."[36]

The lords in London, however, were still under the eyes of the Tower
garrison, who watched them narrowly. Their first meeting to form their
plans was within the Tower walls, and Arundel said "he liked not the air."
[37] Pembroke and Cheyne attempted to escape, but failed to evade the
guard; Winchester made an excuse to go to his own house, but he was sent
for and brought back at midnight. Though Mary might succeed, they might
still lose their own lives, which they were inclined to value.

On Sunday, the 16th, the preachers again exerted themselves. Ridley
shrieked against Mary at Paul's Cross;[38] John Knox, more wisely, at
Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, foretold the approaching retribution from
the giddy ways of the past years; Buckinghamshire, Catholic and Protestant,
was arming to the teeth; and he was speaking at the peril of his life among
the troopers of Sir Edward Hastings.

"Oh England!" cried the saddened Reformer, "now is God's wrath
kindled against thee—now hath he begun to punish as he hath threatened by
his true prophets and messengers. He hath taken from thee the crown of thy
glory, and hath left thee without honour, and this appeareth to be only the
beginning of sorrows. The heart, the tongue, the hand of one Englishman is
bent against another, and division is in the realm, which is a sign of
desolation to come. Oh, England, England! if thy mariners and thy
governors shall consume one another, shalt not thou suffer shipwreck? Oh
England, alas! these plagues are poured upon thee because thou wouldst not
know the time of thy most gentle visitation."[39]

At Cambridge, on the same day, another notable man preached—Edwin
Sandys, then Protestant Vice-Chancellor of the University, and afterwards
Archbishop of York. Northumberland the preceding evening brought his
mutinous troops into the town. He sent for Parker, Lever, Bill, and Sandys
to sup with him, and told them he required their prayers, or he and his
friends were like to be "made deacons of."[40] Sandys, the vice-chancellor,
must address the university the next morning from the pulpit.

Sandys rose at three o'clock in the summer twilight, took his Bible, and
prayed with closed eyes that he might open at a fitting text. His eyes, when
he lifted them, were resting on the 16th of the 1st of Joshua: "The people
answered Joshua, saying, All thou commandest us we will do; and
whithersoever thou sendest us we will go; according as we hearkened unto
Moses, so will we hearken unto thee, only the Lord thy God be with thee as
he was with Moses."

The application was obvious. Edward was Moses, the duke was Joshua;
and if a sermon could have saved the cause, Lady Jane would have been
secure upon her throne.[41]

But the comparison, if it held at all, held only in its least agreeable
features. The deliverers of England from the Egyptian bondage of the
Papacy had led the people out into a wilderness where the manna had been
stolen by the leaders, and there were no tokens of a promised land. To the
universities the Reformation had brought with it desolation. To the people
of England it had brought misery and want. The once open hand was
closed; the once open heart was hardened; the ancient loyalty of man to

man was exchanged for the scuffling of selfishness; the change of faith had
brought with it no increase of freedom, and less of charity. The prisons were
crowded, as before, with sufferers for opinion, and the creed of a thousand
years was made a crime by a doctrine of yesterday; monks and nuns
wandered by hedge and highway, as missionaries of discontent, and pointed
with bitter effect to the fruits of the new belief, which had been crimsoned
in the blood of thousands of English peasants. The English people were not
yet so much in love with wretchedness that they would set aside for the
sake of it a princess whose injuries pleaded for her, whose title was
affirmed by act of parliament. In the tyranny under which the nation was
groaning, the moderate men of all creeds looked to the accession of Mary as
to the rolling away of some bad black nightmare.

On Monday Northumberland made another effort to move forward. His
troops followed him as far as Bury, and then informed him decisively that
they would not bear arms against their lawful sovereign. He fell back on
Cambridge, and again wrote to London for help. As a last resource, Sir
Andrew Dudley, instructed, it is likely, by his brother, gathered up a
hundred thousand crowns' worth of plate and jewels from the treasury in the
Tower, and started for France to interest Henry—to bribe him, it was said,
by a promise of Guisnes and Calais—to send an army into England.[42] The
duke foresaw, and dared the indignation of the people; but he had left
himself no choice except between treason to the country or now inevitable
destruction.[43] When he called in the help of France he must have known
well that his ally, with a successful army in England, would prevent indeed
the accession of Mary Tudor, but as surely would tear in pieces the paper
title of the present queen and snatch the crown for his own Mary, the Queen
of Scots, and the bride of the Dauphin.

But the council was too quick for Dudley. A secret messenger followed or
attended him to Calais, where he was arrested, the treasure recovered, and
his despatches taken from him.

The counter-revolution could now be accomplished without bloodshed
and without longer delay. On Wednesday the 19th July word came that the
Earl of Oxford had joined Mary. A letter was written to Lord Rich
admonishing him not to follow Oxford's example, but to remain true to

Queen Jane, which the council were required to sign. Had they refused, they
would probably have been massacred.[44] Towards the middle of the day,
Winchester, Arundel, Pembroke, Shrewsbury, Bedford, Cheyne, Paget,
Mason, and Petre found means of passing the gates, and made their way to
Baynard's Castle,[45] where they sent for the mayor, the aldermen, and other
great persons of the city. When they were all assembled, Arundel was the
first to speak.

The country, he said, was on the brink of civil war, and if they continued
to support the pretensions of Lady Jane Grey to the crown, civil war would
inevitably break out. In a few more days or weeks the child would be in
arms against the father, the brother against the brother; the quarrels of
religion would add fury to the struggle; the French would interfere on one
side, the Spaniards on the other, and in such a conflict the triumph of either
party would be almost equally injurious to the honour, unity, freedom, and
happiness of England. The friends of the commonwealth, in the face of so
tremendous a danger, would not obstinately persist in encouraging the
pretensions of a faction. It was for them where they sate to decide if there
should be peace or war, and he implored them, for the sake of the country,
to restore the crown to her who was their lawful sovereign.

Pembroke rose next. The words of Lord Arundel, he said, were true and
good, and not to be gainsaid. What others thought he knew not; for himself,
he was so convinced, that he would fight in the quarrel with any man; and if
words are not enough, he cried, flashing his sword out of the scabbard, "this
blade shall make Mary Queen, or I will lose my life."[46]

Not a voice was raised for the Twelfth-day Queen, as Lady Jane was
termed, in scornful pity, by Noailles. Some few persons thought that, before
they took a decisive step, they should send notice to Northumberland, and
give him time to secure his pardon. But it was held to be a needless stretch
of consideration; Shrewsbury and Mason hastened off to communicate with
Renard;[47] while a hundred and fifty men were marched directly to the
Tower gates, and the keys were demanded in the queen's name.

It is said that Suffolk was unprepared: but the goodness of his heart and
the weakness of his mind alike saved him from attempting a useless
resistance: the gates were opened, and the unhappy father rushed to his

daughter's room. He clutched at the canopy under which she was sitting,
and tore it down; she was no longer queen, he said, and such distinctions
were not for one of her station. He then told her briefly of the revolt of the
council. She replied that his present words were more welcome to her than
those in which he had advised her to accept the crown;[48] her reign being at
an end, she asked innocently if she might leave the Tower and go home.[49]
But the Tower was a place not easy to leave, save by one route too often
travelled.

Meanwhile the lords, with the mayor and the heralds, went to the Cross at
Cheapside to proclaim Mary Queen. Pembroke himself stood out to read;
and this time there was no reason to complain of a silent audience. He could
utter but one sentence before his voice was lost in the shout of joy which
thundered into the air. "God save the queen," "God save the queen," rung
out from tens of thousands of throats. "God save the queen," cried
Pembroke himself, when he had done, and flung up his jewelled cap and
tossed his purse among the crowd. The glad news spread like lightning
through London, and the pent-up hearts of the citizens poured themselves
out in a torrent of exultation. Above the human cries, the long-silent church-
bells clashed again into life; first began St. Paul's, where happy chance had
saved them from destruction; then, one by one, every peal which had been
spared caught up the sound; and through the summer evening and the
summer night, and all the next day, the metal tongues from tower and
steeple gave voice to England's gladness. The lords, surrounded by the
shouting multitude, walked in state to St. Paul's, where the choir again sang
a Te Deum, and the unused organ rolled out once more its mighty volume of
music. As they came out again, at the close of the service, the apprentices
were heaping piles of wood for bonfires at the cross-ways. The citizens
were spreading tables in the streets, which their wives were loading with
fattest capons and choicest wines; there was free feasting for all comers;
and social jealousies, religious hatreds, were forgotten for the moment in
the ecstasy of the common delight. Even the retainers of the Dudleys, in
fear or joy, tore their badges out of their caps, and trampled on them.[50]

At a night session of the council, a letter was written to Northumberland,
which Cranmer, Suffolk, and Sir John Cheke consented to sign, ordering
him in the name of Queen Mary to lay down his arms. If he complied, the

lords undertook to intercede for his pardon. If he refused, they said that they
would hold him as a traitor, and spend their lives in the field against him.[51]

While a pursuivant bore the commands of the council to the duke,
Arundel and Paget undertook to carry to Mary at Framlingham their petition
for forgiveness, in which they declared that they had been innocent at heart
of any share in the conspiracy,[52] and had only delayed coming forward in
her favour from a desire to prevent bloodshed.

The two lords immediately mounted and galloped off into the darkness,
followed by thirty horse, leaving the lights of illuminated London gleaming
behind them.

The duke's position was already desperate: on the 18th, before the
proclamation in London, Mary had felt herself strong enough to send orders
to the Mayor of Cambridge for his arrest;[53] and, although he had as yet
been personally unmolested, he was powerless in the midst of an army
which was virtually in Mary's service. The news of the revolution in
London first reached him by a private hand. He at once sent for Sandys,
and, going with him to the market cross, he declared, after one violent
clutch at his beard, that he had acted under orders from the council; the
council, he understood, had changed their minds, and he would change his
mind also; therefore he cried, "God save Queen Mary," and with a strained
effort at a show of satisfaction, he, too, like Pembroke, threw up his cap.
The queen, he said to Sandys, was a merciful woman, and there would be a
general pardon. "Though the queen grant you a pardon," Sandys answered,
"the lords never will; you can hope nothing from those who now rule."[54]

It was true that he could hope nothing—the hatred of the whole nation,
which before his late treasons he had brought upon himself, would clamour
to the very heavens for judgment against him. An hour after the
proclamation of Mary (July 20), Rouge-cross herald arrived with the lords'
letter from London. An order at the same time was read to the troops
informing them that they were no longer under the duke's command, and an
alderman of the town then ventured to execute the queen's warrant for his
arrest. Northumberland was given in charge to a guard of his own soldiers;
he protested, however, that the council had sent no instructions for his
detention; and in some uncertainty, or perhaps in compassion for his fate,

the soldiers obeyed him once more, and let him go. It was then night. He
intended to fly; but he put it off till the morning, and in the morning his
chance was gone. Before he could leave his room he found himself face to
face with Arundel, who, after delivering the council's letter to the queen,
had hastened to Cambridge to secure him.

Northumberland, who, while innocent of crime, had faced death on land
and sea like a soldier and a gentleman, flung himself at the earl's feet. "Be
good to me, for the love of God," he cried; "consider I have done nothing
but by the consent of you and the council." He knew what kind of consent
he had extorted from the council. "My lord," said Arundel, "I am sent
thither by the Queen's Majesty; and in her name I do arrest you."—"I obey,
my lord," the duke replied; "yet show me mercy, knowing the case as it
is."—"My lord," was the cold answer, "you should have sought for mercy
sooner; I must do according to my commandment."[55]

At the same moment Sandys was paying the penalty for his sermon. The
university, in haste to purge itself of its heretical elements, met soon after
sunrise to depose their vice-chancellor. Dr. Sandys, who had gone for an
early stroll among the meadows to meditate on his position, hearing the
congregation-bell ringing, resolved, like a brave man, to front his fortune;
he walked to the senate-house, entered, and took his seat. "A rabble of
Papists" instantly surrounded him. He tried to speak, but the masters of arts
shouted "Traitor;" rough hands shook or dragged him from his chair: and
the impatient theologian, in sudden heat, drew his dagger, and "would have
done a mischief with it," had not some of his friends disarmed him.[56] He,
too, was handed over to a guard, lashed to the back of a lame horse, and
carried to London.

Mary, meanwhile, notwithstanding the revolution in her favour, remained
a few more days at Framlingham, either suspicious of treachery or uncertain
whether there might not be another change. But she was assured rapidly that
the danger was at an end by the haste with which the lords and gentlemen
who were compromised sought their pardon at her feet. On the 21st and
22nd Clinton, Grey, Fitzgerald, Ormond, Fitzwarren, Sir Henry Sidney, and
Sir James Crofts presented themselves and received forgiveness. Cecil
wrote, explaining his secret services, and was taken into favour. Lord

Robert and Lord Ambrose Dudley, Northampton and a hundred other
gentlemen—Sir Thomas Wyatt among them—who had accompanied the
duke to Bury, were not so fortunate. The queen would not see them, and
they were left under arrest. Ridley set out for Norfolk, also, to confess his
offences; but, before he arrived at the court, he was met by a warrant for his
capture, and carried back a prisoner to the Tower.

The conspiracy was crushed, and crushed, happily, without bloodshed.
The inquiry into its origin, and the punishment of the guilty, could be
carried out at leisure. There was one matter, however, which admitted of no
delay. Mary's first anxiety, on feeling her crown secure, was the burial of
her dead brother, who, through all these scenes, was still lying in his bed in
his room at Greenwich. In her first letter to the Imperial ambassadors, the
day after the arrival of Arundel and Paget at the court, she spoke of this as
her greatest care; to their infinite alarm, she announced her intention of
inaugurating her reign with Requiem and Dirige, and a mass for the repose
of his soul.

Their uneasiness requires explanation.

While on matters of religion there was in England almost every variety of
opinion, there was a very general consent that the queen should not marry a
foreigner. The dread that Mary might form a connection with some
continental prince, had formed the strongest element in Northumberland's
cause; all the Catholics, except the insignificant faction who desired the
restoration of the Papal authority,[57] all the moderate Protestants, wished
well to her, but wished to see her married to some English nobleman; and,
while her accession was still uncertain, the general opinion had already
fixed upon a husband for her in the person of her cousin Edward Courtenay,
the imprisoned son of the Marquis of Exeter. The interest of the public in
the long confinement of this young nobleman had invested him with all
imaginary graces of mind and body. He was the grandchild of a
Plantagenet, and a representative of the White Rose. He had suffered from
the tyranny, and was supposed to have narrowly escaped murder at the
hands of the man whom all England most hated. Nature, birth,
circumstances, all seemed to point to him as the king-consort of the realm.
[58] The emperor had thought of Mary for his son; and it has been seen that

the fear of such an alliance induced the French to support Northumberland.
To prevent the injury which the report, if credited in England, would have
done to her cause, Mary, on her first flight to Keninghal, empowered
Renard to assure the council that she had no thought at all of marrying a
stranger. The emperor and the bishop of Arras, in assuring Sir Philip Hoby
that the French intended to strike for the Queen of Scots, declared that, for
themselves they wished only to see the queen settled in her own realm, as
her subjects desired; and especially they would prevent her either from
attempting innovations in religion without their consent, or from marrying
against their approbation.[59]

But the emperor's disinterestedness was only the result of his
despondency. While the crisis lasted, neither Charles nor Henry of France
saw their way to a distinct course of action. Charles, on the 20th of July,
ignorant of the events in London, had written to Renard, despairing of
Mary's success. Jane Grey he would not recognise; the Queen of Scots, he
thought, would shortly be on the English throne. Henry, considering, at any
rate, that he might catch something in troubled waters, volunteered to Lord
William Howard,[60] in professed compliance with the demands of
Northumberland, to garrison Guisnes and Calais for him. Howard replied
that the French might come to Calais if they desired, but their reception
might not be to their taste.[61] The revolution of the 19th altered the aspect
of the situation both at the courts of Paris and of Brussels. The accession of
Mary would be no injury to France, provided she could be married in
England; and Henry at once instructed Noailles to congratulate the council
on her accession. Noailles himself indeed considered, that, should she take
Courtenay for a husband, the change might, after all, be to their advantage.
The emperor, on the other hand, began to think again of his original
scheme. Knowing that the English were sincere in their detestation of the
Papacy, and imperfectly comprehending the insular distinction between
general attachment to Catholic tradition and indifference to Catholic unity,
he supposed that the country really was, on the whole, determined in its
adherence to the reformed opinions. But the political alliance was still of
infinite importance to him; and therefore he was anxious beyond everything
that the princess whom he intended to persuade to break her word about her
marriage should be discreet and conciliatory about religion. He lost not a
moment, after hearing that she was proclaimed queen, in sending her his

congratulations; but he sent with them an earnest admonition to be cautious;
to be content with the free exercise for herself of her own creed, to take no
step whatever without the sanction of parliament, and to listen to no one
who would advise her, of her own authority, to set aside the Act of
Uniformity. Her first duty was to provide for the quiet of the realm; and she
must endeavour, by prudence and moderation, to give reasonable
satisfaction to her subjects of all opinions. Above all things, let her
remember to be a good Englishwoman (bonne Anglaise).[62]

It was, in consequence, with no light anxiety that Renard learnt from
Mary her intention of commencing her reign with an act which was so far at
variance with the emperor's advice, and which would at once display the
colours of a party. To give the late king a public funeral with a ceremonial
forbidden by the law, would be a strain of the prerogative which could not
fail to create jealousy even among those to whom the difference between a
Latin mass and an English service was not absolutely vital; and the
judicious latitudinarianism to which the lay statesmen of the better sort
were inclining, would make them dread the appearance of a disposition that
would encourage the revolutionists. She owed her crown to the Protestants
as well as to the Catholics. If she broke the law to please the prejudices of
the latter, Renard was warned that her present popularity would not be of
long continuance.[63]

Yet, as the ambassador trembled to know, a carelessness of consequences
and an obstinate perseverance in a course which she believed to be right
were the principal features in Mary's character. He wrote to her while she
was still at Framlingham, using every argument which ought, as he
considered, to prevail. He reminded her of the long and unavailing struggle
of the emperor to bring back Germany out of heresy, where the obstinacy of
the Romanists had been as mischievous to him as the fanaticism of the
Lutherans. "Her duty to God was of course the first thing to be considered;
but at such a time prudence was a part of that duty. The Protestant heresies
had taken a hold deep and powerful upon her subjects. In London alone
there were fifteen thousand French, Flemish, and German refugees, most of
them headstrong and ungovernable enthusiasts. The country dreaded any
fresh convulsions, and her majesty should remember that she had instructed

him to tell the council that she was suspected unjustly, and had no thought
of interfering with the existing settlement of the realm."[64]

With all his efforts, however, Renard could but bring the queen to
consent to a few days' delay; and fearing that she would return to her
purpose, he sent to the emperor a copy of his letter, which he urged him to
follow up. Charles on the 29th replied again, lauding the ambassador's
caution, and suggesting an argument more likely to weigh with his cousin
than the soundest considerations of public policy. Edward had lived and
died in heresy, and the Catholic services were intended only for the faithful
sons of the Church.[65] He desired Renard to remind her that those who had
been her most valuable friends were known to hold opinions far from
orthodox; and he once more implored her to be guided by parliament, and
to take care that the parliament was free. She had asked whether she should
imitate Northumberland and nominate the members of the House of
Commons. He cautioned her against so dangerous an example; he advised
her to let the counties and towns send deputies of their own choice; and if
the writs were sent into Cornwall and the northern counties, which had
remained most constant to the Catholic religion, these places might be
expected to return persons who would support her own sentiments.[66]

If the emperor had been equally earnest in urging Mary to consult the
wishes of her subjects on her marriage, he would have been a truer friend to
her than he proved to be. But prudential arguments produced no effect on
the eager queen; Renard had warned her not to resist Northumberland; she
had acted on her own judgment, and Northumberland was a prisoner, and
she was on the throne. By her own will she was confident that she could
equally well restore the mass, and in good time the pope's authority. The
religious objection to the funeral was more telling, and on this point she
hesitated. Meantime she began to move slowly towards London, and at the
end of the month the reached her old house of Newhall in Essex, where she
rested till the preparations were complete for her entry into the city.

The first point on which she had now to make up her mind concerned the
persons with whom she was to carry on the government. The emperor was
again clear in his advice, which here she found herself obliged to follow.
She was forced to leave undisturbed in their authorities such of her brother's

late ministers as had contributed to the revolution in her favour. Derby,
Sussex, Bath, Oxford, who had hurried to her support at Framlingham, were
her loyal subjects, whom she could afford to neglect, because she could
depend upon their fidelity. Pembroke and Winchester, Arundel and
Shrewsbury, Bedford, Cobham, Cheyne, Petre, too powerful to affront, too
uncertain to be trusted as subjects, she could only attach to herself by
maintaining in their offices and emoluments. She would restore the Duke of
Norfolk to the council; Gardiner should hold office again; and she could
rely on the good faith of Paget, the ablest, as well as the most honest, of all
the professional statesmen. But Norfolk was old, and the latitudinarian
Paget and the bigoted Gardiner bore each other no good will; so that, when
the queen had leisure to contemplate her position, it did not promise to be
an easy one. She would have to govern with the assistance of men who
were gorged with the spoils of the church, suspected of heresy, and at best
indifferent to religion.

In Mary's absence, the lords in London carried on the government as they
could on their own responsibility. On the 21st Courtenay was released from
the Tower. Gardiner was offered liberty, but he waited to accept it from the
queen's own hand. He rejoined the council, however, and on the first or
second day of his return to the board, he agitated their deliberations by
requiring the restoration of his house in Southwark, which had been
appropriated to the Marquis of Northampton, and by reminding Pembroke
that he was in possession of estates which had been stolen from the See of
Winchester.

On the 25th Northumberland and Lord Ambrose Dudley were brought in
from Cambridge, escorted by Grey and Arundel, with four hundred of the
guard. Detachments of troops were posted all along the streets from
Bishopsgate, where the duke would enter, to the Tower, to prevent the mob
from tearing him in pieces. It was but twelve days since he had ridden out
from that gate in the splendour of his power; he was now assailed from all
sides with yells and execrations; bareheaded, with cap in hand, he bowed to
the crowd as he rode on, as if to win some compassion from them; but so
recent a humility could find no favour. His scarlet cloak was plucked from
his back; the only sounds which greeted his ears were, "Traitor, traitor,
death to the traitor!" He hid his face, sick at heart with shame, and Lord

Ambrose, at the gate of the Tower, was seen to burst into tears.[67] Edwin
Sandys, Northampton, Ridley, Lord Robert Dudley, the offending judges
Cholmley and Montague, with many others, followed in the few next days.
Montague had protested to the queen that he had acted only under
compulsion, but his excuses were not fully received. Lady Northumberland
went to Newhall to beg for mercy for her sons, but Mary refused to admit
her.[68]

In general, however, there was no desire to press hard upon the prisoners.
Few had been guilty in the first degree; in the second degree so many were
guilty, that all could not be punished, and to make exceptions would be
unjust and invidious. The emperor recommended a general pardon, from
which the principal offenders only should be excluded, and Mary herself
was as little inclined to harshness. Her present desire was to forget all that
had passed, and take possession of her power for the objects nearest to her
heart. Her chief embarrassment for the moment was from the overloyalty of
her subjects. The old-fashioned lords and country gentlemen who had
attended her with their retainers from Norfolk, remained encamped round
Newhall, unable to persuade themselves that they could leave her with
safety in the midst of the men who had been the ministers of the usurpation.
[69]

Her closest confidence the queen reserved for Renard. On the 28th of
July she sent for him at midnight. On the 2nd of August he was again with
her, and the chief subject of her thoughts was still the funeral. "She could
not have her brother committed to the ground like a dog," she said. While
her fortunes were uncertain, she allowed Renard to promise for her that she
would make no changes in religion, but "she had now told the lords
distinctly that she would not recognise any of the laws which had been
passed in the minority,[70] and she intended to act boldly; timidity would
only encourage the people to be insolent;" "the lords were all quarrelling
among themselves, and accusing one another; she could not learn the truth
on any point of the late conspiracy; she did not know who were guilty or
who were innocent; and, amidst the distracted advices which were urged
upon her, she could not tell whether she could safely venture to London or
not; but outward acquiescence in the course which she chose to follow she
believed that she could compel, and she would govern as God should direct

her. The emperor, she added, had written to her about her marriage, not
specifying any particular person, but desiring her to think upon the subject.
She had never desired to marry while princess, nor did she desire it now;
but if it were for the interests of the church, she would do whatever he
might advise."

On this last point Renard knew more of the emperor's intentions than
Mary, and was discreetly silent; on other point he used his influence wisely.
He constrained her, with Charles's arguments, to relinquish her burial
scheme. "Edward, as a heretic, should have a heretic funeral at Westminster
Abbey; she need not be present, and might herself have a mass said for him
in the Tower. As to removing to London, in his opinion she had better go
thither at once, take possession of her throne, and send Northumberland to
trial. Her brother's body ought to be examined also, that it might be
ascertained whether he had been poisoned; and if poisoned, by whom and
for what purpose."[71]

Mary rarely paused upon a resolution. Making up her mind that, as
Renard said, it would be better for her to go to London, she set out thither
the following day, Thursday, the 3rd of August. Excitement lent to her hard
features an expression almost of beauty,[72] as she rode in the midst of a
splendid cavalcade of knights and nobles. Elizabeth, escorted by two
thousand horse and a retinue of ladies, was waiting to receive her outside
the gates. The first in her congratulations, after the proclamation, yet fearful
of giving offence, Elizabeth had written to ask if it was the queen's pleasure
that she should appear in mourning; but the queen would have no mourning,
nor would have others wear it in her presence. The sombre colours which of
late years had clouded the court were to be banished at once and for ever;
and with the dark colours, it seemed for a time as if old dislikes and
suspicions were at the same time to pass away. The sisters embraced; the
queen was warm and affectionate, kissing all the ladies in Elizabeth's train;
and side by side the daughters of Henry VIII. rode through Aldgate at seven
in the evening, amidst the shouts of the people, the thunder of cannon, and
pealing of church bells.[73] At the Tower gates the old Duke of Norfolk,
Gardiner, Courtenay, and the Duchess of Somerset were seen kneeling as
Mary approached. "These are my prisoners," she said as she alighted from
her horse, and stooped and kissed them. Charmed by the enthusiastic

reception and by the pleasant disappointment of her anxieties, she could
find no room for hard thoughts of any one; so far was she softened, Renard
wrote, that she could hardly be brought to consent to the necessary
execution of justice. Against Northumberland himself she had no feeling of
vindictiveness, and was chiefly anxious that he should be attended by a
confessor; Northampton was certainly to be pardoned; Suffolk was already
free; Northumberland should be spared, if possible; and, as to Lady Jane,
justice forbade, she said, that an innocent girl should suffer for the crimes of
others.[74]

The emperor had recommended mercy; but he had not advised a general
indemnity, as Renard made haste to urge. The imperialist conception of
clemency differed from the queen's; and the same timidity which had first
made the ambassadors too prudent, now took the form of measured cruelty.
Renard entreated that Lady Jane should not be spared; "conspirators
required to be taught that for the principals in treason there was but one
punishment; the duke must die, and the rival queen and her husband must
die with him." "We set before her"—Renard's own hand is the witness
against him—"the examples of Maximus and his son Victor, both executed
by the Emperor Theodosius; Maximus, because he had usurped the purple;
Victor, because, as the intended heir of his father, he might have been an
occasion of danger had he lived."[75]

Looking also, as Renard was already doing, on the scenes which were
around him, chiefly or solely as they might affect the interests of his
master's son, he had been nervously struck by the entourage which
surrounded Elizabeth and the popularity which she, as well as the queen,
was evidently enjoying.

Elizabeth, now passing into womanhood, was the person to whom the
affections of the liberal party in England most definitely tended. She was
the heir-presumptive to the crown; in matters of religion she was opposed to
the mass, and opposed as decidedly to factious and dogmatic Protestantism;
while from the caution with which she had kept aloof from political
entanglements, it was clear that her brilliant intellectual abilities were not
her only or her most formidable gifts. Already she shared the favour of the
people with the queen. Let Mary offend them (and in the intended marriage

offence would unquestionably have to be given), their entire hearts might be
transferred to her. The public finger had pointed to Courtenay as the
husband which England desired for the queen. When Courtenay should be
set aside by Mary, he might be accepted by Elizabeth; and Elizabeth, it was
rumoured, looked upon him with an eye of favour.[76] On all accounts,
therefore, Elizabeth was dangerous. She was a figure on the stage whom
Renard would gladly see removed; and a week or two later he bid Mary
look to her, watch her, and catch her tripping if good fortune would so
permit: "it was better to prevent than to be prevented."[77]

The queen did not close her ears to these evil whispers; but for the first
few days after she came to the Tower her thoughts were chiefly occupied
with religion, and her first active step was to release and to restore to their
sees the deprived and imprisoned bishops. The first week in August, Ponet,
by royal order, was ejected from Winchester, Ridley from London, and
Scory from Chichester. The See of Durham was reconstituted. Tunstal, Day,
and Heath were set at liberty, and returned to their dioceses. The Bishop of
Ely was deposed from the chancellorship, and the seals were given to
Gardiner. "On the 5th of August," says the Grey Friars' Chronicle, "at seven
o'clock at night, Edmond Bonner came home from the Marshalsea like a
bishop, and all the people by the wayside bade him welcome home, both
man and woman, and as many of the women as might kissed him; and so he
came to Paul's, and knelt on the steps, and said his prayers, and the people
rang the bells for joy."[78]

While Mary was repairing acts of injustice, Gardiner, with Sir William
Petre, was looking into the public accounts. The debts of the late
government had been reduced, the currency unconsidered, to £190,000.[79]
A doubt had been raised whether, after the attempt to set aside the
succession, the queen was bound to take the responsibility of these
obligations, but Mary preferred honour to convenience; she promised to pay
everything as soon as possible. Further, there remain, partly in Gardiner's
hand, a number of hasty notes, written evidently in these same first weeks
of Mary's reign, which speak nobly for the intentions with which both Mary
and himself were setting generally to work. The expenses of the household
were to be reduced to the scale of Henry VII., or the early years of Henry
VIII.; the garrisons at Berwick and Calais were to be placed on a more

economical footing, the navy reduced, the irregular guard dismissed or
diminished. Bribery was to be put an end to in the courts of Westminster, at
quarter sessions, and among justices of the peace; "the laws were to be
restored to their authority without suffering any matters to be ordered
otherwise than as the laws should appoint."[80] These first essentials having
been attended to, the famous or infamous book of sales, grants, and
exchanges of the crown lands was to be looked into; the impropriation of
benefices was to cease, and decency to be restored to the parish churches,
where the grooms and gamekeepers should give way to competent
ministers; economy, order, justice, and reverence were to heal the canker of
profligate profanity which had eaten too long into the moral life of England.

In happier times Mary might have been a worthy queen, and Gardiner an
illustrious minister;[81] but the fatal superstition which confounded religion
with orthodox opinion was too strong for both of them.

Edward's body was meanwhile examined. The physicians reported that
without doubt he had died of poison, and there was a thought of indicting
the Duke of Northumberland for his murder: but it was relinquished on
further inquiry; the poison, if the physicians were right, must have been
administered by negligence or accident. The corpse was then buried
(August 6) with the forms of the Church of England at Westminster Abbey;
the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had so far been left at liberty, read the
service; it was the last and saddest function of his public ministry which he
was destined to perform. Simultaneously, as Mary had determined,
requiems were chanted in the Tower Chapel; and Gardiner, in the presence
of the queen and four hundred persons, sung the mass for the dead with
much solemnity. The ceremony was, however, injured by a misfortune; after
the gospel the incense was carried round, and the chaplain who bore it was
married; Doctor Weston, who was afterwards deprived of the deanery of
Windsor for adultery, darted forward and snatched the censer out of the
chaplain's hand. "Shamest thou not to do thine office," he said, "having a
wife, as thou hast? The queen will not be censed by such as thou."[82] Nor
was scandal the worst part of it. Elizabeth had been requested to attend, and
had refused; angry murmurs and curses against the Bishop of Winchester
were heard among the yeomen of the guard; while the queen made no secret
of her desire that the example which she had set should be imitated. Renard

trembled for the consequences; Noailles anticipated a civil war; twenty
thousand men, the latter said, would lose their lives before England would
be cured of heresy;[83] yet Mary had made a beginning, and as she had
begun she was resolved that others should continue.

In the Tower she felt her actions under restraint. She was still surrounded
by thousands of armed men, the levies of Derby and Hastings, the retainers
of Pembroke and Arundel and Bedford; the council were spies upon her
actions; the sentinels at the gates were a check upon her visitors. She could
receive no one whose business with her was not made public to the lords,
and whose reception they were not pleased to sanction; even Renard was
for a time excluded from her, and in her anxiety to see him she suggested
that he might come to her in disguise.[84] Such a thraldom was irksome and
inconvenient. She had broken the promise which Renard had been allowed
to make for her about religion; she had been troubled, it is easy to believe,
with remonstrances, to which she was not likely to have answered with
temper; Pembroke absented himself from the presence; he was required to
retire and to reduce the number of his followers; the quarrels which began
while the queen was at Newhall broke out with worse violence than ever;
Lord Derby complained to Renard that those who had saved her crown
were treated with neglect, while men like Arundel, Bedford, and Pembroke,
who had been parties to the treasons against her, remained in power; Lord
Russell was soon after placed under arrest; Pembroke and Winchester were
ordered to keep their houses, and the court was distracted with suspicion,
discord, and uncertainty.[85]

From such a scene Mary desired to escape to some place where she could
be at least mistress of her own movements; her impatience was quickened
by a riot at St. Bartholomew's, where a priest attempted to say mass; and on
Saturday, the 12th of August, she removed to Richmond. Her absence
encouraged the insubordination of the people. On Sunday, the 13th, another
priest was attacked at the altar; the vestments were torn from his back, and
the chalice snatched from his hands. Bourne, whom the queen had
appointed her chaplain, preached at Paul's Cross. A crowd of refugees and
English fanatics had collected round the pulpit; and when he spoke
something in praise of Bonner, and said that he had been unjustly
imprisoned,[86] yells rose of "Papist, Papist! Tear him down!" A dagger was

hurled at the preacher, swords were drawn, the mayor attempted to
interfere, but he could not make his way through the dense mass of the
rioters; and Bourne would have paid for his rashness with his life had not
Courtenay, who was a popular favourite, with his mother, the Marchioness
of Exeter, thrown themselves on the pulpit steps, while Bradford sprung to
his side, and kept the people back till he could be carried off.

But the danger did not end there. The Protestant orators sounded the
alarm through London. Meetings were held, and inflammatory placards
were scattered about the streets. If religion was to be tampered with, men
were heard to say, it was better at once to fetch Northumberland from the
Tower.

Uncertain on whom she could rely, Mary sent for Renard (August 16),
who could only repeat his former cautions, and appeal to what had occurred
in justification of them. He undertook to pacify Lord Derby; but in the
necessity to which she was so soon reduced of appealing to him, a
foreigner, in her emergencies, he made her feel that she could not carry
things with so high a hand. She had a rival in the Queen of Scots, beyond
her domestic enemies, whom her wisdom ought to fear; she would ruin
herself if she flew in the face of her subjects; and he prevailed so far with
her that she promised to take no further steps till the meeting of parliament.
After a consultation with the mayor, she drew up a hasty proclamation,
granting universal toleration till further orders, forbidding her Protestant
and Catholic subjects to interrupt each other's services, and prohibiting at
the same time all preaching on either side without licence from herself.

Being on the spot, the ambassador took the opportunity of again trying
Mary's disposition upon the marriage question. His hopes had waned since
her arrival in London; he had spoken to Paget, who agreed that an alliance
with the Prince of Spain was the most splendid which the queen could hope
for; but the time was inopportune, and the people were intensely hostile.
The exigencies of the position, he thought, might oblige the queen to yield
to wishes which she could not oppose, and accept Lord Courtenay; or
possibly her own inclination might set in the same direction; or, again, she
might wish to renew her early engagement with the emperor himself. The
same uncertainty had been felt at Brussels; the Bishop of Arras, therefore,

had charged Renard to feel his way carefully and make no blunder. If the
queen inclined to the emperor, he might speak of Philip as more eligible; if
she fancied Courtenay, it would be useless to interfere—she would only
resent his opposition.[87] Renard obeyed his instructions, and the result was
reassuring. When the ambassador mentioned the word "marriage," the
queen began to smile significantly, not once, but many times; she plainly
liked the topic: plainly, also, her thoughts were not turning in the direction
of any English husband; she spoke of her rank, and of her unwillingness to
condescend to a subject; Courtenay, the sole remaining representative of the
White Rose except the Poles, was the only Englishman who could in any
way be thought suitable for her; but she said that she expected the emperor
to provide a consort for her, and that, being a woman, she could not make
the first advances. Renard satisfied himself from her manner that, if the
Prince of Spain was proposed, the offer would be most entirely welcome.
[88]

The trials of the conspirators were now resolved upon. The queen was
determined to spare Lady Jane Grey, in spite of all which Renard could
urge; but the state of London showed that the punishment of the really
guilty could no longer be safely delayed. On this point all parties in the
council were agreed. On Friday, the 18th of August, therefore, a court of
peers was formed in Westminster Hall, with the aged Duke of Norfolk for
High Steward, to try John Dudley Duke of Northumberland, the Earl of
Warwick, and the Marquis of Northampton for high treason. Forty-four
years before, as the curious remarked, the father of Norfolk had sat on the
commission which tried the father of Northumberland for the same crime.

The indictments charged the prisoners with levying war against their
lawful sovereign. Northumberland, who was called first to the bar, pleaded
guilty of the acts which were laid against him, but he submitted two points
to the consideration of the court.

1. Whether, having taken the field with a warrant under the Great Seal, he
could be lawfully accused of treason.

2. Whether those peers from whom he had received his commission, and
by whose letters he had been directed in what he had done, could sit upon
his trial as his judges.

The Great Seal, he was answered briefly, was the seal of a usurper, and
could convey no warrant to him. If the lords were as guilty as he said, yet,
"so long as no attainder was on record against them, they were persons able
in law to pass upon any trial, and not to be challenged but at the prince's
pleasure."[89]

The duke bowed and was silent.

Northampton and Warwick came next, and, like Northumberland,
confessed to the indictment. Northampton, however, pleaded in his defence,
that he had held no public office during the crisis; that he had not been
present at the making of Edward's device, and had been amusing himself
hunting in the country.[90] Warwick, with proud sadness, said merely, that
he had followed his father, and would share his father's fortunes; if his
property was confiscated, he hoped that his debts would be paid.[91]

But Northampton had indisputably been in the field with the army, and,
as his judges perfectly well knew, had been, with Suffolk, the Duke's
uniform supporter in his most extreme measures; the queen had resolved to
pardon him; but the court could not recognise his excuse. Norfolk rose, in a
few words pronounced the usual sentence, and broke his wand; the cold
glimmering edge of the Tower axe was turned towards the prisoners, and
the peers rose. Northumberland, before he was led away, fell upon his
knees; his children were young, he said, and had acted under orders from
himself; to them let the queen show mercy; for himself he had his peace to
make with Heaven; he entreated for a few days of life, and the assistance of
a confessor; if two of the council would come to confer with him, he had
important secrets of state to communicate; and, finally, he begged that he
might die by the axe like a nobleman.[92]

On the 19th, Sir John and Sir Henry Gates, Sir Andrew Dudley, and Sir
Thomas Palmer were tried before a special commission. Dudley had gone
with the treasonable message to France; the three others were the boldest
and most unscrupulous of the Duke's partisans, while Palmer was also
especially hated for his share in the death of Somerset. These four also
pleaded guilty, and were sentenced, Palmer only scornfully telling the
commissioners that they were traitors as well as he, and worse than he.[93]

Seven had been condemned; three only, the duke, Sir John Gates, and
Palmer, were to suffer.

Crime alone makes death terrible: in the long list of victims whose
bloody end, at stake or scaffold, the historian of England in the sixteenth
century has to relate, two only showed signs of cowardice, and one of those
was a soldier and a nobleman, who, in a moment of extreme peril, four
years before, had kissed swords with his comrades, and had sworn to
conquer the insurgents at Norwich, or die with honour.

The Duke of Northumberland, who since that time had lived very
emphatically without God in the world, had not lived without religion. He
had affected religion, talked about religion, played with religion, till fools
and flatterers had told him that he was a saint; and now, in his extreme
need, he found that he had trifled with forms and words, till they had grown
into a hideous hypocrisy. The Infinite of death was opening at his feet, and
he had no faith, no hope, no conviction, but only a blank and awful horror,
and perhaps he felt that there was nothing left for him but to fling himself
back in agony into the open arms of superstition. He had asked to speak
with some member of the council; he had asked for a confessor. In
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, he found both.

After the sentence Gardiner visited him in the Tower, where he poured
out his miserable story; he was a Catholic, he said, he always had been a
Catholic; he had believed nothing of all the doctrines for which he had
pretended to be so zealous under Edward. "Alas!" he cried, "is there no help
for me?" "Let me live but a little longer to do penance for my many sins."
Gardiner's heart was softened at the humiliating spectacle; he would speak
to the queen, he said, and he did speak, not wholly without success; he may
have judged rightly, that the living penitence of the Joshua of the
Protestants would have been more useful to the church than his death.[94]
Already Mary had expressed a wish that, if possible, the wretched man
should be spared; and he would have been allowed to live, except for the
reiterated protests of Renard in his own name and in the emperor's.

It was decided at last that he should die; and a priest was assigned him to
prepare his soul. Doctor Watts or Watson, the same man whom Cranmer
long ago had set in the stocks at Canterbury, took charge of Palmer and the

rest—to them, as rough soldiers, spiritual consolation from a priest of any
decent creed was welcome.

The executions were fixed originally for Monday, the 21st; but the duke's
conversion was a triumph to the Catholic cause too important not to be
dwelt upon a little longer. Neither Northampton, Warwick, Andrew Dudley,
or Sir Henry Gates were aware that they were to be respited, and, as all
alike availed themselves of the services of a confessor and the forms of the
Catholic faith, their compliance could be made an instrument of a public
and edifying lesson. The lives of those who were to suffer were prolonged
for twenty-four hours. On Monday morning "certain of the citizens of
London" were requested to be in attendance at the Tower chapel, where
Northumberland, Northampton, Dudley, Henry Gates, and Palmer were
brought in; and, "first kneeling down, every one of them, upon his knees,
they heard mass, saying devoutedly, with the bishop,[95] every one of them,
Confiteor."

"After the mass was done, the duke rose up, and looked back upon my
lord marquis, and came unto him, asking them all forgiveness, the one after
the other, upon their knees, one to another; and the one did heartily forgive
the other. And then they came, every one of them, before the altar, every
one of them kneeling, and confessing to the bishop that they were the same
men in the faith according as they had confessed to him before, and that
they all would die in the Catholic faith." When they had all received the
sacrament, they rose and turned to the people, and the duke said:—

"Truly, good people, I profess here before you all, that I have received the
sacrament according to the true Catholic faith: and the plague that is upon
the realm and upon us now is that we have erred from the faith these sixteen
years; and this I protest unto you all from the bottom of my heart."

Northampton, with the rest, "did affirm the same with weeping tears."[96]

Among the spectators were observed the sons of the Duke of Somerset.

In exhibiting to the world the humiliation of the professors of the gospel,
the Catholic party enjoyed a pardonable triumph. Northumberland, in

playing a part in the pageant, was hoping to save his wretched life. When it
was over he wrote (August 22) a passionate appeal to Arundel.

"Alas, my lord," he said, "is my crime so heinous as no redemption but
my blood can wash away the spots thereof? An old proverb there is, and
that most true—A living dog is better than a dead lion; oh that it would
please her good grace to give me life, yea, the life of a dog, if I might but
live and kiss her feet, and spend both life and all in her honourable service."

But Arundel could not save him—would not have saved him, perhaps,
had he been able—and he had only to face the end with such resolution as
he could command.

The next morning, at nine o'clock, Warwick and Sir John Gates heard
mass in the Tower chapel; the two Seymours were again present with
Courtenay: and before Gates received the sacrament, he said a few words of
regret to the latter for his long imprisonment, of which he admitted himself
in part the cause.[97] On leaving the chapel Warwick was taken back to his
room, and learned that he was respited. Gates joined Palmer, who was
walking with Watson in the garden, and talking with the groups of
gentlemen who were collected there. Immediately after, the duke was
brought out. "Sir John," he said to Gates, "God have mercy on us; forgive
me as I forgive you, although you and your council have brought us hither."
"I forgive you, my lord," Gates answered, "as I would be forgiven; yet it
was you and your authority that was the only original cause of all." They
bowed each. The duke passed on, and the procession moved forward to
Tower Hill.

The last words of a worthless man are in themselves of little moment; but
the effect of the dying speech of Northumberland lends to it an artificial
importance. Whether to the latest moment he hoped for his life, or whether,
divided between atheism and superstition, he thought, if any religion was
true, Romanism was true, and it was prudent not to throw away a chance,
who can tell? At all events, he mounted the scaffold with Heath, the Bishop
of Worcester, at his side; and then deliberately said to the crowd, that his
rebellion and his present fall were owing to the false preachers who had led
him to err from the Catholic faith of Christ; the fathers and the saints had
ever agreed in one doctrine; the present generation were the first that had

dared to follow their private opinions; and in England and in Germany,
where error had taken deepest root, there had followed war, famine,
rebellion, misery, tokens all of them of God's displeasure. Therefore, as they
loved their country, as they valued their souls, he implored his hearers to
turn, all of them, and turn at once, to the church which they had left; in
which church he, from the bottom of his heart, avowed his own steadfast
belief. For himself he called them all to witness that he died in the one true
Catholic faith; to which, if he had been brought sooner, he would not have
been in his present calamity.

He then knelt; "I beseech you all," he said again, "to believe that I die in
the Catholic faith." He repeated the Miserere psalm, the psalm De
Profundis, and the Paternoster. The executioner, as usual, begged his
pardon. "I have deserved a thousand deaths," he muttered. He made the sign
of the cross upon the saw-dust, and kissed it, then laid down his head, and
perished.

The shame of the apostasy shook down the frail edifice of the Protestant
constitution, to be raised again in suffering, as the first foundations of it had
been laid, by purer hands and nobler spirits.[98] In his better years
Northumberland had been a faithful subject and a fearless soldier, and, with
a master's hand over him, he might have lived with integrity, and died with
honour. Opportunity tempted his ambition—ambition betrayed him into
crime—and, given over to his lower nature, he climbed to the highest round
of the political ladder, to fall and perish like a craven. He was one of those
many men who can follow worthily, yet cannot lead; and the virtue of the
beginning was not less real than the ignominy of the end.

Gates was the second sufferer. He, too, spoke in the same key. He had
been a great reader of Scripture, he said, but he had not read it to be edified,
but to be seditious—to dispute, to interpret it after his private affection; to
him, therefore, the honey had been poison, and he warned all men how they
followed his ill example; God's holy mysteries were no safe things to toy or
play with. Gates, in dying, had three strokes of an axe;—"Whether," says an
eye-witness,[99] "it was by his own request or no was doubtful"—
remarkable words: as if the everlasting fate of the soul depended on its

latest emotion, and repentance could be intensified by the conscious
realisation of death.

Last came Sir Thomas Palmer, in whom, to judge by his method of taking
leave of life, there was some kind of nobleness. It was he who led the
cavalry forlorn hope, at Haddington, when the supplies were thrown in for
the garrison.

He leapt upon the scaffold, red with the blood of his companions. "Good
morning to you all, good people," he said, looking round him with a smile;
"ye come hither to see me die, and to see what news I have; marry, I will
tell you; I have seen more in yonder terrible place [he pointed towards the
Tower] than ever I saw before throughout all the realms that ever I
wandered in; for there I have seen God, I have seen the world, and I have
seen myself; and when I beheld my life, I saw nothing but slime and clay,
full of corruption; I saw the world nothing else but vanity, and all the
pleasures and treasures thereof nought worth; I saw God omnipotent, his
power infinite, his mercy incomprehensible; and when I saw this, I most
humbly submitted myself unto him, beseeching him of mercy and pardon,
and I trust he hath forgiven me; for he called me once or twice before, but I
would not turn to him, but even now by this sharp kind of death he hath
called me unto him. I trust the wings of his mercy shall spread over me and
save me; and I do here confess, before you all, Christ to be the very Son of
God the Father, born of the Virgin Mary, which came into the world to fulfil
the law for us, and to bear our offences on his back, and suffered his
passion for our redemption, by the which I trust to be saved."

Like his fellow-sufferers, Palmer then said a few prayers, asked the
queen's forgiveness, knelt, and died.

Stunned by the apostasy on the scaffold of the man whom they had
worshipped as a prophet, the ultra-faction among the Protestants became
now powerless. The central multitude, whose belief was undefined, yielded
to the apparent sentence of Heaven upon a cause weakened by unsuccessful
treason, and disavowed in his death by its champion. Edward had died on
the anniversary of the execution of More; God, men said, had visited his
people, and "the Virgin Mary" had been set upon the throne for their
redemption.[100] Dr. Watson, on the 20th of August, preached at Paul's Cross

under a guard of soldiers; on the 24th, two days after the scene on Tower
Hill, so little was a guard necessary, that mass was said in St. Paul's Church
in Latin, with matins and vespers. The crucifix was replaced in the roodloft,
the high altar was re-decorated, the real presence was defended from the
pulpit, and, except from the refugees, not a murmur was heard.[101]
Catching this favourable opportunity, the queen charmed the country with
the announcement that the second portion of the last subsidy granted by
Parliament should not be collected; she gave her word that the currency at
the earliest moment should be thoroughly restored; while she gained credit
on all sides for the very moderate vengeance with which she appeared to be
contenting herself. Ridley only, Renard wrote, on the 9th of September,
would now be executed; the other prisoners were to be all pardoned. The
enthusiasm was slightly abated, indeed, when it was announced that their
forgiveness would not be wholly free. Montague and Bromley, on their
release from the Tower, were fined £7000 a-piece; Suffolk, Northampton,
and other noblemen and gentlemen, as their estates would bear. But, to
relieve the burdens of the people at the expense of those who had reaped the
harvest of the late spoliations was, on the whole, a legitimate retribution;
the moneyed men were pleased with the recognition of Edward's debts, and
provided a loan of 25,000 crowns for the present necessities of the
government. London streets rang again with shouts of "God Save the
Queen;" and Mary recovered a fresh instalment of popularity to carry her a
few steps further.[102]

The refugees were the first difficulty. They were too numerous to
imprison; and the most influential among them—men like Peter Martyr—
having come to England on the invitation of the late government, it was
neither just nor honourable to hand them over to their own sovereigns. But
both Mary and her Flemish adviser were anxious to see them leave the
country as quickly as possible. The emperor recommended a general
intimation to be given out, that criminals of all kinds taking refuge in
England would be liable to seizure, offences against religion being neither
specially mentioned nor specially excepted.[103] The foreign preachers were
ordered to depart by proclamation; and Peter Martyr, who had left Oxford,
and was staying with Cranmer at Lambeth, expecting an arrest, received,
instead of it, a safe-conduct, of which he instantly availed himself. The
movements of others were quickened with indirect menaces; while Gardiner

told Renard, with much self-satisfaction, that a few messages desiring some
of them to call upon him at his house had given them wings.[104]

Finding her measures no longer opposed, the queen refused next to
recognise the legality of the marriage of the clergy. Married priests should
either leave their wives or leave their benefices; and on the 29th of August,
Gardiner, Bonner, Day, and Tunstal, late prisoners in the Tower, were
appointed commissioners to examine into the conditions of their episcopal
brethren. Convocation was about to meet, and must undergo a preliminary
purification. Unhappy Convocation! So lately the supreme legislative body
in the country, it was now patched, clipped, mended, repaired, or altered, as
the secular government put on its alternate hues. The Protestant bishops had
accepted their offices on Protestant terms—Quamdiu se bene gesserint, on
their good behaviour; and, with the assistance of so pliant a clause, a swift
clearance was effected. Barlow, to avoid expulsion, resigned Bath. Paul
Bush retreated from Bristol. Hooper, ejected from Worcester by the
restoration of Heath, was deprived of Gloucester for heresy and marriage,
and, being a dangerous person, was committed on the 1st of September to
the Fleet. Ferrars, of St. David's, left in prison by Northumberland for other
pretended offences, was deprived on the same grounds, but remained in
confinement. Bird, having a wife, was turned out of Chester; Archbishop
Holgate out of York. Coverdale, Ridley, Scory, and Ponet had been already
disposed of. The bench was wholesomely swept.[105]

The English Protestant preachers seeing that priests everywhere held
themselves licensed ex officio to speak as they pleased from the pulpit,
began themselves also, in many places, to disobey the queen's proclamation.
They were made immediately to feel their mistake, and were brought to
London to the Tower, the Marshalsea, or the Fleet, to the cells left vacant by
their opponents. Among the rest came one who had borne no share in the
late misdoings, but had long foreseen the fate to which those doings would
bring him and many more. When Latimer was sent for, he was at Stamford.
On the 4th of September six hours' notice was given him of his intended
arrest; and so obviously his escape was desired, that the pursuivant who
brought the warrant left him to obey it at his leisure; his orders, he said,
were not to wait. But Latimer had business in England. While the fanatics
who had provoked the catastrophe were slinking across the Channel from

its consequences, Latimer determined to stay at home, and help to pay the
debts which they had incurred. He went quietly to London, appeared before
the council, where his "demeanour" was what they were pleased to term
"seditious,"[106] and was committed to the Tower. "What, my friend," he
said to a warder who was an old acquaintance there, "how do you? I am
come to be your neighbour again." Sir Thomas Palmer's rooms in the
garden were assigned for his lodging. In the winter he was left without a
fire, and, growing infirm, he sent a message to the Lieutenant of the Tower
to look better after him, or he should give him the slip yet.[107]

And there was another besides Latimer who would not fly when the
chance was left open to him. Archbishop Cranmer had continued at
Lambeth unmolested, yet unpardoned; his conduct with respect to the letters
patent had been more upright than the conduct of any other member of the
council by whom they had been signed; and on this ground, therefore, an
exception could not easily be made in his disfavour. But his friends had
interceded vainly to obtain the queen's definite forgiveness for him; treason
might be forgotten; the divorce of Catherine of Arragon could never be
forgotten. So he waited on, watching the reaction gathering strength, and
knowing well the point to which it tended. In the country the English
service was set aside and the mass restored with but little disturbance. No
force had been used or needed; the Catholic majorities among the
parishioners had made the change for themselves. The archbishop's friends
came to him for advice; he recommended them to go abroad; he was urged
to go himself while there was time; he said, "it would be in no ways fitting
for him to go away, considering the post in which he was; and to show that
he was not afraid to own all the changes that were by his means made in
religion in the last reign."[108]

Neither was it fitting for him to sit by in silence. The world,
misconstruing his inaction, believed him false like Northumberland; the
world reported that he had restored mass at Canterbury; the world professed
to have ascertained that he had offered to sing a requiem at Edward's
funeral. In the second week of September, therefore, he made a public offer,
in the form of a letter to a friend, to defend the communion service, and all
the alterations for which he was responsible, against any one who desired to
impugn them; he answered the stories against himself with a calm denial;

and, though the letter was not printed, copies in manuscript were circulated
through London so numerously that the press, said Renard, would not have
sent out more.[109]

The challenge was answered by an immediate summons before the
council; the archbishop was accused of attempting to excite sedition among
the people, and was forthwith committed to the Tower to wait, with Ridley
and Latimer, there, till his fate should be decided on. Meantime the
eagerness with which the country generally availed itself of the permission
to restore the Catholic ritual, proved beyond a doubt that, except in London
and a few large towns, the popular feeling was with the queen. The English
people had no affection for the Papacy. They did not wish for the re-
establishment of the religious orders, or the odious domination of the
clergy. But the numerical majority among them did desire a celibate
priesthood, the ceremonies which the customs of centuries had sanctified,
and the ancient faith of their fathers, as reformed by Henry VIII. The rights
of conscience had found no more consideration from the Protestant
doctrinalists than from the most bigoted of the persecuting prelates; and the
facility with which the professors of the gospel had yielded to moral
temptations, had for the time inspired moderate men with much distrust for
them and for their opinions.

Could Mary have been contented to pursue her victory no further, she
would have preserved the hearts of her subjects; and the reaction, left to
complete its own tendencies, would in a few years, perhaps, have
accomplished in some measure her larger desires. But few sovereigns have
understood less the effects of time and forbearance. She was deceived by
the rapidity of her first success; she flattered herself that, difficult though it
might be, she could build up again the ruined hierarchy, could compel the
holders of church property to open their hands, and could reunite the
country to Rome. Before she had been three weeks on the throne, she had
received, as will be presently mentioned, a secret messenger from the
Vatican; and she had opened a correspondence with the pope, entreating
him, as an act of justice to herself and to those who had remained true to
their Catholic allegiance, to remove the interdict.[110]

Other actors in the great drama which was approaching were already
commencing their parts.

Reginald Pole having attempted in vain to recover a footing in England
on the accession of Edward, having seen his passionate expectations from
the Council of Trent melt into vapour, and Germany confirmed in heresy by
the Peace of Passau, was engaged, in the summer of 1553, at a convent on
the Lago di Garda, in re-editing his book against Henry VIII., with an
intended dedication to Edward, of whose illness he was ignorant. The first
edition, on the failure of his attempt to raise a Catholic crusade against his
country, had been withdrawn from circulation; the world had not received it
favourably, and there was a mystery about the publication which it is
difficult to unravel. In the interval between the first despatch of the book
into England as a private letter in the summer of 1536, and the appearance
of it in print at Rome in the winter of 1538-9, it was re-written, as I have
already stated, enlarged, and divided into parts. In a letter of apology which
Pole wrote to Charles V., in the summer or early autumn of 1538,[111] he
spoke of that division as having been executed by himself;[112] he said that
he had kept his book secret till the church had spoken; but Paul having
excommunicated Henry, he could no longer remain silent; he dwelt at
length on the history of the work which he was then editing,[113] and he sent
a copy at the same time with a letter, or he wrote a letter with the intention
of sending a copy, to James V. of Scotland.[114]

But Charles had refused to move; the book injured Henry not at all, and
injured fatally those who were dear to Pole; he checked the circulation of
the copies, and he declared to the Cardinal of Naples that it had been
published only at the command of the pope—that his own anxiety had been
for the suppression of it.[115] Thirteen years after this, however, writing to
Edward VI., he forgot that he had described himself to Charles as being
himself engaged in the publication; and he assured the young king that he
had never thought of publishing the book, that he had abhorred the very
thought of publishing it; that it was prepared, edited, and printed by his
friends at Rome during his own absence;[116] now, at length, he found
himself obliged in his own person to give it forth, because an edition was in
preparation elsewhere from one of the earlier copies; and he selected the

son of Henry as the person to whom he could most becomingly dedicate the
libel against his father's memory.

Edward did not live to receive this evidence of Pole's good feeling. He
died before the edition was completed; and as soon as Northumberland's
failure and Mary's accession were known at Rome, England was looked
upon in the Consistory as already recovered to the faith, and Pole was
chosen by the unanimous consent of the cardinals as the instrument of the
reconciliation. The account of the proclamation of the queen was brought to
the Vatican on the 6th of August by a courier from Paris; the pope in tears of
joy drew his commission and despatched it on the instant to the Lago di
Garda; and on the 9th Pole himself wrote to Mary to say that he had been
named legate, and waited her orders to fly to England. He still clung to his
conviction that the revolution in all its parts had been the work of a small
faction, and that he had but himself to set his foot upon the shore to be
received with an ovation; his impulse was therefore to set out without
delay; but the recollection, among other things, that he was attainted by act
of parliament, forced him to delay unwillingly till he received formal
permission to present himself.

Anxious for authentic information as to the state of England and the
queen's disposition, Julius had before despatched also a secret agent,
Commendone, afterwards a cardinal, with instructions to make his way to
London to communicate with Mary, and if possible to learn her intentions
from her own lips. Rapid movement was possible in Europe even with the
roads of the sixteenth century. Commendone was probably sent from Rome
as soon as Edward was known to be dead; he was in London, at all events,
on the 8th of August,[117] disguised as an Italian gentleman in search of
property which he professed had been bequeathed him by a kinsman. By the
favour of Providence,[118] he fell in with an acquaintance, a returned
Catholic refugee, who had a place in the household; and from this man he
learnt that the queen was virtually a prisoner in the Tower, and that the
heretics on the council allowed no one of whose business they disapproved
to have access to her. Mary, however, was made acquainted with his arrival;
a secret interview was managed, at which she promised to do her very best
in the interests of the church; but she had still, she said, to conquer her
kingdom, and Pole's coming, much as she desired it, was for the moment

out of the question; before she could draw the spiritual sword she must have
the temporal sword more firmly in her grasp, and she looked to marriage as
the best means of strengthening herself. If she married abroad, she thought
at that time of the emperor; if she accepted one of her subjects, she doubted
—in her dislike of Courtenay—whether Pole might not return in a less
odious capacity than that of Apostolic Legate; as the queen's intended
husband the country might receive him; he had not yet been ordained priest,
and deacon's orders, on a sufficient occasion, could perhaps be dispensed
with.[119] The visit, or visits, were concealed even from Renard.
Commendone was forbidden, under the strictest injunctions, to reveal what
the queen might say to him, except to the pope or to Pole; and it is the more
likely that she was serious in her expressions about the latter, from the care
with which she left Renard in ignorance of Commendone's presence.

The papal messenger remained long enough to witness a rapid change in
her position; he saw the restoration of the mass; he was in London at the
execution, and he learnt the apostasy, of Northumberland; and he carried
letters from Mary to the pope with assurances of fidelity, and entreaties for
the absolution of the kingdom. But Mary was obliged to say,
notwithstanding, that for the present she was in the power of the people, of
whom the majority mortally detested the Holy See; that the lords of the
council were in possession of vast estates which had been alienated from
the church, and they feared their titles might be called in question;[120] and,
although she agreed herself in all which Pole had urged (she had received
his letter before Commendone left England), yet that, nevertheless,
necessity acknowledged no law. Her heretical sister was in every one's
mouth, and might at any moment take her place on the throne, and for the
present, she said, to her deep regret, she could not, with prudence or safety,
allow the legate to come to her.

The queen's letters were confirmed by Commendone himself; he had
been permitted to confer in private with more than one good Catholic in the
realm; and every one had given him the same assurances,[121] although he
had urged upon them the opposite opinion entertained by Pole:[122] he had
himself witnessed the disposition with which the people regarded Elizabeth,
and he was satisfied that the queen's alarm on this head was not
exaggerated.[123]

In opinions so emphatically given, the pope was obliged to acquiesce,
and the same view was enforced upon him equally strongly by the emperor.
Charles knew England tolerably well; he was acquainted perfectly well with
the moral and intellectual unfitness of the intended legate for any office
which required discretion; and Julius, therefore, was obliged to
communicate to the eager cardinal the necessity of delay, and to express his
fear that, by excess of zeal, he might injure the cause and alienate the well-
affected queen.[124] Though Pole might not go to England, however, he
might go, as he went before, to the immediate neighbourhood; he might
repair to Flanders, with a nominal commission to mediate in the peace
which was still hoped for. In Flanders, though the pope forbore to tell him
so, he would be under the emperor's eyes and under the emperor's control,
till the vital question of the queen's marriage had been disposed of, or till
England was in a calmer humour.

About the marriage Charles was more anxious than ever; Pole was
understood to have declined the honour of being a competitor;[125] Renard
had informed the emperor of the present direction of the queen's own
inclinations; and treating himself, therefore, as out of the question on the
score of age and infirmities, he instructed his minister to propose the Prince
of Spain as a person whom the religious and the political interests of the
world alike recommended to her as a husband. The alliance of England,
Spain, and Flanders would command a European supremacy; their united
fleets would sweep the seas, and Scotland, deprived of support from France,
must become an English province; while sufficient guarantees could be
provided easily for the security of English liberties. These, in themselves,
were powerful reasons; Renard was permitted to increase their cogency by
promises of pensions, lands, and titles, or by hard money in hand, in
whatever direction such liberality could be usefully employed.[126]

The external advantages of the connection were obvious; it recommended
itself to the queen from the Spanish sympathies which she had contracted in
her blood, and from the assistance which it promised to afford her in the
great pursuit of her life. The proposal was first suggested informally. Mary
affected to find difficulties; yet, if she raised objections, it was only to
prolong the conversation upon a subject which delighted her. She spoke of
her age; Philip was twenty-seven, she ten years older; she called him "boy;"

she feared she might not be enough for him; she was unsusceptible; she had
no experience in love;[127] with such other phrases, which Renard
interpreted at their true importance. With the queen there would be no
difficulty; with the council it was far otherwise. Lord Paget was the only
English statesman who listened with any show of favour.

The complication of parties is not to be easily disentangled. Some
attempt, however, may be partially successful.

The council, the peers, the Commons, the entire lay voices of England,
liberal and conservative alike, were opposed to Rome; Gardiner was the
only statesman in the country who thought a return to Catholic union
practicable or desirable; while there was scarcely an influential family,
titled or untitled, which was not, by grant or purchase, in possession of
confiscated church property.

There was an equal unanimity in the dread that if Mary became the wife
of a Spanish sovereign England would, like the Low Countries, sink into a
provincial dependency; while, again, there was the utmost unwillingness to
be again entangled in the European war; the French ambassador insisted
that the emperor only desired the marriage to secure English assistance; and
the council believed that, whatever promises might be made, whatever
stipulations insisted on, such a marriage, sooner or later, would implicate
them. The country was exhausted, the currency ruined, the people in a state
of unexampled suffering, and the only remedy was to be looked for in quiet
and public economy; there were attractions in the offer of a powerful
alliance, but the very greatness of it added to their reluctance; they desired
to isolate England from European quarrels, and marry their queen at home.
With these opinions Paget alone disagreed, while Gardiner was loudly
national.

On the other hand, though Gardiner held the restoration of the papal
authority to be tolerable, yet he dreaded the return of Pole, as being likely to
supersede him in the direction of the English Church;[128] the party who
agreed with the chancellor about the marriage, and about Pole, disagreed
with him about the pope; while Paget, who was in favour of the marriage,
was with the lords on the supremacy, and, as the Romanising views of the

queen became notorious, was inclining, with Arundel and Pembroke,
towards the Protestants.

No wonder, therefore, that the whole council were in confusion and at
cross purposes. No sooner were Charles's proposals definitely known than
the entire machinery of the government was dislocated. Mary represented
herself to Renard as without a friend whom she could trust; and the letters,
both of Renard and Noailles, contain little else but reports how the lords
were either quarrelling, or had, one after the other, withdrawn in disgust to
their country houses. Now it was Pembroke that was gone, now Mason,
now Paget; then Courtenay was a prisoner in his house; then Lord
Winchester was forbidden to appear at court: the ministers were in distrust
of each other and of their mistress; the queen was condemned to keep them
in their offices because she durst not make them enemies; while the
Stanleys, Howards, Talbots, and Nevilles were glooming apart, indignant at
the neglect of their own claims.

The queen herself was alternately angry and miserable; by the middle of
September Renard congratulated Charles on her growing ill-humour; the
five Dudleys and Lady Jane, he hoped, would be now disposed of, and
Elizabeth would soon follow.

Elizabeth's danger was great, and proceeded as much from her friend's
indiscretion as from the hatred of her enemies. Every one who disliked the
queen's measures, used Elizabeth's name. Renard was for ever hissing his
suspicions in the queen's ear, and, unfortunately, she was a too willing
listener—not, indeed, that Renard hated Elizabeth for her own sake, for he
rather admired her—or for religion's sake, for he had a most statesmanlike
indifference to religion; but he saw in her the queen's successful rival in the
favour of the people, the heir-presumptive to the crown, whose influence
would increase the further the queen travelled on the road on which he was
leading her, and, therefore, an enemy who, if possible, should be destroyed.
An opportunity of creating a collision between the sisters was not long
wanting. The lords of the council were now generally present at mass in the
royal chapel. Elizabeth, with Anne of Cleves, had as yet refused to appear.
Her resistance was held to imply a sinister intention; and on the 2nd and 3rd
of September the council were instructed to bring her to compliance.[129]

Yet the days passed, the priest sang, and the heir to the crown continued
absent. Gardiner, indeed, told Renard that she was not obdurate; he had
spoken to her, and she had seemed to say that, if he could convince her, her
objections would cease;[130] but they had not ceased so far; she did not
attend. In the happiness of her first triumph Mary had treated Elizabeth like
a sister, but her manner had relapsed into coldness; and the princess, at
length, knowing how her name was made use of, requested a private
interview, which, with difficulty, was granted. The sisters, each
accompanied by a single lady, met in a gallery with a half-door between
them. Elizabeth threw herself on her knees. She said that she perceived her
majesty was displeased with her; she could not tell what the cause might be,
unless it was religion; and for this, she said, she might be reasonably
forgiven; she had been educated, as the queen was aware, in the modern
belief, and she understood no other; if her majesty would send her books
and teachers, she would read; she would listen; she could say no more.

Mary, at the moment, was delighted. Like a true Catholic, however, she
insisted that obedience must precede faith; come to the mass, she said, and
belief will be the reward of your submission; make your first trial on the
mass of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.[131]

Elizabeth consented. She was present, but present reluctantly; pretending,
as Renard said, to be ill; the next Sunday she was again absent. The queen,
knowing the effect which her conduct would produce, again sent for her,
and asked her earnestly what she really believed; the world said that,
although she had complied once, her compliance was feigned, and that she
had submitted out of fear; she desired to hear the truth. Elizabeth could
reply merely that she had done as the queen had required her to do, with no
ulterior purpose; if her majesty wished she would make a public declaration
to that effect.[132] The queen was obliged to receive her answer; but she told
Renard that her sister trembled as she spoke, and well, Renard said, he
understood her agitation; she was the hope of the heretics, and the heretics
were raising their heads; the Papists, they said, had had their day, but it was
waning; if Elizabeth lived, England would again apostatise.

There was no difficulty in keeping the queen's jealousy alive against her
sister. Courtenay was another offence in the eye of the ambassador, as the

rival to Philip, who found favour with the English council. The queen
affected to treat Courtenay as a child; she commanded him to keep to his
house; she forbade him to dine abroad without special permission; the title
of Earl of Devon was given to him, and he had a dress made for him to take
his seat in, of velvet and gold, but the queen would not allow him to wear it:
[133] and yet, to her own and the ambassador's mortification, she learnt that
he affected the state of a prince; that he spoke of his marriage with her as
certain; that certain prelates, Gardiner especially, encouraged his
expectation, and one or more of them had knelt in his presence.[134] The
danger had been felt from the first that, if she persisted in her fancy for the
Prince of Spain, Courtenay might turn his addresses to Elizabeth; the lords
would in that case fall off to his support, and the crown would fall from her
head as easily as it had settled there.

More afflicting to Mary than these personal grievances was the
pertinacity with which the council continued, in their public documents, to
describe her as Head of the Church, the execrable title which was the
central root of the apostasy. In vain she protested; the hateful form—
indispensable till it was taken away by parliament—was thrust under her
eyes in every paper which was brought to her for signature, and she was
obliged to acknowledge the designation with her own hand and pen.

Amidst these anxieties, September wore away. Parliament was to open on
the fifth of October, and either before or after the meeting the queen was to
be crowned. The ceremony was an occasion of considerable agitation; Mary
herself was alarmed lest the holy oil should have lost its efficacy through
the interdict; and she entreated Renard to procure her a fresh supply from
Flanders, blessed by the excellent hands of the Bishop of Arras. But the oil
was not the gravest difficulty. As the rumour spread of the intended Spanish
marriage, libellous handbills were scattered about London; the people said
it should not be till they had fought for it. A disturbance at Greenwich, on
the 25th of September, extended to Southwark, where Gardiner's house was
attacked,[135] and a plot was discovered to murder him: in the day he wore a
shirt of mail under his robes, and he slept with a guard of a hundred men.
Threatening notices were even found on the floor of the queen's bed-room,
left there by unknown hands. Noailles assured the lords that his own
government would regard the marriage as little short of a declaration of war,

so inevitably would war be the result of it; and Gardiner, who was unjustly
suspected of being in the Spanish interest, desired to delay the coronation
till parliament should have met; intending that the first act of the assembly
should be to tie Mary's hands with a memorial which she could not set
aside. She inherited under her father's will, by which her accession was
made conditional on her marrying not without the consent of the council;
parliament might remind her both of her own obligation to obey her father's
injunctions, and of theirs to see that they were obeyed.

With the same object, though not with the same object only, the lords of
the council supported the Bishop of Winchester. They proposed to alter the
form of the coronation oath, and to bind the queen by an especial clause to
maintain the independence of the English Church—a precaution, as it
proved, not unnecessary—for the existing form was already inconvenient,
and Mary was meditating how, when called on to swear to observe the laws
and constitutions of the realm, she could introduce an adjective sub silentio;
she intended to swear only that she would observe the JUST laws and
constitutions.[136] But she looked with the gravest alarm to the introduction
of more awkward phrases; if words were added which would be equivalent
(as she would understand them) to a denial of Christ and his Church, she
had resolved to refuse at all hazards.[137]

But her courage was not put to the test. The true grounds on which the
delay of the coronation was desired could not be avowed. The queen was
told that her passage through the streets would be unsafe until her accession
had been sanctioned by parliament, and the act repealed by which she was
illegitimatised. With Paget's help she faced down these objections, and
declared that she would be crowned at once; she appointed the 1st of
October for the ceremony; on the 28th of September she sent for the council
to attempt an appeal to their generosity. She spoke to them at length of her
past life and sufferings, of the conspiracy to set her aside, and of the
wonderful Providence which had preserved her and raised her to the throne;
her only desire, she said, was to do her duty to God and to her subjects; and
she hoped, turning as she spoke, pointedly to Gardiner, that they would not
forget their loyalty, and would stand by her in her extreme necessity.
Observing them hesitate, she cried, "My lords, on my knees I implore
you"—and flung herself on the ground at their feet.[138]

The most skilful acting could not have served Mary's purpose better than
this outburst of natural emotion; the spectacle of their kneeling sovereign
overcame for a time the scheming passions of her ministers; they were
affected, burst into tears, and withdrew their opposition to her wishes.[139]

On the 30th, the procession from the Tower to Westminster through the
streets was safely accomplished. The retinues of the lords protected the
queen from insult, and London put on its usual outward signs of rejoicing;
St. Paul's spire was rigged with yards like a ship's mast, an adventurous
sailor sitting astride on the weathercock five hundred feet in the air:[140]
there was no interruption; and the next day (October 1), Arras having sent
the necessary unction,[141] the ceremony was performed at the Abbey
without fresh burdens being laid on Mary's conscience.

The banquet in the great hall passed off with equal success; Sir Edward
Dymocke, the champion, rode in and flung down his gage, and was listened
to with becoming silence: on the whole, Mary's friends were agreeably
disappointed; only Renard observed that, between the French ambassador
and the Lady Elizabeth there seemed to be some secret understanding; the
princess saluted Noailles as he passed her; Renard she would neither
address nor look at—and Renard was told that she complained to Noailles
of the weight of her coronet, and that Noailles "bade her have patience, and
before long she would exchange it for a crown."[142]

The coronation was a step gained; it was one more victory, yet it
produced no material alteration. Rome, and the Spanish marriage, remained
as before, insoluble elements of difficulty; the queen, to her misfortune, was
driven to rely more and more on Renard; and at this time she was so
desperate and so ill-advised as to think of surrounding herself with an Irish
bodyguard; she went so far as to send a commission to Sir George Stanley
for their transport.[143]

The scheme was abandoned, but not because her relations with her own
people were improved. Before parliament met, an anonymous pamphlet
appeared by some English nobleman on the encroachments of the House of
Austria, and on the treatment of other countries which had fallen through
marriages into Austrian hands. In Lombardy and Naples every office of
trust was described as held by a Spaniard; the Prince of Salerno was

banished, the Prince of Benevento was a prisoner in Flanders, the Duke of
Calabria a prisoner in Spain. Treating Mary's hopes of children as
ridiculous, the writer pictured England, bound hand and foot, at the mercy
of the insolent Philip, whose first step, on entering the country, would be to
seize the Tower and the fleet, the next, to introduce a Spanish army and
suppress the parliament. The free, glorious England of the Plantagenets
would then be converted into a prostrate appanage of the dominions of Don
Carlos. The pamphlet was but the expression of the universal feeling.
Gardiner, indeed, perplexed between his religion and his country, for a few
days wavered. Gardiner had a long debt to pay off against the Protestants,
and a Spanish force, divided into garrisons for London and other towns,
would assist him materially.[144] Partly, however, from attachment to
Courtenay, partly from loyalty to his country, he shook off the temptation
and continued to support the opposition.[145]

Mary, except for the cautious support of Paget, stood otherwise alone
coquetting with her fancy, and played upon by the skilful Renard. The
queen and the ambassador were incessantly together, and Philip was the
never-tiring subject of conversation between them. She talked of his
disposition. She had heard, she said, that he was proud; that he was inferior
to his father in point of ability; and then he was young, and she had been
told sad stories about him; if he was of warm temperament, he would not
suit her at all, she said, considering the age at which she had arrived.[146]
Moreover, when she was married, she must obey as God commanded; her
husband, perhaps, might wish to place Spaniards in authority in England,
and she would have to refuse; and that he would not like. To all of which,
being the fluttering of the caught fly, Renard would answer that his
highness was more like an angel than a man; his youth was in his favour,
for he might live to see his child of age, and England had had too much
experience of minorities. Life, he added remarkably, was shorter than it
used to be; sixty was now a great age for a king; and as the world was, men
were as mature at thirty as in the days of his grandfather they were
considered at forty.[147] Then touching the constant sore—"her majesty," he
said, "had four enemies, who would never rest till they had destroyed her or
were themselves destroyed—the heretics, the friends of the late Duke of
Northumberland, the courts of France and Scotland, and, lastly, her sister
Elizabeth. Her subjects were restless, turbulent, and changeable as the

ocean of which they were so fond;[148] the sovereigns of England had been
only able to rule with a hand of iron, and with severities which had earned
them the name of tyrants;[149] they had not spared the blood royal in order
to secure their thrones, and she too must act as they had acted, leaning for
support, meanwhile, on the arm of a powerful prince."

To these dark hints Mary ever listened eagerly—meantime she was
harassed painfully from another quarter.

Reginald Pole, as might have been expected from his temperament, could
ill endure the delay of his return to England. The hesitation of the queen and
the objections of the emperor were grounded upon arguments which he
assured himself were fallacious; the English nation, he continued to insist,
were devoted to the Holy See; so far from being himself unpopular, the
Cornish in the rebellion under Edward had petitioned for his recall, and had
even designated him by the forbidden name of cardinal; they loved him and
they longed for him; and, regarding himself as the chosen instrument of
Providence to repair the iniquities of Henry VIII., he held the obstructions
to his return not only to be mistaken, but to be impious. The duty of the
returning prodigal was to submit; to lay aside all earthly considerations—to
obey God, God's vicegerent the pope, and himself the pope's representative.

Mendoza had been sent by Charles to meet Pole on his way to Flanders,
and reason him into moderation. In return the legate wrote himself to
Charles's confessor, commanding him to explain to his master the sin which
he was committing. "The objection to his going to England," as Pole
understood, "was the supposed danger of an outbreak". Were the truth as the
emperor feared, the queen's first duty would be, nevertheless, to God, her
own soul, and the souls of the millions of her subjects who were perishing
in separation from the church; for no worldly policy or carnal respect ought
she to defer for a moment to apply a remedy to so monstrous a calamity.[150]
But the danger was imaginary—or, rather, such danger as there was, arose
from the opposite cause. The right of the queen to the throne did not rest on
an act of parliament; it rested on her birth as the lawful child of the lawful
marriage between Henry and Catherine of Arragon. Parliament, he was
informed, would affirm the marriage legitimate, if nothing was said about
the pope; but, unless the pope's authority was first recognised, parliament

would only stultify itself; the papal dispensation alone made valid a
connection which, if the pope had no power to dispense, was incestuous,
and the offspring of it illegitimate. God had made the peaceful settlement of
the kingdom dependent on submission to the Holy See,[151] and for
parliament to interfere and give an opinion upon the subject would be but a
fresh act of schism and disobedience.

The original letter, being in our own State Paper Office, was probably
given by the confessor to Charles, and by Charles sent over to England.
Most logical it was; so logical that it quite outwitted the intention of the
writer. While it added to the queen's distress, it removed, nevertheless, all
objections which might have been raised by the anti-papal party against the
act to legitimatise her. So long as there was a fear that, by a repeal of the
Act of Divorce between her father and mother, the pope's authority might
indirectly be admitted, some difficulty was to be anticipated; as a new
assertion of English independence, it could be carried with unanimous
alacrity.

What parliament would or would not consent to, however, would soon
cease to be a mystery. The advice of the emperor on the elections had been,
for the most part, followed. It was obvious, indeed, that a sovereign who
was unable to control her council was in no position to dictate to
constituencies. There were no circulars to the lords-lieutenant of counties,
such as Northumberland had issued, or such as Mary herself, a year later,
was able to issue; while the unusual number of members returned to the
Lower House—four hundred and thirty, it will be seen, voted on one great
occasion—shows that the issue of writs had been on the widest scale. On
the whole, it was, perhaps, the fairest election which had taken place for
many years. In the House of Lords the ejection of the Reforming bishops
and the restoration of their opponents—the death, imprisonment, or
disgrace of three noblemen on the Reforming side, and the return to public
life of the peers who, in the late reign, had habitually absented themselves,
had restored a conservative majority. How the representatives of the people
would conduct themselves was the anxious and all-agitating question. The
queen, however, could console herself with knowing that Protestantism, as
a system of belief, had made its way chiefly among the young; the votes
were with the middle-aged and the old.

The session opened on the 5th of October with the ancient form, so long
omitted, of the mass of the Holy Ghost. Two Protestant bishops, Taylor of
Lincoln and Harley of Hereford, who had been left as yet undisturbed in
their sees, on the service commencing, rose and went out; they were not
allowed to return. Two prebends, Alexander Nowel and Doctor Tregonwell
had been returned to the Lower House; Nowel as a member of Convocation
was declared ineligible;[152] Tregonwell, being a layman, was on
consideration allowed to retain his seat. These were the only ejections
which can be specifically traced, and the silence of those who were
interested in making the worst of Mary's conduct, may be taken to prove
that they did not know of any more.[153] The Houses, purged of these
elements, then settled to their work; and, plunging at once into the great
question of the time, the Commons came to an instant understanding that
the lay owners of church lands should not be disturbed in their tenures
under any pretext whatsoever.

Commendone, on returning to Rome, had disregarded his obligations to
secrecy, and had related all that the queen had said to him in the open
consistory; from the consistory the account travelled back to England, and
arrived inopportunely at the opening of parliament. The fatal subject of the
lands had been spoken of, and the queen had expressed to Commendone her
intention to restore them, if possible, to the church. The council cross-
questioned her, and she could neither deny her words nor explain them
away; the Commons first, the Lords immediately after, showed her that,
whatever might be her own hopes or wishes, their minds on that point were
irrevocably fixed.[154]

No less distinct were the opinions expressed in the Lower House on the
Papacy. The authority of the pope, as understood in England, was not a
question of doctrine, nor was the opposition to it of recent origin. It had
been thrown off after a struggle which had lasted for centuries, and a
victory[155] so hardly won was not to be lightly parted with. Lord Paget
warned the queen that Pole's name must not be so much as mentioned, or
some unwelcome resolution about him would be immediately passed;[156]
and she was in hourly dread that before they would consent to anything,
they would question her whether she would or would not maintain the royal
supremacy.[157] On the other hand, if no difficulties were raised about the

pope or the church lands, the preliminary discussion, both among Lords and
Commons, showed a general disposition to re-establish religion in the
condition in which Henry left it—provided, that is to say, no penalties were
to attach to nonconformity; and the Houses were ready also to take the step
so much deprecated by Pole, and pass a measure legitimatising the queen,
provided no mention was to be made of the papal dispensation. Some
difference of opinion on the last point had shown itself in the House of
Commons,[158] but the legate's ingenuity had removed all serious obstacles.

Again parliament seemed determined that the Act of Succession, and the
will of Henry VIII., should not be tampered with, to the disfavour of
Elizabeth. It is singular that Renard, and probably, therefore, Mary, were
unaware of the position in which Elizabeth was placed towards the crown.
They imagined that her only title was as a presumptively legitimate child;
that if the Act of Divorce between Catherine of Arragon and Henry was
repealed, she must then, as a bastard, be cut off from her expectations. Had
Elizabeth's prospects been liable to be affected by the legitimisation of her
sister, the queen would have sued as vainly for it as she sued afterwards in
favour of her husband. With unmixed mortification Renard learnt that
Elizabeth, in the eye of the law, had been as illegitimate as Mary, and that
her place in the order of succession rested on her father's will. He flattered
himself, at first, that Henry's dispositions could be set aside;[159] but he very
soon found that there was no present hope of it.

These general features of the temper of parliament were elicited in
conversation in the first few days of the session. The Marchioness of
Exeter, during the same days, was released from her attainder, Courtenay
was restored in blood, and a law, similar to that with which Somerset
commenced his Protectorate, repealed all late treason acts, restricted the
definition of treason within the limits of the statute of Edward III., and
relieved the clergy of the recent extensions of the Premunire. The queen
gave her assent to these three measures on the 21st of October; and there
was then an interval of three days, during which the bishops were consulted
on the view taken by parliament of the queen's legitimacy. Renard told the
Bishop of Norwich, Thirlby, that they must bend to the times, and leave the
pope to his fortunes. They acted on the ambassador's advice. An act was
passed, in which the marriage from which the queen was sprung, was

declared valid, and the pope's name was not mentioned; but the essential
point being secured, the framers of the statute were willing to gratify their
mistress by the intensity of the bitterness with which the history of the
divorce was related.[160] The bishops must have been glad to escape from so
mortifying a subject, and to apply themselves to the more congenial subject
of religion.

As soon as the disposition of parliament had been generally ascertained,
the restoration of the mass was first formally submitted, for the sake of
decency, to the clergy of Convocation.

The bench had been purged of dangerous elements. The Lower House
contained a small fraction of Protestants just large enough to permit a
controversy, and to insure a triumph to their antagonists. The proceedings
opened with a sermon from Harpsfeld, then chaplain of the Bishop of
London, in which, in a series of ascending antitheses, Northumberland was
described as Holofernes, and Mary as Judith; Northumberland was Haman,
and Mary was Esther; Northumberland was Sisera, and Mary was the
mother in Israel. Mary was the sister who had chosen the better part:
religion ceased and slept until Mary arose a virgin in Israel, and with the
mother of God Mary might sing, "Behold, from henceforth all generations
shall call me blessed." The trumpet having thus sounded, the lists were
drawn for the combat; the bishops sat in their robes, the clergy stood
bareheaded, and the champions appeared. Hugh Weston, Dean of Windsor,
Dean of Westminster afterwards, Dr. Watson, Dr. Moreman, and the
preacher Harpsfeld undertook to defend the real presence against Phillips
Dean of Rochester, Philpot, Cheny, Aylmer, and Young.

The engagement lasted for a week. The reforming theologians fought for
their dangerous cause bravely and temperately; and Weston, who was at
once advocate and prolocutor, threw down his truncheon at last, and told
Philpot that he was meeter for Bethlehem than for a company of grave and
learned men, and that he should come no more into their house.[161] The
orthodox thus ruled themselves the victors: but beyond the doors of the
Convocation House they did not benefit their cause. The dispute, according
to Renard, resolved itself, in the opinion of the laity, into scandalous railing
and recrimination;[162] the people were indignant; and the Houses of

Parliament, disgusted and dissatisfied, resumed the discussion among
themselves, as more competent to conduct it with decency. In eight days the
various changes introduced by Edward VI. were argued in the House of
Commons, and points were treated of there, said Renard, which a general
council could scarcely resolve. At length, by a majority, which exceeded
Gardiner's most sanguine hopes, of 350 against 80, the mass was restored,
and the clergy were required to return to celibacy.[163]

The precipitation with which Somerset, Cranmer, and Northumberland
had attempted to carry out the Reformation, was thus followed by a natural
recoil. Protestant theology had erected itself into a system of intolerant
dogmatism, and had crowded the gaols with prisoners who were guilty of
no crime but Nonconformity; it had now to reap the fruits of its injustice,
and was superseded till its teachers had grown wiser. The first parliament of
Mary was indeed more Protestant, in the best sense of that word, than the
statesmen and divines of Edward. While the House of Commons re-
established the Catholic services, they decided, after long consideration,
that no punishment should be inflicted on those who declined to attend
those services.[164] There was to be no pope, no persecution, no restoration
of the abbey lands—resolutions, all of them disagreeable to a reactionary
court. On the Spanish marriage both Lords and Commons were equally
impracticable. The Catholic noblemen—the Earls of Derby, Shrewsbury,
Bath, and Sussex were in the interest of Courtenay. The chancellor had
become attached to him in the Tower when they were fellow-prisoners
there; and Sir Robert Rochester, Sir Francis Englefield, Sir Edward
Waldegrave, the queen's tried and faithful officers of the household, went
with the chancellor. Never, on any subject, was there greater unanimity in
England than in the disapproval of Philip as a husband for the queen, and,
on the 29th of October, the Lower House had a petition in preparation to
entreat her to choose from among her subjects.

To Courtenay, indeed, Mary might legitimately object. Since his
emancipation from the Tower he had wandered into folly and debauchery;
he was vain and inexperienced, and his insolence was kept in check only by
the quality so rare in an Englishman of personal timidity. But to refuse
Courtenay was one thing, to fasten her choice on the heir of a foreign
kingdom was another. Paget insisted, indeed, that, as the Queen of Scots

was contracted to the Dauphin, unless England could strengthen herself
with a connection of corresponding strength, the union of the French and
Scottish crowns was a menace to her liberties.[165] But the argument, though
important in itself, was powerless against the universal dread of the
introduction of a foreign sovereign, and it availed only to provide Mary
with an answer to the protests and entreaties of her other ministers.

Perhaps, too, it confirmed her in her obstinacy, and allowed her to
persuade herself that, in following her own inclination, she was consulting
the interests of her subjects. Obstinate, at any rate, she was beyond all reach
of persuasion. Once only she wavered, after her resolution was first taken.
Some one had told her that, if she married Philip, she would find herself the
step-mother of a large family of children who had come into the world
irregularly. A moral objection she was always willing to recognise. She sent
for Renard, and conjured him to tell her whether the prince was really the
good man which he had described him; Renard assured her that he was the
very paragon of the world.

She caught the ambassador's hand.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "do you speak as a subject whose duty is to praise
his sovereign, or do you speak as a man?"

"Your majesty may take my life," he answered, "if you find him other
than I have told you."

"Oh that I could but see him!" she said.

She dismissed Renard gratefully. A few days after she sent for him again,
when she was expecting the petition of the House of Commons. "Lady
Clarence," one of the queen's attendants, was the only other person present.
The holy wafer was in the room on an altar, which she called her protector,
her guide, her adviser.[166] Mary told them that she spent her days and
nights in tears and prayers before it, imploring God to direct her; and as she
was speaking her emotions overcame her; she flung herself on her knees
with Renard and Lady Clarence at her side, and the three together before
the altar sang the Veni Creator. The invocation was heard in the breasts
from which it was uttered. As the chant died into silence, Mary rose from

the ground as if inspired, and announced the divine message. The Prince of
Spain was the chosen of Heaven for the virgin queen; if miracles were
required to give him to her, there was a stronger than man who would work
them; the malice of the world should not keep him from her; she would
cherish him and love him, and him alone; and never thenceforward, by a
wavering thought, would she give him cause for jealousy.[167]

It was true that she had deliberately promised not to do what she was
now resolved on doing, but that was no matter.

The Commons' petition was by this time (November) ready, but the
agitation of the last scene brought on a palpitation of the heart which for the
time enabled the queen to decline to receive it; while Renard assailed the
different ministers, and extracted from them their general views on the state
of the country, and the measures which should be pursued.

The Bishop of Winchester he found relaxing in his zeal for Rome, and
desiring a solid independent English government, the re-enactment of the
Six Articles, and an Anglican religious tyranny supported by the lords of the
old blood. Nobles and people were against the pope, Gardiner said, and
against foreign interference of all sorts; Mary could not marry Philip
without a papal dispensation, which must be kept secret; the country would
not tolerate it;[168] the French would play into the hands of the heretics, and
the Spanish alliance would give them the game; there would be a cry raised
that Spanish troops would be introduced to inflict the pope upon the people
by force. If the emperor desired the friendship of England, he would
succeed best by not pressing the connection too close. Political marriages
were dangerous. Cromwell tied Henry VIII. to Anne of Cleves; the marriage
lasted a night, and destroyed him and his policy. Let the queen accept the
choice of her people, marry Courtenay, send Elizabeth to the Tower, and
extirpate heresy with fire and sword.

These were the views of Gardiner, from whom Renard turned next to
Paget.

If the queen sent Elizabeth to the Tower, Lord Paget said, her life would
not be safe for a day. Paget wished her to be allowed to choose her own
husband; but she must first satisfy parliament that she had no intention of

tampering with the succession. Should she die without children, the country
must not be left exposed to claims from Spain on behalf of Philip, or from
France on behalf of the Queen of Scots. His own advice, therefore, was, that
Mary should frankly acknowledge her sister as her presumptive successor;
Elizabeth might be married to Courtenay, and, in default of heirs of her own
body, it might be avowed and understood that those two should be king and
queen. Could she make up her mind to this course, could she relinquish her
dreams of restoring the authority of the pope, of meddling with the church
lands, and interfering with the liberties of her people, she might rely on the
loyalty of the country, and her personal inclinations would not be interfered
with.[169]

Both the lines of conduct thus sketched were consistent and intelligible,
and either might have been successfully followed. But neither the one nor
the other satisfied Mary. She would have Philip, she would have the pope,
and she would not recognise her sister. If she insisted on choosing a
husband for herself, she felt it would be difficult to refuse her; her object
was to surprise the council into committing themselves, and she succeeded.
On the 8th of November, when they were in session in a room in the palace,
Renard presented Mary in the emperor's name with a formal offer of
Philip's hand, and requested a distinct answer, Yes or no. The queen said she
would consult her ministers, and repaired in agitation to the council-room.
[170] Distrusting one another, unprepared for the sudden demand, and unable
to consult in her presence, the lords made some answer, which she
interpreted into acquiescence: Mary returned radiant with joy, and told the
ambassador that his proposal was accepted.

A momentary lull followed, during which Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop
of Canterbury, Lady Jane Grey, Lord Guilford, Lord Ambrose, and Lord
Henry Dudley were taken from the Tower on foot to the Guildhall, and were
there tried, found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to die. Lady Jane the
queen still intended to spare; the Dudleys she meant to pause upon.
Cranmer, in a grave, mild letter, explained what his conduct had been with
respect to his so-called treason; but his story, creditable to him as it was,
produced no effect; Cranmer was immediately to be put to death. That was
the first intention, though it was found necessary to postpone his fate
through a superstitious scruple. The archbishop had received the pallium

from Rome, and, until degraded by apostolic authority, he could not,
according to Catholic rule, be condemned by a secular tribunal. But there
was no intention of sparing him at the time of his trial; in a few days,
Renard wrote on the 17th of November, "the archbishop" will be executed;
and Mary, triumphant, as she believed herself, on the question nearest to her
heart, had told him that the melancholy which had weighed upon her from
childhood was rolling away; she had never yet known the meaning of
happiness, and she was about to be rewarded at last.[171]

The struggle had told upon her. She was looking aged and worn,[172] and
her hopes of children, if she married, were thought extremely small. But she
considered that she had won the day, and was now ready to face the
Commons; the House had chafed at the delay: they had talked largely of
their intentions; if the queen's answer was unsatisfactory, they would
dissolve themselves, they said, and return to their counties. On the 16th of
November a message was brought that the Speaker would at last be
admitted to the presence. The interview which followed, Mary thus herself
described to Renard. The council were present; the Speaker was introduced,
and the queen received him standing.

In an oration, she said, replete to weariness with fine phrases and historic
precedents, the Speaker requested her, in the name of the commonwealth, to
marry. The succession was perplexed; the Queen of Scots made pretensions
to the crown; and, in the event of her death, a civil war was imminent. Let
her majesty take a husband, therefore, and with God's grace the kingdom
would not be long without an heir whose title none would dispute. Yet, in
taking a husband, the Speaker said, her majesty's faithful Commons trusted
she would not choose from abroad. A foreign prince had interests of his
own which might not be English interests; he would have command of
English armies, fleets, and fortresses, and he might betray his trust; he
might involve the country in wars; he might make promises and break
them; he might carry her highness away out of the realm; or he might bring
up her children in foreign courts and in foreign habits. Let her marry,
therefore, one of her own subjects.

The Speaker was so prolix, so tedious, so confused, the queen said—his
sentences were so long drawn and so little to the purpose—that she sate

down before he had half-finished. When he came to the words "Marry a
subject," she could remain silent no longer.

Replies to addresses of the House of Commons were usually read by the
chancellor; but, careless of forms, she again started to her feet, and spoke:
—[173]

"For your desire to see us married we thank you; your desire to dictate to
us the consort whom we shall choose we consider somewhat superfluous;
the English parliament has not been wont to use such language to their
sovereigns, and where private persons in such cases follow their private
tastes, sovereigns may reasonably challenge an equal liberty. If you, our
Commons, force upon us a husband whom we dislike, it may occasion the
inconvenience of our death;[174] if we marry where we do not love, we shall
be in our grave in three months, and the heir of whom you speak will not
have been brought into being. We have heard much from you of the
incommodities which may attend our marriage; we have not heard from you
of the commodities thereof—one of which is of some weight with us, the
commodity, namely, of our private inclination. We have not forgotten our
coronation oath. We shall marry as God shall direct our choice, to his
honour and to our country's good."

She would hear no reply. The Speaker was led out, and as he left the
room Arundel whispered to Gardiner that he had lost his office; the queen
had usurped it. At the same moment the queen herself turned to the
chancellor—"I have to thank you, my lord, for this business," she said.

The chancellor swore in tears that he was innocent; the Commons had
drawn their petition themselves; for himself it was true he was well inclined
towards Courtenay; he had known him in the Tower.

"And is your having known him in the Tower," she cried, "a reason that
you should think him a fitting husband for me? I will never, never marry
him—that I promise you—and I am a woman of my word; what I say I do."

"Choose where you will," Gardiner answered, "your majesty's consort
shall find in me the most obedient of his subjects."

Mary had now the bit between her teeth, and, resisting all efforts to check
or guide her, was making her own way with obstinate resolution.

The next point was the succession, which, notwithstanding the humour of
parliament, should be re-arranged, if force or skill could do it. There were
four possible claimants after herself, she told Renard, and in her own
opinion the best title was that of the Queen of Scots. But the country
objected, and the emperor would not have the English crown fall to France.
The Greys were out of the question, but their mother, the Duchess of
Suffolk, was eligible; and there was Lady Lennox, also, Darnley's mother,
who perhaps, after all, would be the best choice that could be made.[175]
Elizabeth, she was determined, should never, never succeed. She had
spoken to Paget about it, she said, and Paget had remonstrated; Paget had
said marry her to Courtenay, recognise her as presumptive heir, and add a
stipulation, if necessary, that she become a Catholic; but, Catholic or no
Catholic, she said, her sister should never reign in England with consent of
hers; she was a heretic, a hypocrite, and a bastard, and her infamous mother
had been the cause of all the calamities which had befallen the realm.

Even Renard was alarmed at this burst of passion. He had fed Mary's
suspicions till they were beyond either his control or her own; and the
attitude of parliament had lately shown him that, if any step were taken
against Elizabeth without provocation on her part, it would infinitely
increase the difficulty of concluding the marriage. He was beginning to
believe, and he ventured to hint to the queen, that Paget's advice might be
worth consideration; but on this subject she would listen to nothing.

Elizabeth had hitherto, when at court, taken precedence of all other
ladies. The queen now compelled her to walk behind Lady Lennox and the
Duchess of Suffolk, as a sign of the meditated change;[176] and the ladies of
the court were afraid to be seen speaking to her. But in reply to Mary's
derogatory treatment, the young lords, knights, and gentlemen gathered
ostentatiously round the princess when she rode abroad, or thronged the
levees at her house; old-established statesmen said, in Renard's ear, that, let
the queen decide as she would, no foreigner should reign in England; and
Lord Arundel believed that Elizabeth's foot was already on the steps of the
throne. A large and fast-growing party, which included more than one

member of the Privy Council, were now beginning to consider, as the best
escape from Philip, that Courtenay had better fly from the court, taking
Elizabeth with him—call round him in their joint names all who would
strike with him for English independence, and proclaim the queen deposed.

There was uncertainty about Elizabeth herself; both Noailles and Renard
believed that she would consent to this dangerous proposal; but she had
shown Courtenay, hitherto, no sign of favour; while Courtenay, on his side,
complained that he was frightened by her haughty ways. Again there was a
serious difficulty in Courtenay's character; he was too cowardly for a
dangerous enterprise, too incapable for an intricate one, and his weak
humour made men afraid to trust themselves to a person who, to save
himself, might at any moment betray them. Noailles, however, said
emphatically that, were Courtenay anything but what he was, his success
would be certain.[177]

The plot grew steadily into definite form. Devonshire and Cornwall were
prepared for insurrection, and thither, as to the stronghold of the Courtenay
family, Elizabeth was to be first carried. Meantime the ferment of popular
feeling showed in alarming symptoms through the surface. The council
were in continual quarrel. Parliament, since the rebuff of the Speaker, had
not grown more tractable, and awkward questions began to be asked about a
provision for the married clergy. All had been already gained which could
be hoped for from the present House of Commons; and, on the 6th of
December, the session ended in a dissolution. The same day a dead dog was
thrown through the window of the presence chamber with ears cropped, a
halter about its neck, and a label saying that all the priests in England
should be hanged.

Renard, who, though not admitted, like Noailles, into the confidence of
the conspirators, yet knew the drift of public feeling, and knew also
Arundel's opinion of the queen's prospects, insisted that Mary should place
some restraint upon herself, and treat her sister at least with outward
courtesy; Philip was expected at Christmas, should nothing untoward
happen in the interval; and the ambassador prevailed on her, at last, to
pretend that her suspicions were at an end. His own desire, he said, was as
great as Mary's that Elizabeth should be detected in some treasonable

correspondence; but harshness only placed her on her guard; she would be
less careful, if she believed that she was no longer distrusted. The princess,
alarmed perhaps at finding herself the unconsenting object of dangerous
schemes, had asked permission to retire to her country house. It was agreed
that she should go; persons in her household were bribed to watch her; and
the queen, yielding to Renard's entreaties, received her when she came to
take leave with an appearance of affection so well counterfeited, that it
called out the ambassador's applause.[178] She made her a present of pearls,
with a head-dress of sable; and the princess, on her side, implored the queen
to give no more credit to slanders against her. They embraced; Elizabeth left
the court; and, as she went out of London, five hundred gentlemen formed
about her as a voluntary escort.[179] There were not wanting fools, says
Renard, who would persuade the queen that her sister's last words were
honestly spoken; but she remembers too acutely the injuries which her
mother and herself suffered at Anne Boleyn's hands; and she has a fixed
conviction that Elizabeth, unless she can be first disposed of, will be a cause
of infinite calamities to the realm.[180](Back to Content)

CHAPTER II.

THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.

The fears of Renard and the hopes of Noailles were occasioned by the
unanimity of Catholics and heretics in the opposition to the marriage; yet,
so singular was the position of parties, that this very unanimity was the
condition which made the marriage possible. The Catholic lords and
gentlemen were jealous of English independence, and, had they stood alone,
they would have coerced the queen into an abandonment of her intentions:
but, if they dreaded a Spanish sovereign, they hated unorthodoxy more, and
if they permitted, or assisted in the schemes of the Reformers, they feared
that they might lose the control of the situation when the immediate object
was obtained. Those who were under the influence of Gardiner desired to
restore persecution; and persecution, which was difficult with Mary on the
throne, would be impossible under a sovereign brought in by a revolution.
They made a favourite of Courtenay, but they desired to marry him to the
queen, not to Elizabeth: Gardiner told the young earl that he would sooner
see him the husband of the vilest drab who could be picked out of the
London kennels.[181]

Thus, from their murmurs, they seemed to be on the edge of rebellion;
yet, when the point of action came, they halted, uncertain what to do,
unwilling to acquiesce, yet without resolution to resist. From a modern
point of view the wisest policy was that recommended by Paget. The claim
of the Queen of Scots on the throne unquestionably made it prudent for
England to strengthen herself by some powerful foreign alliance; sufficient
precautions could be devised for the security of the national independence;

and, so far from England being in danger of being drawn into the war on the
continent, Lord Paget said that, if England would accept Philip heartily, the
war would be at an end. Elizabeth of France might marry Don Carlos,
taking with her the French pretensions to Naples and Milan as a dowry.
Another French princess might be given to the expatriated Philibert, and
Savoy and Piedmont restored with her. "You," Paget said to Noailles, "by
your Dauphin's marriage forced us to be friends with the Scots; we, by our
queen's marriage, will force you to be friends with the emperor."[182]

Paget, however, was detested as an upstart, and detested still more as a
latitudinarian; he could form no party, and the queen made use of him only
to support her in her choice of the Prince of Spain, as in turn she would use
Gardiner to destroy the Protestants; and thus the two great factions in the
state neutralised each other's action in a matter in which both were equally
anxious; and Mary, although with no remarkable capacity, without friends
and ruined, if at any moment she lost courage, was able to go her own way
in spite of her subjects.

The uncertainty was, how long so anomalous a state of things would
continue. The marriage, being once decided on, Mary could think of
nothing else, and even religion sank into the second place. Reginald Pole,
chafing the imperial bridle between his lips, vexed her, so Renard said, from
day to day, with his untimely importunities;[183] the restoration of the mass
gave him no pleasure so long as the papal legate was an exile; and in vain
the queen laboured to draw from him some kind of approval. He saw her
only preferring carnal pleasures to her duty to Heaven; and, indifferent
himself to all interests save those of the See of Rome, he was irritated with
the emperor, irritated with the worldly schemes to which he believed that
his mission had been sacrificed. He talked angrily of the marriage. The
queen heard, through Wotton the ambassador at Paris, that he had said
openly, it should never take place;[184] while Peto, the Greenwich friar, who
was in his train, wrote to her, reflecting impolitely on her age, and adding
Scripture commendations of celibacy as the more perfect state.[185] It was
even feared that the impatient legate had advised the pope to withhold the
dispensations.

Mary, beyond measure afflicted, wrote to Pole at last, asking what in his
opinion she ought to do. He sent his answer through a priest, by whom it
could be conveyed with the greatest emphasis. First, he said, she must pray
to God for a spirit of counsel and fortitude: next, she must, at all hazards,
relinquish the name of Head of the Church; and, since she could trust
neither peer nor prelate, she must recall parliament, go in person to the
House of Commons, and demand permission with her own mouth for
himself to return to England. The holy see was represented in his person,
and was freshly insulted in the refusal to receive him; the pope's vast
clemency had volunteered unasked to pardon the crimes of England; if the
gracious offer was not accepted, the legacy would be cancelled, the national
guilt would be infinitely enhanced. The emperor talked of prudence; in the
service of God prudence was madness; and, so long as the schism
continued, her attempts at reform were vanity, and her seat upon the throne
was usurpation. Let her tell the truth to the House of Commons, and the
House of Commons would hear.[186]

"Your majesty will see," wrote Renard, enclosing to Charles a copy of
these advices, "the extent of the cardinal's discretion, and how necessary it
is that for the present he be kept at a distance." The pope was not likely to
reject the submission of England at any moment, late or early, when
England might be pleased to offer it, and could well afford to wait. Julius
was wiser than his legate. Pole was not recalled, but exhorted to patience,
and a letter or message from Rome cooled Mary's anxieties. Meanwhile the
marriage was to be expedited with as much speed as possible; the longer the
agitation continued, the greater the danger; while the winter was
unfavourable to revolutionary movements, and armed resistance to the
prince's landing would be unlikely so long as the season prevented large
bodies of men from keeping the field.[187]

The emperor, therefore, in the beginning of December, sent over the draft
of a marriage treaty; and if the security that the articles would be observed
had equalled the form in which they were conceived, the English might
have afforded to lay aside their alarms. Charles seemed to have anticipated
almost every point on which the insular jealousy would be sensitive. The
Prince of Spain should bear the title of King of England so long, but so long
only as the queen should be alive; and the queen should retain the disposal

of all affairs in the realm, and the administration of the revenues. The
queen, in return, should share Philip's titles, present and prospective, with
the large settlement of £60,000 a year upon her for her life. Don Carlos, the
prince's child by his first wife, would, if he lived, inherit Spain, Sicily, the
Italian provinces, and the Indies. But Burgundy and the Low Countries
should be settled on the offspring of the English marriage, and be annexed
to the English crown; and this prospect, splendid in itself, was made more
magnificent by the possibility that Don Carlos might die. Under all
contingencies, the laws and liberties of the several countries should be held
inviolate and inviolable.

In such a treaty the emperor conferred everything, and in return received
nothing; and yet, to gain the alliance, a negotiation already commenced for
the hand of the Infanta of Portugal was relinquished. The liberality of the
proposals was suspicious, but they were submitted to the council, who,
unable to refuse to consider them, were obliged to admit that they were
reasonable. Five additional clauses were added, however, to which it was
insisted that Philip should swear before the contract should be completed—

1. That no foreigner, under any circumstances, should be admitted to any
office in the royal household, in the army, the forts, or the fleet.

2. That the queen should not be taken abroad without her own consent;
and that the children—should children be born—should not be carried out
of England without consent of parliament, even though among them might
be the heir of the Spanish empire.

3. Should the queen die childless, the prince's connection with the realm
should be at an end.

4. The jewel-house and treasury should be wholly under English control,
and the ships of war should not be removed into a foreign port.

5. The prince should maintain the existing treaties between England and
France; and England should not be involved, directly or indirectly, in the
war between France and the empire.[188]

These demands were transmitted to Brussels, where they were accepted
without difficulty, and further objection could not be ventured unless
constraint was laid upon the queen. The sketch of the treaty, with the
conditions attached to it, was submitted to such of the Lords and Commons
as remained in London after the dissolution of parliament, and the result
was a sullen acquiescence.

An embassy was immediately announced as to be sent from Flanders.
Count Egmont, M. de Courières, the Count de Lalaing, and M. de Nigry,
Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, were coming over as plenipotentiaries of
the emperor. Secret messengers went off to Rome to hasten the
dispensations—a dispensation for Mary to marry her cousin, and a
dispensation which also was found necessary permitting the ceremony to be
performed by a bishop in a state of schism. The marriage could be
solemnised at once on their arrival, the ambassadors standing as Philip's
representatives, while Sir Philip Hoby, Bonner, Bedford, and Lord Derby
would go to Spain to receive the prince's oaths, and escort him to England.
Again and again the queen pressed haste. Ash-Wednesday fell on the 6th of
February, and in Lent she might not marry. Renard assured her that the
prince should be in her arms before Septuagesima, and all her trials would
be over. The worst danger which he now anticipated was from some
unpleasant collision which might arise after the prince's landing; and he had
advised the emperor to have the Spaniards who would form the retinue
selected for their meekness. They would meet with insolence from the
English, which they would not endure, if they had the spirit to resent it;
their dispositions, therefore, must be mild and forgiving.[189]

And yet Renard could not hide from himself, and the lords did not hide
from Mary, that their consent was passive only; that their reluctance was
vehement as ever. Bedford said, if he went to Spain, he must go without
attendance, for no one would accompany him. Lord Derby refused to be
one of the ambassadors, and with Sir Edward Waldegrave and Sir Edward
Hastings told the queen that he would leave her service if she persisted. The
seditious pamphlets which were scattered everywhere created a vague terror
in the court, and the court ladies wept and lamented in the queen's presence.
The council in a body again urged her to abandon her intention. The peers
met again to consider the marriage articles. Gardiner read them aloud, and

Lord Windsor, a dull Brutus, who till then had never been known to utter a
reasonable word, exclaimed, amidst general applause, "You have told us
fine things of the queen, and the prince, and the emperor; what security
have we that words are more than words?" Corsairs from Brest and
Rochelle hovered in the mouth of the Channel to catch the couriers going to
and fro between Spain and London and Brussels, and to terrify Philip with
the danger of the passage. The Duke of Suffolk's brother and the Marquis of
Winchester had been heard to swear that they would set upon him when he
landed; and Renard began to doubt whether the alliance, after all, was worth
the risk attending it.[190] Mary, however, brave in the midst of her
perplexities, vowed that she would relinquish her hopes of Philip only with
her life. An army of spies watched Elizabeth day and night, and the
emperor, undeterred by Renard's hesitation, encouraged the queen's
resolution. There could be no conspiracy as yet, Charles said, which could
not be checked with judicious firmness; and dangerous persons could be
arrested and made secure. A strong hand could do much in England, as was
proved by the success for a time of the late Duke of Northumberland.[191]

The advice fell in with Mary's own temperament; she had already been
acting in the spirit of it. A party of Protestants met in St. Matthew's Church
on the publication of the acts of the late session, to determine how far they
would obey them. Ten or twelve were seized on the spot, and two were
hanged out of hand.[192] The queen told Hastings and Waldegrave that she
would endure no opposition; they should obey her or they should leave the
council. She would raise a few thousand men, she said, to keep her subjects
in order, and she would have a thousand Flemish horse among them. There
was a difficulty about ways and means; as fast as money came into the
treasury she had paid debts with it, and, as far as her means extended, she
had replaced chalices and roods in the parish churches. But, if she was poor,
five millions of gold had just arrived in Spain from the New World; and, as
the emperor suggested, her credit was good at Antwerp from her honesty.
Lazarus Tucker came again to the rescue. In November, Lazarus provided
£50,000 for her at fourteen per cent. In January she required £100,000
more, and she ordered Gresham to find it for her at low interest or high.[193]
Fortunately for Mary the project of a standing army could not be carried out
by herself alone, and the passive resistance of the council saved her from
commencing the attempt. Neither Irish mercenaries, nor Flemish, nor

Welsh, as, two months after she was proposing to herself, were permitted to
irritate England into madness.

While Mary was thus buffeting with the waves, on the 23rd, Count
Egmont and his three companions arrived at Calais. The French had
threatened to intercept the passage, and four English ships-of-war had been
ordered to be in waiting as their escort: these ships, however, had not left
the Thames, being detained either by weather, as the admiral pretended, or
by the ill-humour of the crews, who swore they would give the French
cruisers small trouble, should they present themselves.[194] On Christmas-
day ill-looking vessels were hanging in mid-channel, off Calais harbour, but
the ambassadors were resolved to cross at all risks. They stole over in the
darkness on the night of the 26th, and were at Dover by nine in the
morning. Their retinue, a very large one, was sent on at once to London;
snow was on the ground, and the boys in the streets saluted the first comers
with showers of balls. The ambassadors followed the next day, and were
received in silence, but without active insult. The emperor's choice of
persons for his purpose had been judicious. The English ministers intended
to be offensive, but they were disarmed by the courtesy of Egmont, who
charmed every one. In ten days the business connected with the treaty was
concluded. The treaty itself was sent to Brussels to be ratified, and the
dispensations from Rome, and the necessary powers from the Prince of
Spain, were alone waited for that the marriage might be concluded in public
or in private, whichever way would be most expeditious. The queen cared
only for the completion of the irrevocable ceremony, which would bring her
husband to her side before Lent.[195]

The interval of delay was consumed in hunting-parties[196] and dinners at
the palace, where the courtiers played off before the guests the passions of
their eager mistress.[197] The enemies of the marriage, French and English,
had no time to lose, if they intended to prevent the completion of it.

When the queen's design was first publicly announced, the King of
France directed Noailles to tell her frankly the alarm with which it was
regarded at Paris. Henry and Montmorency said the same repeatedly, and at
great length, to Dr. Wotton. The queen might have the best intentions of
remaining at peace, but events might be too strong for her; and they

suggested, at last, that she might give a proof of the good-will which she
professed by making a fresh treaty with them.[198] That a country should be
at peace while its titular king was at war, was a situation without a
precedent. Intricate questions were certain to arise; for instance, if a mixed
fleet of English and Spanish ships should escort the prince, or convoy his
transports or treasure, or if the English ships having Spaniards on board,
should enter French harbours. A thousand difficulties such as these might
occur, and it would be wise to provide for them beforehand.

The uneasiness of the court of Paris was not allayed when the queen met
this most reasonable proposal with a refusal.[199] A clause, she replied, was
added to the marriage articles for the maintenance of the existing treaties
with France, and with that and with her own promises the French
government ought to be content. In vain Noailles pointed out that the
existing treaties would not meet the new conditions; she was obstinate, and
both Noailles and the King of France placed the worst interpretation upon
her attitude. Philip, after his arrival, would unquestionably drag or lead her
into his quarrels; and they determined, therefore, to employ all means,
secret and open, to prevent his coming, and to co-operate with the English
opposition.

The time to act had arrived. Rumours were industriously circulated that
the Prince of Spain was already on the seas, bringing with him ten thousand
Spaniards, who were to be landed at the Tower, and that eight thousand
Germans were to follow from the Low Countries. Noailles and M. d'Oysel,
then on his way through London to Scotland, had an interview with a
number of lords and gentlemen, who undertook to place themselves at the
head of an insurrection, and to depose the queen. The whole country was
crying out against her, and the French ministers believed that the opposition
had but to declare itself in arms to meet with universal sympathy. They
regarded the persons with whom they were dealing as the representatives of
the national discontent; but on this last point they were fatally mistaken.

Noailles spoke generally of lords and gentlemen; but those with whom
d'Oysel and himself had communicated were a party of ten or twelve of the
pardoned friends of the Duke of Northumberland, or of men otherwise
notorious among the ultra-Protestants; the Duke of Suffolk and his three

brothers, Lord Thomas, Lord John, and Lord Leonard Grey; the Marquis of
Northampton; Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet; Sir Nicholas
Throgmorton; Sir Peter Carew; Sir Edmund Warner; Lord Cobham's
brother-in-law; and Sir James Crofts, the late deputy of Ireland.[200]
Courtenay, who had affected orthodoxy as long as he had hopes of the
queen, was admitted into the confederacy. Cornwall and Devonshire were
to be the first counties to rise, where Courtenay would be all-powerful by
his name. Wyatt undertook to raise Kent, Sir James Crofts the Severn
border, Suffolk and his brothers the midland counties. Forces from these
four points were to converge on London, which would then stir for itself.
The French Admiral Villegaignon promised to keep a fleet on the seas, and
to move from place to place among the western English harbours, wherever
his presence would be most useful. Plymouth had been tampered with, and
the mayor and aldermen, either really, or as a ruse to gain information,
affected a desire to receive a French garrison.[201] For the sake of their
cause the Protestant party were prepared to give to France an influence in
England as objectionable in itself, and as offensive to the majority of the
people, as the influence of Spain; and the management of the opposition to
the queen was snatched from the hands of those who might have brought it
to some tolerable issue, by a set of men to whom the Spanish marriage was
but the stalking-horse for the reimposition of their late tyranny. If the Duke
of Northumberland, instead of setting up a rival to Mary, had loyally
admitted her to the throne which was her right, he might have tied her
hands, and secured the progress of moderate reform. Had the great patriotic
anti-papal party been now able to combine, with no disintegrating element,
they could have prevented the marriage or made it harmless. But the ultra-
party plunged again into treason, in which they would succeed only to
restore the dominion of a narrow and blighting sectarianism.[202]

The conspirators remained in London till the second week in January.
Wyatt went into Kent, Peter Carew ran down the Channel to Exmouth in a
vessel of his own, and sent relays of horses as far as Andover for Courtenay,
Sir Nicholas Throgmorton undertaking to see the latter thus far upon his
way. The disaffection was already simmering in Devonshire. There was a
violent scene among the magistrates at the Christmas quarter-sessions at
Exeter. A countryman came in and reported that he had been waylaid and
searched by a party of strange horsemen in steel saddles, "under the gallows

at the hill top," at Fair-mile, near Sir Peter Carew's house. His person had
been mistaken, it seemed, but questions were asked, inquiries made, and
ugly language had been used about the queen. On Carew's arrival the
ferment increased. One of his lacqueys, mistaking intention for fact,
whispered in Exeter that "my Lord of Devonshire was at Mohun's Ottery."
[203] Six horses heavily loaded passed in, at midnight, through the city
gates. The panniers were filled with harness and hand-guns from Sir Peter's
castle at Dartmouth.[204] Sir John Chichester, Sir Arthur Champernowne,
Peter and Gawen Carew, and Gybbes of Silverton, had met in private,
rumour said for no good purpose; and the Exeter Catholics were anxious
and agitated. They had been all disarmed after the insurrection of 1549, the
castle was in ruins, the city walls were falling down. Should Courtenay
come, the worst consequences were anticipated.

But Courtenay did not come. After Carew had left London, he became
nervous; when the horses were reported to be ready, he lingered about the
court; he flattered himself that the queen had changed her mind in his
favour; and two nights before the completion of the treaty he sate up,
affecting to expect to be sent for to marry her on the spot.[205] Finding the
message did not arrive, he gave an order to his tailor to prepare a splendid
court costume, adding perhaps some boasting words, which were carried to
Gardiner. The chancellor's regard for him was sincere, and went beyond a
desire to make him politically useful. He sent for him, cross-questioned
him, and by the influence of a strong mind over a weak one, drew out as
much as Courtenay knew of the secrets of the plot.[206]

The intention was to delay, if possible, an open declaration of rebellion a
few weeks longer—till the Prince of Spain's arrival should raise the ferment
to boiling point. Gardiner, who was determined, at all events, to prevent the
Protestants from making head, informed the queen, without mentioning
Courtenay's name, that he had cause to suspect Sir Peter Carew. A summons
was despatched to Devonshire to require Sir Peter and his brother to return
to London; and thus either to compel them to rise prematurely, without
Courtenay's assistance, or, if they complied, to enable the court to secure
their persons. The desired effect was produced; Carew had waded too deep
in treason to trust himself in Gardiner's hands. He wrote an excuse, yet

protesting his loyalty; and he invited the inhabitants of Exeter to join in a
petition to the crown against the marriage, as a first step towards a rising.

But the Carews were notorious and unpopular; the justices of the peace at
the sessions had been just occupied with a Protestant outrage committed by
one of their nearest friends,[207] and their true object was suspected. The
barns of Crediton were not forgotten, nor the massacre of the prisoners at
Clyst, and without Courtenay they were powerless. Their invitation met
with no response; and Chichester and Champernowne, seeing how the tide
was setting, washed their hands of the connection. Sir Thomas Dennys, a
Catholic gentleman of the county, took command of Exeter, sent express for
the sheriff, Sir Richard Edgecumbe, of Cotteyll, to come to his help, and as
well as he could he put the city in a state of defence.[208] Carew retired to
Mohun's Ottery, when an order came to Dennys from the court for his
arrest.

Dennys, who desired Carew's escape more than his capture, replied that
for the moment he could not execute the order. Mohun's Ottery could not be
taken without cannon, and wet weather had made the roads impassable.
Meantime he gave Sir Peter notice of his danger; and Sir Peter, disposing in
haste of his farm stock to raise a supply of money, crossed the country to
Weymouth, embarked in a vessel which "Mr. Walter Raleigh" had brought
round to meet him, and sailed for France.[209]

One arm of the conspiracy was thus lopped off at the first blow. But,
although Courtenay's treachery was known, some days elapsed before the ill
success of Carew was heard of in London. Courtenay had been trusted only
so far as his intended share in the action had made it necessary to trust him,
and the confederates were chiefly anxious that, having broken down, he
should be incapacitated from doing further mischief by being restored to the
Tower. Courtenay, wrote Noailles, has thrown away his chance of greatness,
and will now probably die miserably. Lord Thomas Grey was heard to say
that, as Courtenay had proved treacherous he would take his place, and run
his chance for the crown or the scaffold.[210]

They would, perhaps, have still delayed till they had received authentic
accounts from Devonshire; but the arrest of Sir Edmund Warner, and one or
two others, assured them that too much of their projects had transpired; and

on the 22nd of January Sir Thomas Wyatt called a meeting of his friends at
Allingham Castle, on the Medway. The commons of Kent were the same
brave, violent, and inflammable people whom John Cade, a century before,
had led to London; the country gentlemen were generally under Wyatt's
influence. Sir R. Southwell, the sheriff for the year, had been among the
loudest objectors in parliament to the marriage; and if Southwell joined in
the rising he would bring with him Lord Abergavenny.[211] Lord Cobham,
Wyatt's uncle, was known to wish him well. Sir Thomas Cheyne, the only
other person of weight in the county, would be loyal to the queen, but Wyatt
had tampered with his tenants; Cheyne could bring a thousand men into the
field, but they would desert when led out, and there was nothing to fear
from them. Whether Southwell and Cobham would act openly on Wyatt's
side was the chief uncertainty; it was feared that Southwell might desire to
keep within the limits of loyal opposition; Cobham offered to send his sons,
but "the sending of sons," some member of the meeting said, "was the
casting away of the Duke of Northumberland; their lives were as dear to
them as my Lord Cobham's was to him; let him come himself and set his
foot by them."[212] The result of the conference was a determination to
make the venture. Thursday the 25th was the day agreed on for the rising,
and the gentlemen present went in their several directions to prepare the
people.

Meantime Gardiner was following the track which Courtenay had
opened. He knew generally the leaders of the conspiracy, yet uncertain, in
the universal perplexity, how any one would act, he knew not whom to
trust. To send Courtenay out of the way, he allowed a project to be set on
foot for despatching him on an embassy to Brussels (January 23); and
anxious, perhaps, not to alarm Mary too much, he simply told her what she
and Renard knew already, that treasonable designs were on foot to make
Elizabeth queen. In a conversation about Elizabeth the chancellor agreed
with Renard that it would be well to arrest her without delay. "Were but the
emperor in England," Gardiner said, "she would be disposed of with little
difficulty."[213] Unfortunately, the spies had as yet detected no cause for
suspicion on which the government could act legitimately.

Mary, ignorant that she was in immediate danger, and only vaguely
uneasy, looked to Philip's coming as the cure of her discomforts. "Let the

prince come," she said to Renard, "and all will be well." She said she would
raise eight thousand men and keep them in London as his guard and hers;
she would send a fleet into the Channel and sweep the French into their
harbours; only let him come before Lent, which was now but a fortnight
distant: "give him my affectionate love," she added; "tell him that I will be
all to him that a wife ought to be; and tell him, too [delightful message to an
already hesitating bridegroom], tell him to bring his own cook with him"
for fear he should be poisoned,[214] The ceremony, could it have been
accomplished, would have been a support to her; but the forms from Rome
were long in coming. On the 24th of January the emperor was at last able to
send a brief, which, in the absence of the bulls, he trusted might be enough
to satisfy the queen's scruples. Cuthbert Tunstal, who had been consecrated
before the schism, might officiate, and the pope would remove all
irregularities afterwards.[215] But when the letter and the brief arrived Mary
was at no leisure to be married.

Wyatt, having arranged the day for the rising, sent notice to the Duke of
Suffolk, who was still in London. On the morning of the 25th an officer of
the court appeared at the duke's house, with an intimation that he was to
repair to the queen's presence. Suffolk was in a riding dress—"Marry!" he
said, "I was coming to her grace; ye may see I am booted and spurred; I will
but break my fast and go."[216] The officer retired. The duke collected as
much money as he could lay hands on—sent a servant to warn his brothers,
and, though in bad health, mounted his horse and rode without stopping to
Lutterworth, where, on the Sunday following, Lord John and Lord Thomas
Grey joined him.

The same morning of the 25th an alarm was rung on the church bells in
the towns and villages in all parts of Kent; and copies of a proclamation
were scattered abroad, signifying that the Spaniards were coming to
conquer the realm, and calling on loyal Englishmen to rise and resist them.
Wyatt's standard was raised at Rochester, the point at which the insurgent
forces were to unite; his friends had done their work well, and in all
directions the yeomen and the peasants rose in arms. Cheyne threw himself
into Dover Castle: Southwell and Abergavenny held to the queen as had
been feared; Abergavenny raised two thousand men, and attacked and
dispersed a party of insurgents under Sir Henry Isly on Wrotham Heath; but

Abergavenny's followers deserted him immediately afterwards, and
marched to Rochester to Wyatt; Southwell could do nothing; he believed
that the rebellion would spread to London, and that Mary would be lost.[217]

On the 26th, Wyatt, being master of Rochester and the Medway, seized
the queen's ships that were in the river, took possession of their guns and
ammunition, proclaimed Abergavenny, Southwell, and another gentleman
traitors to the commonwealth,[218] and set himself to organise the force
which continued to pour in upon him. Messengers, one after another,
hurried to London with worse and worse news; Northampton was arrested
and sent to the Tower, but Suffolk and his brothers were gone; and, after all
which had been said of raising troops, when the need came for them there
were none beyond the ordinary guard. The queen had to rely only on the
musters of the city and the personal retainers of the council and the other
peers; both of which resources she had but too much reason to distrust. In
fact, the council, dreading the use to which the queen might apply a body of
regular troops, had resisted all her endeavours to raise such a body; Paget
had laboured loyally for a fortnight, and at the end he assured the queen on
his knees that he had not been allowed to enlist a man.[219] Divided on all
other points, the motley group of ministers agreed to keep Mary powerless;
with the exception of Gardiner and Paget, they were all, perhaps, unwilling
to check too soon a demonstration which, kept within bounds, might prove
the justice of their own objections.

The queen, however, applied to the corporation of the city (January 27),
and obtained a promise of five hundred men; she gave the command to the
Duke of Norfolk, on whose integrity she knew that she could rely; and,
sending a herald to Rochester with a pardon, if the rebels would disperse,
she despatched Norfolk, Sir Henry Jerningham, and the young Lord
Ormond, to Gravesend, without waiting for an answer. The city bands were
to follow them immediately. Afraid that Elizabeth would fly before she
could be secured, the queen wrote a letter to her studiously gracious, in
which she told her that, in the disturbed state of the country, she was uneasy
for her safety, and recommended her to take shelter with herself in the
palace.[220] Had Elizabeth obeyed, she would have been instantly arrested;
but she was ill, and wrote that she was unable to move. The next day

evidence came into Gardiner's hands which he trusted would consign her at
last to the scaffold.

The King of France had sent a message to the confederates that he had
eighty vessels in readiness, with eighteen companies of infantry, and that he
waited to learn on what part of the coast they should effect a landing.[221]
The dangerous communication had been made known to the court. The
French ambassador had been narrowly watched, and one of his couriers
who left London on the 26th with despatches for Paris was followed to
Rochester, where he saw, or attempted to see, Wyatt. The courier, after
leaving the town, was waylaid by a party of Lord Cobham's servants in the
disguise of insurgents; his despatches were taken from him and sent to the
chancellor, who found in the packet a letter of Noailles to the king in
cypher, and a copy of Elizabeth's answer to the queen. Although in the latter
there was no treason, yet it indicated a suspicious correspondence. The
cypher, could it be read, might be expected to contain decisive evidence
against her.[222]

Meantime the herald had not been admitted into Rochester. He had read
the queen's message on the bridge (January 27), and, being answered by
Wyatt's followers that they required no pardon, for they had done no wrong,
he retired. Sir George Harper, who was joint commander with Wyatt, stole
away the same evening to Gravesend, and presented himself to Norfolk.
The rebels, he said, were discontented and irresolute; for himself he desired
to accept the queen's pardon, which he was ready to earn by doing service
against them; if the duke would advance without delay, he would find no
resistance, and Wyatt would fall into his hands.

The London bands arrived the following afternoon (January 28), and
Norfolk determined to take Harper's advice. The weather was "very
terrible." On Monday morning it blew so hard that no boat could live;
Wyatt, therefore, would be unable to escape by the river, and an immediate
advance was resolved upon. Sir Thomas Cheyne was coming up from
Dover; Lord William Howard was looked for hourly, and Abergavenny was
again exerting himself: Lord Cobham had urged the duke to wait a few
days, and had told him that he had certain knowledge from Wyatt himself
that "the Londoners would not fight:"[223] but Norfolk was confident; the

men had assured him of their loyalty; and at four o'clock on Monday
afternoon he was on the sloping ground facing towards Rochester, within
cannon-shot of the bridge. The duke was himself in front, with Ormond,
Jerningham, and eight "field-pieces," which he had brought with him. A
group of insurgents were in sight across the water, a gun was placed in
position to bear upon them; and the gunner was blowing his match, when
Sir Edward Bray galloped up, crying out that the "white coats," as the
London men were called, were changing sides. The duke had fallen into a
trap which Harper had laid for him. Turning round, he saw Brett, the
London captain, with all his men, and with Harper at his side, advancing
and shouting, "A Wyatt! a Wyatt! we are all Englishmen!" The first impulse
was to turn the gun upon them; the second, and more prudent, was to spring
on his horse, and gallop with half a dozen others for his life. His whole
force had deserted, and guns, money, baggage, and five hundred of the best
troops in London fell into the insurgents' hands, and swelled their ranks.

No sooner was the duke gone, than Wyatt in person came out over the
bridge. "As many as will tarry with us," he cried, "shall be welcome; as
many as will depart, let them go," Very few accepted the latter offer. Three
parts, even of Norfolk's private attendants, took service with the rebel
leader.

The prestige of success decided all who were wavering in the county.
Abergavenny was wholly forsaken; Southwell escaped to the court; Cheyne
wrote to the council that he was no longer sure of any one; "the abominable
treason of those that came with the Duke of Norfolk had infected the whole
population."[224] Cobham continued to hold off, but his sons came into
Rochester the evening of the duke's flight; and Wyatt sent a message to the
father expressing his sorrow that he had been hitherto backward; promising
to forgive him, however, and requiring him to be in the camp the next day,
when the army would march on London. Cobham still hesitating, two
thousand men were at the gates of his house[225] by daybreak the next
morning (January 30). He refused to lower the drawbridge, but the chains
were cut with a cannon-shot, the gates were blown open, and the rebels
were storming in when his servants forced him to surrender. The house was
pillaged; an oath was thrust on Cobham that he would join, which he took
with the intention of breaking it; and the rebels, perhaps seeing cause to

distrust him, carried him off to Wyatt as a prisoner.[226] That night the
insurgents rested at Gravesend. The next day (January 31) they reached
Dartford. Their actual numbers were insignificant, but their strength was the
disaffection of London, where the citizens were too likely to follow the
example which had been set at Rochester.

Mary's situation was now really alarming: she was without money,
notwithstanding the Jews; she had no troops; of all her ministers Paget
alone was sincerely anxious to do her service; for Gardiner, on the subject
of the marriage, was as unwilling as ever. It was rumoured that the King of
Denmark intended to unite with the French in support of the revolutionists,
and Renard began calmly to calculate that, should this report prove true, the
queen could not be saved. Pembroke and Clinton offered to raise another
force in the city and fight Wyatt; but, so far as Mary could tell, they would
be as likely to turn against her as to fight in her defence; and she declined
their services. Renard offered Gardiner assistance from the Low Countries
—Gardiner replied with extreme coldness that he had no desire to see
Flemish soldiers in England—and the council generally were "so strange"
in their manner, and so languid in their action, that the ambassador could
not assure himself that they were not Wyatt's real instigators. Not a man had
been raised to protect the queen, and part of her own guard had been among
the deserters at Rochester. She appealed to the honour of the lords to take
measure for her personal safety; but they did nothing, and, it seemed, would
do nothing; if London rose, they said merely, she must retire to Windsor.

The aspect of affairs was so threatening, that Renard believed that the
marriage at least would have to be relinquished. It seemed as if it could be
accomplished only with the help of an invading army; and although Mary
would agree to any measure which would secure Philip, the presence of
foreign troops, as the emperor himself was aware, could only increase the
exasperation.[227] The queen's resolution, however, grew with her
difficulties. If she could not fight she would not yield; and, taking matters
into her own hands, she sent Sir Thomas Cornwallis and Sir Edward
Hastings to Dartford, with directions to speak with Wyatt, if possible, alone;
to tell him that she "marvelled at his demeanour," "rising as a subject to
impeach her marriage;" she was ready to believe, however, that he thought
himself acting in the interests of the commonwealth; she would appoint

persons to talk over the subject with him, and if it should appear that the
marriage would not, as she supposed, be beneficial to the realm, she would
sacrifice her wishes.[228]

The message was not strictly honest, for the queen had no real intention
of sacrificing anything. She desired merely to gain time; and, should Wyatt
refuse, as she expected, she wished to place herself in a better position to
appeal to her subjects for help.[229] But the move under this aspect was
skilful and successful; when Cornwallis and Hastings discharged their
commission, Wyatt replied that he would rather be trusted than trust; he
would argue the marriage with pleasure, but he required first the custody of
the Tower, and of the queen's person, and four of the council must place
themselves in his hands as hostages.[230]

Had Wyatt, said Noailles, been able to reach London simultaneously with
this answer, he would have found the gates open and the whole population
eager to give him welcome. To his misfortune he lingered on the way, and
the queen had time to use his words against him. The two gentlemen
returned indignant at his insolence. The next morning (February 1), Count
Egmont waited on Mary to say that he and his companions were at her
service, and would stand by her to their death. Perplexed as she was,
Egmont said he found her "marvellously firm." The marriage, she felt,
must, at all events, be postponed for the present; the prince could not come
till the insurrection was at an end; and, while she was grateful for the offer,
she not only thought it best to decline the ambassadors' kindness, but she
recommended them, if possible, to leave London and the country without
delay. Their party was large enough to irritate the people, and too small to
be of use. She bade Egmont, therefore, tell the emperor that from the first
she had put her trust in God, and that she trusted in Him still; and for
themselves, she told them to go at once, taking her best wishes with them.
They obeyed. Six Antwerp merchant sloops were in the river below the
bridge, waiting to sail. They stole on board, dropped down the tide, and
were gone.

The afternoon of the same day the queen herself, with a studied air of
dejection,[231] rode through the streets to the Guildhall, attended by
Gardiner and the remnant of the guard. In St. Paul's Churchyard she met

Pembroke, and slightly bowed as she passed him. Gardiner was observed to
stoop to his saddle. The hall was crowded with citizens: some brought there
by hatred, some by respect, many by pity, but more by curiosity. When the
queen entered she stood forward on the steps, above the throng, and, in her
deep man's voice, she spoke to them.[232]

Her subjects had risen in rebellion against her, she said; she had been told
that the cause was her intended marriage with the Prince of Spain; and,
believing that it was the real cause, she had offered to hear and to respect
their objections. Their leader had betrayed in his answer his true motives;
he had demanded possession of the Tower of London and of her own
person. She stood there, she said, as lawful Queen of England, and she
appealed to the loyalty of her great city to save her from a presumptuous
rebel, who, under specious pretences, intended to "subdue the laws to his
will, and to give scope to rascals and forlorn persons to make general havoc
and spoil." As to her marriage, she had supposed that so magnificent an
alliance could not have failed to be agreeable to her people. To herself, and,
she was not afraid to say, to her council, it seemed to promise high
advantage to the commonwealth. Marriage, in itself, was indifferent to her;
she had been invited to think of it by the desire of the country that she
should have an heir; but she could continue happy in the virgin state in
which she had hitherto passed her life. She would call a parliament and the
subject should be considered in all its bearings; if, on mature consideration,
the Lords and Commons of England should refuse to approve of the Prince
of Spain as a fitting husband for her, she promised, on the word of a queen,
that she would think of him no more.

The spectacle of her distress won the sympathy of her audience; the
boldness of her bearing commanded their respect; the promise of a
parliament satisfied, or seemed to satisfy, all reasonable demands: and
among the wealthy citizens there was no desire to see London in possession
of an armed mob, in whom the Anabaptist leaven was deeply interfused.
The speech, therefore, had remarkable success. The queen returned to
Westminster, leaving the corporation converted to the prudence of
supporting her. Twenty-five thousand men were enrolled the next day for
the protection of the crown and the capital; Lord William Howard was
associated with the mayor in the command; and Wyatt, who had reached

Greenwich on Thursday, and had wasted two days there, uncertain whether
he should not cross the river in boats to Blackwall, arrived on Saturday
morning at Southwark, to find the gates closed on London Bridge, and the
drawbridge flung down into the water.

Noailles, for the first time, believed now that the insurrection would fail.
Success or failure, in fact, would turn on the reception which the midland
counties had given to the Duke of Suffolk; and of Suffolk authentic news
had been brought to London that morning.

On the flight of the duke being known at the court, it was supposed
immediately that he intended to proclaim his daughter and Guilford Dudley.
Rumour, indeed, turned the supposition into fact,[233] and declared that he
had called on the country to rise in arms for Queen Jane. But Suffolk's plan
was identical with Wyatt's; he had carried with him a duplicate of Wyatt's
proclamation, and, accompanied by his brother, he presented himself in the
market-place at Leicester on the morning of Monday the 29th. Lord
Huntingdon had followed close upon his track from London; but he assured
the Mayor of Leicester that the Earl of Huntingdon was coming, not to
oppose, but to join with him. No harm was intended to the queen; he was
ready to die in her defence; his object was only to save England from the
dominion of foreigners.

In consequence of these protestations, he was allowed to read his
proclamation; the people were indifferent; but he called about him a few
scores of his tenants and retainers from his own estates in the country; and,
on Tuesday morning, while the insurgents in Kent were attacking Cowling
Castle, Suffolk rode out of Leicester, in full armour, at the head of his
troops, intending first to move on Coventry, then to take Kenilworth and
Warwick, and so to advance on London. The garrison at Warwick had been
tampered with, and was reported to be ready to rise. The gates of Coventry
he expected to find open. He had sent his proclamation thither the day
before, by a servant, and he had friends within the walls who had
undertaken to place the town at his disposal.

The state of Coventry was probably the state of most other towns in
England. The inhabitants were divided. The mayor and aldermen, the
fathers of families, and the men of property, were conservatives, loyal to the

queen, to the mass, and to "the cause of order." The young and enthusiastic,
supported by others who had good reasons for being in opposition to
established authorities, were those who had placed themselves in
correspondence with the Duke of Suffolk.

Suffolk's servant (his name was Thomas Rampton), on reaching the town,
on Monday evening, made a mistake in the first person to whom he
addressed himself, and received a cold answer. Two others of the
townsmen, however, immediately welcomed him, and told him that "the
whole place was at his lord's commandment, except certain of the town
council, who feared that, if good fellows had the upper hand, their
extremities heretofore should be remembered."[234] They took Rampton into
a house, where, presently, another man entered of the same way of thinking,
and, in his own eyes, a man of importance. "My lord's quarrel is right well
known," this person said, "it is God's quarrel, let him come; let him come,
and make no stay, for this town is his own. I say to you assuredly this town
is his own. I am it."

It was now night; no time was to be lost, the townsmen said. They urged
Rampton to return at once to Suffolk, and hasten his movements. They
would themselves read the proclamation at the market-cross forthwith, and
raise the people. Rampton, who had ridden far, and was weary, wished to
wait till the morning; if they were so confident of success, a few hours
could make no difference: but it appeared shortly that the "good fellows" in
Coventry were not exclusively under the influence of piety and patriotism.
If a rising commenced in the darkness, it was admitted that "undoubted
spoil and peradventure destruction of many rich men would ensue," and
with transactions of this kind the duke's servant was unwilling to connect
himself.

Thus the hours wore away, and no resolution was arrived at; and, in the
meantime, the town council had received a warning to be on their guard.
Before daybreak the constables were on the alert, the decent citizens took
possession of the gates, and the conspirators had lost their opportunity. In
the afternoon Suffolk arrived with a hundred horse under the walls, but
there was no admission for him. Whilst he was hesitating what course to
pursue, a messenger came in to say that the Earl of Huntingdon was at

Warwick. The plot for the revolt of the garrison had been detected, and the
whole country was on the alert. The people had no desire to see the
Spaniards in England; but sober, quiet farmers and burgesses would not rise
at the call of the friend of Northumberland, and assist in bringing back the
evil days of anarchy.

The Greys had now only to provide for their personal safety.

Suffolk had an estate a few miles distant, called Astley Park, to which the
party retreated from Coventry. There the duke shared such money as he had
with him among his men, and bade them shift for themselves. Lord Thomas
Grey changed coats with a servant, and rode off to Wales to join Sir James
Crofts. Suffolk himself, who was ill, took refuge with his brother, Lord
John, in the cottage of one of his gamekeepers, where they hoped to remain
hidden till the hue and cry should be over, and they could escape abroad.

The cottage was considered insecure. Two bowshots south of Astley
Church there stood in the park an old decaying tree, in the hollow of which
the father of Lady Jane Grey concealed himself; and there, for two winter
days and a night, he was left without food. A proclamation had been put out
by Huntingdon for Suffolk's apprehension (January 30), and the keeper,
either tempted by the reward, or frightened by the menace against all who
should give him shelter, broke his trust—a rare example of disloyalty—and
going to Warwick Castle, undertook to betray his master's hiding-place. A
party of troopers were despatched, with the keeper for a guide; and, on
arriving at Astley, they found that the duke, unable to endure the cold and
hunger longer, had crawled out of the tree, and was warming himself by the
cottage fire. Lord John was discovered buried under some bundles of hay.
[235] They were carried off at once to the Tower, whither Lord Thomas Grey
and Sir James Crofts, who had failed as signally in Wales, soon after
followed them.[236]

The account of his confederates' failure saluted Wyatt on his arrival in
Southwark, on the 3rd of February. The intelligence was being published, at
the moment, in the streets of London; Wyatt himself, at the same time, was
proclaimed traitor, and a reward of a hundred pounds was offered for his
capture, dead or alive. The peril, however, was far from over; Wyatt replied
to the proclamation by wearing his name, in large letters, upon his cap; the

success of the queen's speech in the city irritated the council, who did not
choose to sit still under the imputation of having approved of the Spanish
marriage. They declared everywhere, loudly and angrily, that they had not
approved of it, and did not approve; in the city itself public feeling again
wavered, and fresh parties of the train-bands crossed the water and deserted.
The behaviour of Wyatt's followers gave the lie to the queen's charges
against them: the prisons in Southwark were not opened; property was
respected scrupulously; the only attempt at injury was at Winchester House,
and there it was instantly repressed; the inhabitants of the Borough
entertained them with warm hospitality; and the queen, notwithstanding her
efforts, found herself as it were besieged, in her principal city, by a handful
of commoners, whom no one ventured, or no one could be trusted, to attack.
So matters continued through Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The
lawyers at Westminster Hall pleaded in harness, the judges wore harness
under their robes; Doctor Weston sang mass in harness before the queen;
tradesmen attended in harness behind their counters. The metropolis, on
both sides of the water, was in an attitude of armed expectation, yet there
was no movement, no demonstration on either side of popular feeling. The
ominous strangeness of the situation appalled even Mary herself.[237]

By this time (February 5) the intercepted letter of Noailles had been
decyphered. It proved, if more proof was wanted, the correspondence
between the ambassador and the conspirators; it explained the object of the
rising—the queen was to be dethroned in favour of her sister; and it was
found, also, though names were not mentioned, that the plot had spread far
upwards among the noblemen by whom Mary was surrounded. Evidence of
Elizabeth's complicity it did not contain; while, to Gardiner's mortification,
it showed that Courtenay, in his confessions to himself, had betrayed the
guilt of others, but had concealed part of his own. In an anxiety to shield
him the chancellor pronounced the cypher of Courtenay's name to be
unintelligible. The queen placed the letter in the hands of Renard, by whom
it was instantly read, and the chancellor's humour was not improved; Mary
had the mortification of feeling that she was herself the last object of
anxiety either to him or to any of her council; though Wyatt was at the gates
of London, the council could only spend the time in passionate
recriminations; Paget blamed Gardiner for his religious intolerance;
Gardiner blamed Paget for having advised the marriage; some exclaimed

against Courtenay, some against Elizabeth; but, of acting, all alike seemed
incapable. If the queen was in danger, the council said, she might fly to
Windsor, or to Calais, or she might go to the Tower. "Whatever happens,"
she exclaimed to Renard, "I am the wife of the Prince of Spain; crown,
rank, life, all shall go before I will take any other husband."[238]

The position, however, could not be of long continuance. Could Wyatt
once enter London, he assured himself of success; but the gates on the
bridge continued closed. Cheyne and Southwell had collected a body of
men on whom they could rely, and were coming up behind from Rochester.
Wyatt desired to return and fight them, and then cross the water at
Greenwich, as had been before proposed; but his followers feared that he
meant to escape; a backward movement would not be permitted, and his
next effort was to ascertain whether the passage over the bridge could be
forced.

London Bridge was then a long, narrow street. The gate was at the
Southwark extremity; the drawbridge was near the middle. On Sunday or
Monday night Wyatt scaled the leads of the gatehouse, climbed into a
window, and descended the stairs into the lodge. The porter and his wife
were nodding over the fire. The rebel leader bade them, on their lives, be
still, and stole along in the darkness to the chasm from which the
drawbridge had been cut away. There, looking across the black gulf where
the river was rolling below, he saw the dusky mouths of four gaping
cannon, and beyond them, in the torch-light, Lord Howard himself, keeping
watch with the guard: neither force nor skill could make a way into the city
by London Bridge.

The course which he should follow was determined for him. The
lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, a soldier and a Catholic, had
looked over the water with angry eyes at the insurgents collected within
reach of his guns, and had asked the queen for permission to fire upon
them. The queen, afraid of provoking the people, had hitherto refused; on
the Monday, however, a Tower boat, passing the Southwark side of the
water, was hailed by Wyatt's sentries; the watermen refused to stop, the
sentries fired, and one of the men in the boat was killed. The next morning
(February 6) (whether permission had been given at last, or not, was never

known), the guns on the White Tower, the Devil's Tower, and all the
bastions, were loaded and aimed, and notice was sent over that the fire was
about to open. The inhabitants addressed themselves, in agitation, to Wyatt;
and Wyatt, with a sudden resolution, half felt to be desperate, resolved to
march for Kingston Bridge, cross the Thames, and come back on London.
His friends in the city promised to receive him, could he reach Ludgate by
daybreak on Wednesday.

On Tuesday morning, therefore, Shrove Tuesday, which the queen had
hoped to spend more happily than in facing an army of insurgents, Wyatt,
accompanied by not more than fifteen hundred men, pushed out of
Southwark. He had cannon with him, which delayed his march, but at four
in the afternoon he reached Kingston. Thirty feet of the bridge were broken
away, and a guard of three hundred men were on the other side; but the
guard fled after a few rounds from the guns, and Wyatt, leaving his men to
refresh themselves in the town, went to work to repair the passage. A row of
barges lay on the opposite bank; three sailors swam across, attached ropes
to them, and towed them over; and, the barges being moored where the
bridge was broken, beams and planks were laid across them, and a road was
made of sufficient strength to bear the cannon and the waggons.

By eleven o'clock at night the river was crossed, and the march was
resumed. The weather was still wild, the roads miry and heavy, and through
the winter night the motley party plunged along. The Rochester men had,
most of them, gone home, and those who remained were the London
deserters, gentlemen who had compromised themselves too deeply to hope
for pardon, or fanatics, who believed they were fighting the Lord's battle,
and some of the Protestant clergy. Ponet, the late Bishop of Winchester, was
with them; William Thomas, the late clerk of the council; Sir George
Harper, Anthony Knyvet, Lord Cobham's sons, Pelham, who had been a spy
of Northumberland's on the continent,[239] and others more or less
conspicuous in the worst period of the late reign.

From the day that Wyatt came to Southwark the whole guard had been
under arms at Whitehall, and a number of them, to the agitation of the court
ladies, were stationed in the queen's ante-chamber. But the guard was
composed of dangerous elements. Sir Humfrey Radcliff, the lieutenant, was

a "favourer of the gospel;"[240] and the "Hot Gospeller" himself, on his
recovery from his fever, had returned to his duties.[241] No additional
precautions had been taken, nor does it seem that, on Wyatt's departure, his
movements were watched. Kingston Bridge having been broken, his
immediate approach was certainly unlooked for; nor was it till past
midnight that information came to the palace that the passage had been
forced, and that the insurgents were coming directly back upon London.
Between two and three in the morning the queen was called from her bed.
Gardiner, who had been, with others of the council, arguing with her in
favour of Courtenay the preceding day, was in waiting; he told her that her
barge was at the stairs to carry her up the river, and she must take shelter
instantly at Windsor.

Without disturbing herself, the queen sent for Renard. Shall I go or stay?
she asked.

Unless your majesty desire to throw away your crown, Renard answered,
you will remain here till the last extremity; your flight will be known, the
city will rise, seize the Tower, and release the prisoners; the heretics will
massacre the priests, and Elizabeth will be proclaimed queen.

The lords were divided. Gardiner insisted again that she must and should
go. The others were uncertain, or inclined to the opinion of Renard. At last
Mary said that she would be guided by Pembroke and Clinton. If those two
would undertake to stand by her, she would remain and see out the struggle.
[242]

They were not present, and were sent for on the spot. Pembroke for
weeks past had certainly wavered; Lord Thomas Grey believed at one time
that he had gained him over, and to the last felt assured of his neutrality.
Happily for Mary, happily, it must be said, for England—for the
Reformation was not a cause to be won by such enterprises as that of Sir
Thomas Wyatt—he decided on supporting the queen, and promised to
defend her with his life. At four o'clock in the morning drums went round
the city, calling the train-bands to an instant muster at Charing Cross.
Pembroke's conduct determined the young lords and gentlemen about the
court, who with their servants were swiftly mounted and under arms; and by
eight, more than ten thousand men were stationed along the ground, then an

open field, which slopes from Piccadilly to Pall Mall. The road or causeway
on which Wyatt was expected to advance ran nearly on the site of Piccadilly
itself. An old cross stood near the head of St. James's Street, where guns
were placed; and that no awkward accident like that at Rochester might
happen on the first collision, the gentlemen, who formed four squadrons of
horse, were pushed forwards towards Hyde Park Corner.

Wyatt, who ought to have been at the gate of the city two hours before,
had been delayed in the meantime by the breaking down of a gun in the
heavy road at Brentford. Brett, the captain of the city deserters, Ponet,
Harper, and others, urged Wyatt to leave the gun where it lay and keep his
appointment. Wyatt, however, insisted on waiting till the carriage could be
repaired, although in the eyes of every one but himself the delay was
obvious ruin. Harper, seeing him obstinate, stole away a second time to gain
favour for himself by carrying news to the court. Ponet, unambitious of
martyrdom, told him he would pray God for his success, and, advising Brett
to shift for himself, made away with others towards the sea and Germany.
[243] It was nine o'clock before Wyatt brought the draggled remnant of his
force, wet, hungry, and faint with their night march, up the hill from
Knightsbridge. Near Hyde Park Corner a lane turned off; and here
Pembroke had placed a troop of cavalry. The insurgents straggled on
without order. When half of them had passed, the horse dashed out, and cut
them in two, and all who were behind were dispersed or captured. Wyatt,
caring now only to press forward, kept his immediate followers together,
and went straight on. The queen's guns opened, and killed three of his men;
but, lowering his head, he dashed at them and over them; then, turning to
the right, to avoid the train-bands, he struck down towards St. James's,
where his party again separated. Knyvet and the young Cobhams, leaving
St. James's to their left, crossed the park to Westminster. Wyatt went right
along the present Pall Mall, past the line of the citizens. They had but to
move a few steps to intercept his passage, close in, and take him; but not a
man advanced, not a hand was lifted; where the way was narrow they drew
aside to let him pass. At Charing Cross Sir John Gage was stationed, with
part of the guard, some horse, and among them, Courtenay, who in the
morning had been heard to say he would not obey orders; he was as good a
man as Pembroke. As Wyatt came up Courtenay turned his horse towards
Whitehall, and began to move off, followed by Lord Worcester. "Fie! my

lord," Sir Thomas Cornwallis cried to him, "is this the action of a
gentleman?"[244] But deaf, or heedless, or treacherous, he galloped off,
calling Lost, lost! all is lost! and carried panic to the court. The guard had
broken at his flight, and came hurrying behind him. Some cried that
Pembroke had played false. Shouts of treason rung through the palace. The
queen, who had been watching from the palace gallery, alone retained her
presence of mind. If others durst not stand the trial against the traitors, she
said, she herself would go out into the field and try the quarrel, and die with
those that would serve her.[245]

At this moment Knyvet and the Cobhams, who had gone round by the
old palace, came by the gates as the fugitive guard were struggling in.
Infinite confusion followed. Gage was rolled in the dirt, and three of the
judges with him. The guard shrunk away into the offices and kitchens to
hide themselves. But Knyvet's men made no attempt to enter. They
contented themselves with shooting a few arrows, and then hurried on to
Charing Cross to rejoin Wyatt. At Charing Cross, however, their way was
now closed by a company of archers, who had been sent back by Pembroke
to protect the court. Sharp fighting followed, and the cries rose so loud as to
be heard on the leads of the White Tower. At last the leaders forced their
way up the Strand; the rest of the party were cut up, dispersed, or taken.[246]

Wyatt himself, meanwhile, followed by three hundred men, had hurried
on through lines of men who still opened to give him passage. He passed
Temple Bar, along Fleet Street, and reached Ludgate. The gate was open as
he approached, when some one seeing a number of men coming up,
exclaimed, "These be Wyatt's antients." Muttered curses were heard among
the bystanders; but Lord Howard was on the spot; the gates,
notwithstanding the murmurs, were instantly closed; and, when Wyatt
knocked, Howard's voice answered, "Avaunt! traitor; thou shalt not come in
here." "I have kept touch," Wyatt exclaimed; but his enterprise was hopeless
now. He sat down upon a bench outside the Belle Sauvage Yard. His
followers scattered from him among the by-lanes and streets; and, of the
three hundred, twenty-four alone remained, among whom were now Knyvet
and one of the young Cobhams. With these few he turned at last, in the
forlorn hope that the train-bands would again open to let him pass. Some of
Pembroke's horse were coming up. He fought his way through them to

Temple Bar, where a herald cried, "Sir, ye were best to yield; the day is
gone against you; perchance ye may find the queen merciful." Sir Maurice
Berkeley was standing near him on horseback, to whom, feeling that further
resistance was useless, he surrendered his sword; and Berkeley, to save him
from being cut down in the tumult, took him up upon his horse. Others in
the same way took up Knyvet and Cobham, Brett and two more. The six
prisoners were carried through the Strand back to Westminster, the passage
through the city being thought dangerous; and from Whitehall Stairs, Mary
herself looking on from a window of the palace, they were borne off in a
barge to the Tower.

The queen had triumphed, triumphed through her own resolution, and
would now enjoy the fruits of victory.

Had Wyatt succeeded, Mary would have lost her husband and her crown;
and had the question been no more than a personal one, England could have
well dispensed both with her and Philip. But Elizabeth would have
ascended a throne under the shadow of treason. The Protestants would have
come back to power in the thoughtless vindictiveness of exasperated and
successful revolutionists; and the problem of the Reformation would have
been more hard than ever of a reasonable solution. The fanatics had made
their effort, and they had failed; they had shaken the throne, but they had
not overthrown it; the queen's turn was come, and, as the danger had been
great, so was the resentment. She had Renard at one ear protesting that,
while these turbulent spirits were uncrushed, the precious person of the
prince could not be trusted to her. She had Gardiner, who, always pitiless
towards heretics, was savage at the frustration of his own schemes. Renard
in the closet, Gardiner in the pulpit, alike told her that she must show no
more mercy.[247] On Ash Wednesday evening, after Wyatt's surrender, a
proclamation forbade all persons to shelter the fugitive insurgents under
pain of death. The "poor caitiffs" were brought out of the houses where they
had hidden themselves, and were given up by hundreds. Huntingdon came
in on Saturday with Suffolk and his brothers. Sir James Crofts, Sir Henry
Isly, and Sir Gawen Carew followed. The common prisons overflowed into
the churches, where crowds of wretches were huddled together till the
gibbets were ready for their hanging; the Tower wards were so full that
Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were packed into a single cell; and all the

living representatives of the families of Grey and Dudley, except two young
girls, were now within the Tower walls, sentenced, or soon to be sentenced,
to death.

The queen's blood is up at last, Renard wrote exultingly to the emperor
on the 8th of February;[248] "the Duke of Suffolk, Lord Thomas Grey, and
Sir James Crofts have written to ask for mercy, but they will find none; their
heads will fall, and so will Courtenay's and Elizabeth's. I have told the
queen that she must be especially prompt with these two. We have nothing
now to hope for except that France will break the peace, and then all will be
well." On the 12th of February the ambassador was still better satisfied.
Elizabeth had been sent for, and was on her way to London. A rupture with
France seemed inevitable, and as to clemency, there was no danger of it.
"The queen," he said, "had told him that Anne of Cleves was implicated;"
but for himself he was sure that the two centres of all past and all possible
conspiracies were Elizabeth and Courtenay, and that when their heads, and
the heads of the Greys, were once off their shoulders, she would have
nothing more to fear. The prisoners were heretics to a man; she had a fair
plea to despatch them, and she would then settle the country as she pleased;
[249] "The house of Suffolk would soon be extinct."

The house of Suffolk would be extinct: that too, or almost that, had been
decided on. Jane Grey was guiltless of this last commotion; her name had
not been so much as mentioned among the insurgents; but she was guilty of
having been once called queen, and Mary, who before had been generously
deaf to the emperor's advice, and to Renard's arguments, yielded in her
present humour. Philip was beckoning in the distance; and while Jane Grey
lived, Philip, she was again and again assured, must remain for ever
separated from her arms.

Jane Grey, therefore, was to die—her execution was resolved upon the
day after the victory; and the first intention was to put her to death on the
Friday immediately approaching. In killing her body, however, Mary
desired to have mercy on her soul; and she sent the message of death
(February 9) by the excellent Feckenham, afterwards Abbot of Westminster,
who was to bring her, if possible, to obedience to the Catholic faith.

Feckenham, a man full of gentle and tender humanity, felt to the bottom
of his soul the errand on which he was despatched. He felt as a Catholic
priest—but he felt also as a man.

On admission to Lady Jane's room he told her that she was to die the next
morning, and he told her, also, for what reason the queen had selected him
to communicate the sentence.

She listened calmly. The time was short, she said; too short to be spent in
theological discussion; which, if Feckenham would permit, she would
decline.

Believing, or imagining that he ought to believe, that, if she died
unreconciled, she was lost, Feckenham hurried back to the queen to beg for
delay; and the queen, moved with his entreaties, respited the execution till
Monday, giving him three more days to pursue his labour. But Lady Jane,
when he returned to her, scarcely appreciated the favour; she had not
expected her words to be repeated, she said; she had given up all thoughts
of the world, and she would take her death patiently whenever her majesty
desired.[250]

Feckenham, however, still pressed his services, and courtesy to a kind
and anxious old man forbade her to refuse them. He remained with her to
the end; and certain arguments followed on faith and justification, and the
nature of sacraments; a record of which may be read by the curious in Foxe.
[251] Lady Jane was wearied without being convinced. The tedium of the
discussion was relieved, perhaps, by the now more interesting account
which she gave to her unsuccessful confessor of the misfortune which was
bringing her to her death.[252] The night before she suffered she wrote a few
sentences of advice to her sister on the blank leaf of a New Testament. To
her father, knowing his weakness, and knowing, too, how he would be
worked upon to imitate the recantation of Northumberland, she sent a letter
of exquisite beauty, in which the exhortations of a dying saint are tempered
with the reverence of a daughter for her father.[253]

The iron-hearted Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, had been
softened by the charms of his prisoner, and begged for some memorial of

her in writing. She wrote in a manual of English prayers the following
words:—

"Forasmuch as you have desired so simple a woman to write in so worthy
a book, good Master Lieutenant, therefore I shall, as a friend, desire you,
and as a Christian, require you, to call upon God to incline your heart to his
laws, to quicken you in his way, and not to take the word of truth utterly out
of your mouth. Live still to die, that by death you may purchase eternal life,
and remember how Methuselah, who, as we read in the Scriptures, was the
longest liver that was of a man, died at the last; for, as the Preacher saith,
there is a time to be born and a time to die; and the day of death is better
than the day of our birth. Yours, as the Lord knoweth, as a friend, Jane
Dudley."[254]

Her husband was also to die, and to die before her. The morning on
which they were to suffer he begged for a last interview and a last embrace.
It was left to herself to consent or refuse. If, she replied, the meeting would
benefit either of their souls, she would see him with pleasure; but, in her
own opinion, it would only increase their trial. They would meet soon
enough in the other world.

He died, therefore, without seeing her again. She saw him once alive as
he was led to the scaffold, and again as he returned a mutilated corpse in the
death-cart. It was not wilful cruelty. The officer in command had forgotten
that the ordinary road led past her window. But the delicate girl of
seventeen was as masculine in her heart as in her intellect. When her own
turn arrived, Sir John Brydges led her down to the green; her attendants
were in an agony of tears, but her own eyes were dry. She prayed quietly till
she reached the foot of the scaffold, when she turned to Feckenham, who
still clung to her side. "Go now," she said; "God grant you all your desires,
and accept my own warm thanks for your attentions to me; although,
indeed, those attentions have tried me more than death can now terrify me."
[255] She sprung up the steps, and said briefly that she had broken the law in
accepting the crown; but as to any guilt of intention, she wrung her hands,
and said she washed them clean of it in innocency before God and man. She
entreated her hearers to bear her witness that she died a true Christian
woman; that she looked to be saved only by the mercy of God and the

merits of his Son: and she begged for their prayers as long as she was alive.
Feckenham had still followed her, notwithstanding his dismissal. "Shall I
say the Miserere psalm?" she said to him.[256] When it was done, she let
down her hair with her attendants' help, and uncovered her neck. The rest
may be told in the words of the chronicler:—

"The hangman kneeled down and asked her forgiveness, whom she
forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the straw, which
doing, she saw the block. Then she said, I pray you despatch me quickly.
Then she kneeled down, saying, Will you take it off before I lay me down?
and the hangman answered No, Madam. She tied a kerchief about her eyes;
then, feeling for the block, she said, What shall I do; where is it? One of the
bystanders guiding her thereunto, she laid her head down upon the block,
and stretched forth her body, and said, Lord, into thy hands I commend my
spirit. And so ended."[257]

The same day Courtenay was sent to the Tower, and a general slaughter
commenced of the common prisoners. To spread the impression, gibbets
were erected all over London, and by Thursday evening eighty or a hundred
bodies[258] were dangling in St. Paul's Churchyard, on London Bridge, in
Fleet Street, and at Charing Cross, in Southwark and Westminster. At all
cross-ways and in all thoroughfares, says Noailles, "the eye was met with
the hideous spectacle of hanging men;" while Brett and a fresh batch of
unfortunates were sent to suffer at Rochester and Maidstone. Day after day,
week after week, commissioners sat at Westminster or at the Guildhall
trying prisoners, who passed with a short shrift to the gallows. The Duke of
Suffolk was sentenced on the 17th; on the 23rd he followed his daughter,
penitent for his rebellion, but constant, as she had implored him to be, in his
faith. His two brothers and Lord Cobham's sons were condemned. William
Thomas, to escape torture, stabbed himself, but recovered to die at Tyburn.
Lord Cobham himself, who was arrested notwithstanding his defence of his
house, Wyatt, Sir James Crofts, Sir William St. Lowe, Sir Nicholas Arnold,
Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, and, as the council expressed it, "a world more,"
were in various prisons waiting their trials. Those who were suspected of
being in Elizabeth's confidence were kept with their fate impending over
them—to be tempted either with hopes of pardon, or by the rack, to betray
their secrets.[259]

But, sooner or later, the queen was determined that every one who could
be convicted should die,[260] and beyond, and above them all, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth's illness, which had been supposed to have been assumed, was
real, and as the feeling of the people towards her compelled the observance
of the forms of justice and decency, physicians were sent from the court to
attend upon her. On the 18th of February they reported that she could be
moved with safety; and, escorted by Lord William Howard, Sir Edward
Hastings, and Sir Thomas Cornwallis, she was brought by slow stages, of
six or seven miles a day, to London.[261] Renard had described her to the
emperor as probably enceinte through some vile intrigue, and crushed with
remorse and disappointment.[262]

To give the lie to all such slanders, when she entered the city, the princess
had the covering of her litter thrown back; she was dressed in white, her
face was pale from her illness, but the expression was lofty, scornful, and
magnificent.[263] Crowds followed her along the streets to Westminster. The
queen, when she arrived at Whitehall, refused to see her; a suite of rooms
was assigned for her confinement in a corner of the palace, from which
there was no egress except by passing the guard, and there, with short
attendance, she waited the result of Gardiner's investigations. Wyatt, by
vague admissions, had already partially compromised her, and, on the
strength of his words, and the discovery of the copy of her letter in the
packet of Noailles, she would have gone direct to the Tower, had the lords
permitted. The emperor urged instant and summary justice both on her and
on Courtenay; the irritation, should irritation arise, could be allayed
afterwards by an amnesty.[264] The lords, however, insisted obstinately on
the forms of law, the necessity of witnesses, and of a trial; and Renard
watched their unreasonable humours with angry misgivings. It was enough,
he said, that the conspiracy was undertaken in Elizabeth's interests; if she
escaped now, the queen would never be secure.[265] In fact, while Elizabeth
lived, the prince could not venture among the wild English spirits, and
Charles was determined that the marriage should not escape him.

As soon as the rebellion was crushed, Egmont, attended by Count Horn,
returned to complete his work. He brought with him the dispensations in
regular form. He brought also a fresh and pressing entreaty that Elizabeth
should be sacrificed. An opportunity had been placed in the queen's hand,

which her duty to the church required that she should not neglect; and
Egmont was directed to tell her that the emperor, in trusting his son in a
country where his own power could not protect him, relied upon her honour
not to neglect any step essential to his security.[266] Egmont gave his
message. The unhappy queen required no urging; she protested to Renard,
that she could neither rest nor sleep, so ardent was her desire for the prince's
safe arrival.[267] Courtenay, if necessary, she could kill; against him the
proofs were complete; as to Elizabeth, she knew her guilt; the evidence was
growing; and she would insist to the council that justice should be done.

About the marriage itself, the lords had by this time agreed to yield.
Courtenay's pretensions could no longer be decently advanced, and
Gardiner, abandoning a hopeless cause, and turning his attention to the
restoration of the church, would consent to anything, if, on his side, he
might emancipate the clergy from the control of the civil power, and re-
establish persecution. Two factions, distinctly marked, were now growing in
the council—the party of the statesmen, composed of Paget, Sussex,
Arundel, Pembroke, Lord William Howard, the Marquis of Winchester, Sir
Edward Hastings, and Cornwallis: the party of the church, composed of
Gardiner, Petre, Rochester, Gage, Jerningham, and Bourne. Divided on all
other questions, the rival parties agreed only no longer to oppose the
coming of Philip. The wavering few had been decided by the presents and
promises which Egmont brought with him from Charles. Pensions of two
thousand crowns had been offered to, and were probably accepted by the
Earls of Pembroke, Arundel, Derby, and Shrewsbury; pensions of a
thousand crowns were given to Sussex, Darcy, Winchester, Rochester,
Petre, and Cheyne; pensions of five hundred crowns to Southwell,
Waldegrave, Inglefield, Wentworth, and Grey;[268] ten thousand crowns
were distributed among the officers and gentlemen who had distinguished
themselves against Wyatt. The pensions were large, but, as Renard
observed, when Charles seemed to hesitate, several of the recipients were
old, and would soon die; and, as to the rest, things in England were
changing from day to day, and means of some kind would easily be found
to put an early end to the payments.[269]

Unanimity having been thus secured, on the day of Egmont's arrival
Renard demanded an audience of the lords, and in the queen's presence

requested their opinion whether the condition of England allowed the
completion of the contract. The life of the prince of Spain was of great
importance to Europe; should they believe in their hearts that he would be
in danger, there was still time to close the negotiation. The rebellion having
broken out and having failed, the lords replied that there was no longer any
likelihood of open violence. Arundel hinted, again, that the prince must
bring his own cook and butler with him;[270] but he had nothing else to fear,
if he could escape the French cruisers.

These assurances, combined with the queen's secret promises about
Elizabeth, were held sufficient; and on the 6th of March, at three o'clock in
the afternoon, the ambassadors were conducted by Pembroke into the
presence chamber. The queen, kneeling before the sacrament, called it to
witness that, in consenting to the alliance with the Prince of Spain, she was
moved by no carnal concupiscence, but only by her zeal for the welfare of
her realm and subjects; and then, rising up, with the bystanders all in tears,
she gave her hand to Egmont as Philip's representative. The blessing was
pronounced by Gardiner, and the proxy marriage was completed.[271] The
prince was to be sent for without delay, and Southampton was chosen as the
port at which he should disembark, "being in the country of the Bishop of
Winchester," where the people were, for the most part, good Catholics.

Parliament was expected to give its sanction without further difficulty;
the opposition of the country having been neutralised by the same causes
which had influenced the council. The queen, indeed, in going through the
ceremony before consulting parliament, though she had broken the promise
which she made in the Guildhall, had placed it beyond their power to raise
difficulties; but other questions were likely to rise which would not be
settled so easily. She herself was longing to show her gratitude to
Providence by restoring the authority of the pope; and the pope intended, if
possible, to recover his first-fruits and Peter's pence, and to maintain the
law of the church which forbade the alienation of church property.[272] The
English laity were resolute on their side to keep hold of what they had got;
and to set the subject at rest, and to prevent unpleasant discussions on
points of theology, Paget, with his friends, desired that the session should
last but a few days, and that two measures only should be brought forward;
the first for the confirmation of the treaty of marriage, the second to reassert

the validity of the titles under which the church estates were held by their
present owners. If the queen consented to the last, her title of Head of the
Church might be dropped informally, and allowed to fall into abeyance.[273]

Gardiner, however, saw in the failure of the insurrection an opportunity
of emancipating the church, and of extinguishing heresy with fire and
sword.[274] He was preparing a bill to restore the ancient rigorous tyranny of
the ecclesiastical courts; and by his own authority he directed that, in the
writs for the parliament, the summons should be to meet at Oxford,[275]
where the conservatism of the country would be released from the dread of
the London citizens. The spirit which, thirteen years before, had passed the
Six Articles Bill by acclamation, continued to smoulder in the slow minds
of the country gentlemen, and was blazing freely among the lately
persecuted priests. The Bishop of Winchester had arranged in his
imagination a splendid melodrama. The session was to begin on the 2nd of
April; and the ecclesiastical bill was to be the first to be passed. On the 8th
of March, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were sent down to the University
to be tried before a committee of Convocation which had already decided
on its verdict; and the Fathers of the Reformation were either to recant or to
suffer the flaming penalties of heresy in the presence of the legislature, as
the first-fruits of a renovated church discipline.

Vainly Renard protested. In the fiery obstinacy of his determination,
Gardiner was the incarnate expression of the fury of the ecclesiastical
faction, smarting, as they were, under their long degradation, and under the
irritating consciousness of those false oaths of submission which they had
sworn to a power which they loathed. Once before, in the first reaction
against Protestant excesses, the Bishop of Winchester had seen the Six
Articles Bill carried—but his prey had then been snatched from his grasp.
Now, embittered by fresh oppression, he saw his party once more in a
position to revenge their wrongs when there was no Henry any longer to
stand between them and their enemies. He would take the tide at the flood,
forge a weapon keener than the last, and establish the Inquisition.[276] Paget
swore it should not be.[277] Charles V. himself, dreading a fresh interruption
to the marriage, insisted that this extravagant fervour should be checked;
[278] and the Bishop of Arras, the scourge of the Netherlands, interceded for
moderation in England. But Gardiner and the clergy were not to be turned

from the hope of their hearts by the private alarms of the Imperialists; and
in the heart of the queen religious orthodoxy was Philip's solitary rival.
Renard urged her to be prudent in religion and cruel to the political
prisoners. Gardiner, though eager as Renard to kill Elizabeth, would buy the
privilege of working his will upon the Protestants by sparing Courtenay and
Courtenay's friends. Mary listened to the worst counsels of each, and her
distempered humour settled into a confused ferocity. So unwholesome
appeared the aspect of things in the middle of March that, notwithstanding
the formal contract, Renard almost advised the emperor to relinquish the
thought of committing his son among so wild a people.[279]

As opposition to extreme measures was anticipated in the House of
Lords, as well as among the Commons, it was important to strengthen the
bench of bishops. The pope had granted permission without difficulty to fill
the vacant sees; and on the 1st of April six new prelates were consecrated at
St. Mary Overies, while Sir John Brydges and Sir John Williams of Thame
were raised to the peerage.

The Protestants, it must be admitted, had exerted themselves to make
Gardiner's work easy to him. On the 14th of March the wall of a house in
Aldgate became suddenly vocal, and seventeen thousand persons were
collected to hear a message from Heaven pronounced by an angel. When
the people said "God save Queen Mary," the wall was silent; when they said
"God save Queen Elizabeth," the wall said "Amen!" When they asked,
"What is the mass?" the wall said, "It is idolatry." As the nation was holding
its peace, the stones, it seemed, were crying out against the reaction. But the
angel, on examination, turned out to be a girl concealed behind the plaster.
Shortly after, the inhabitants of Cheapside, on opening their shop windows
in the morning, beheld on a gallows, among the bodies of the hanged
insurgents, a cat in priestly robes, with crown shaven, the fore-paws tied
over her head, and a piece of paper clipped round between them,
representing the wafer.

More serious were the doings of a part of the late conspirators who had
escaped to France. Peter Carew, when he left Weymouth, promised soon to
return, and he was received at Paris with a cordiality that answered his
warmest hopes. Determined, if possible, to prevent Philip from reaching

England, the French had equipped every vessel which they possessed
available for sea, and Carew was sent again to the coast of the Channel to
tempt across into the French service all those who, like himself, were
compromised in the conspiracy, or whose blood was hotter than their
fathers'. Every day the queen was chafed with the news of desertions to
their dangerous rendezvous. Young men of honourable families, Pickerings,
Strangways's, Killegrews, Staffords, Stauntons, Tremaynes, Courtenays,
slipped over the water, carrying with them hardy sailors from the western
harbours. The French supplied them with arms, ships, and money; and fast-
sailing, heavily-armed privateers, officered by these young adventurers in
the cause of freedom, were cruising on their own account, plundering
Flemish and Spanish ships, and swearing that the Prince of Spain should set
no foot on English shores.[280]

The queen indignantly demanded explanations of Noailles, and, through
her ambassador at Paris, she required the French government to seize "her
traitors," and deliver them to her. Noailles, alarmed, perhaps, for his own
security, suggested that it might be well to conceal Carew, and to affect to
make an attempt to arrest him. But Henry, at once more sagacious and more
bold, replied to the ambassador that "he was not the queen's hangman:"
"these men that you require," he said, "deny that they have conspired
anything against the queen; marry, they say they will not be oppressed by
mine enemy, and that is no just cause why I should owe them ill-will."[281]
He desired Noailles, with quiet irony, to tell her majesty "that there was
nothing in the existing treaties to forbid his accepting the services of
English volunteers in the war with the emperor: her majesty might
remember that he had invited her to make a new treaty, and that she had
refused:" "he would act by the just letter of his obligations."[282]

Would her subjects have permitted, the queen would have replied by a
declaration of war. As it was, she could only relieve herself with indignant
words.[283] But Carew and his friends might depend on support so long as
they would make themselves useful to France. Possessed of ships and arms,
they were a constant menace to the Channel, and a constant temptation to
the disaffected; and, growing bitter at last, and believing that Elizabeth's life
was on the point of being sacrificed, they were prepared to support Henry in
a second attempt to seize the Isle of Wight, and to accept the French

competitor for the English crown in the person of the Queen of Scots.[284]
Thus fatally the friends of the Reformation played into the hands of its
enemies. By the solid mass of Englishmen the armed interference of France
was more dreaded than even a Spanish sovereign; and the heresy became
doubly odious which was tampering with the hereditary enemies of the
realm. In London only the revolutionary spirit continued vigorous, and
broke out perpetually in unexpected forms. At the beginning of March three
hundred schoolboys met in a meadow outside the city walls: half were for
Wyatt and for France, half for the Prince of Spain; and, not all in play (for
evidently they chose their sides by their sympathies), they joined battle, and
fought with the fierceness of grown men. The combat ended in the capture
of the representative of Philip, who was dragged to a gallows, and would
have been hanged upon it, had not the spectators interfered.[285] The boys
were laid hands upon. The youngest were whipped, the elder imprisoned. It
was said that the queen thought of gibbeting one of these innocents in real
fact, for an example; or, as Noailles put it, as an expiation for the sins of the
people.[286]

Over Elizabeth, in the meantime, the fatal net appeared to be closing;
Lord Russell had received a letter for her from Wyatt, which, though the
princess declared that it had never been in her hands, he said that he had
forwarded; and Wyatt himself was flattered with hopes of life if he would
extend his confession. Renard carried his ingenuity farther; he called in the
assistance of Lady Wyatt, and promised her that her husband should be
spared; he even urged the queen to gain over, by judicious leniency, a man
whose apostasy would be a fresh disgrace to his cause, and who might be as
useful as a servant as he had been dangerous as a foe.[287] Wyatt, being a
man without solidity of heart, showed signs of yielding to what was
required of him; but his revelations came out slowly, and to quicken his
confession he was brought to his trial on the 15th of March. He pleaded
guilty to the indictment, and he then said that Courtenay had been the
instigator of the conspiracy; he had written to Elizabeth, he said, to advise
her to remove as far as possible from London, and Elizabeth had returned
him a verbal message of thanks. This being not enough, he was sentenced to
death; but he was made to feel that he might still earn his pardon if he
would implicate Elizabeth more deeply; and though he said nothing

definite, he allowed himself to drop vague hints that he could tell more if he
pleased.[288]

At all events, however, sufficient evidence had been obtained in the
opinion of the court for the committal of the princess to the Tower. On the
day of Wyatt's trial, the council met, but separated without a resolution; on
Friday, the 16th, Elizabeth was examined before them in person; and when
she withdrew, Gardiner required that she should be sent to the Tower
instantly. Paget, supported by Sussex, Hastings, and Cornwallis, said that
there was no evidence to justify so violent a measure.[289] Which of you,
then, said Gardiner, with dexterous ingenuity, will be responsible for the
safe keeping of her person?

The guardian of Elizabeth would be exposed to a hundred dangers and a
thousand suspicions; the lords answered that Gardiner was conspiring their
destruction. No one could be found courageous enough to undertake the
charge, and they gave their reluctant consent to his demand. The same night
Elizabeth's attendants were removed, a hundred soldiers were picketed in
the garden below her window, and on Saturday morning (March 17) the
Marquis of Winchester and Lord Sussex waited on her to communicate her
destination, and to attend her to a barge.

The terrible name of the Tower was like a death-knell; the princess
entreated a short delay till she could write a few words to the queen; the
queen could not know the truth, she said, or else she was played upon by
Gardiner. Alas! she did not know the queen: Winchester hesitated; Lord
Sussex, more generous, accepted the risk, and promised, on his knees, to
place her letter in the queen's hands.

The very lines traced by Elizabeth in that bitter moment may still be read
in the State Paper Office,[290] and her hand was more than usually firm.

"If ever any one," she wrote, "did try this old saying that a king's word
was more than another man's oath, I most humbly beseech your majesty to
verify it in me, and to remember your last promise, and my last demand,
that I be not condemned without answer and due proof, which it seems that
I now am: for that without cause proved I am by your council from you
commanded to go unto the Tower, a place more wonted for a false traitor

than a true subject: which, though I know I deserve it not, yet in the face of
all this realm appears that it is proved; which I pray God that I may die the
shamefullest death that any died, afore I may mean any such thing: and to
this present hour I protest, afore God who shall judge my truth, whatsoever
malice shall devise, that I never practised, counselled, nor consented to
anything that might be prejudicial to your person any way, or dangerous to
the state by any means. And I therefore humbly beseech your majesty to let
me answer afore yourself, and not suffer me to trust to your councillors;
yea, and that afore I go to the Tower, if it is possible; if not, afore I be
further condemned. Howbeit, I trust assuredly your highness will give me
leave to do it afore I go, for that thus shamefully I may not be cried out on,
as now I shall be, yea, and without cause. Let conscience move your
highness to take some better way with me, than to make me be condemned
in all men's sight, afore my desert known. Also, I most humbly beseech
your highness to pardon this my boldness, which innocency procures me to
do, together with hope of your natural kindness, which I trust will not see
me cast away without desert: which what it is I would desire no more of
God than that you truly knew; which thing, I think and believe, you shall
never by report know, unless by yourself you hear. I have heard in my time
of many cast away for want of coming to the presence of their prince; and
in late days I heard my Lord of Somerset say that, if his brother had been
suffered to speak with him, he had never suffered; but the persuasions were
made to him so great, that he was brought in belief that he could not live
safely if the admiral lived, and that made him give his consent to his death.
Though these persons are not to be compared to your majesty, yet I pray
God as evil persuasions persuade not one sister against the other, and all for
that they have heard false reports, and not hearken to the truth known;
therefore, once again kneeling with all humbleness of my heart, because I
am not suffered to bow the knees of my body, I humbly crave to speak with
your highness, which I would not be so bold to desire if I knew not myself
most clear, as I know myself most true. And as for the traitor Wyatt, he
might peradventure write me a letter, but on my faith I never received any
from him; and for the copy of my letter sent to the French king, I pray God
confound me eternally if ever I sent him word, message, token, or letter by
any means:[291] and to this my truth I will stand to my death your highness's
most faithful subject that hath been from the beginning, and will be to the
end." Elizabeth.

"I humbly crave but one word of answer from yourself."

Had Elizabeth known the history of those words of the queen to her, to
which she appealed, she would have spared herself the trouble of writing
this letter. Sussex fulfilled his promise, and during the delay the tide turned,
and the barge could not pass London Bridge till the following day. The
queen could not venture to send the princess through the streets; and in
dread lest, at the last moment, her prey should be snatched from her, she
answered the appeal only by storming at the bearer, and at his friends in the
council. "They were going no good way," she said, "for their lives they
durst not have acted so in her father's time; she wished that he was alive and
among them but for a single month."[292]

At nine o'clock the next morning—it was Palm Sunday (March 18)—the
two lords returned to Elizabeth to tell her that her letter had failed. As she
crossed the garden to the water she threw up her eyes to the queen's
window, but there was no sign of recognition. What do the lords mean, she
said, that they suffer me thus to be led into captivity? The barge was too
deep to approach sufficiently near to the landing-place at the Tower to
enable her to step upon the causeway without wetting her feet; it was
raining too, and the petty inconveniences, fretting against the dreadful
associations of the Traitors' Gate, shook her self-command. She refused to
land; then sharply rejecting an offer of assistance, she sprang out upon the
mud. "Are all those harnessed men there for me?" she said to Sir John
Gage, who was waiting with the Tower guard. "No, madam," Gage
answered. "Yes," she said, "I know it is so; it needed not for me, being but a
weak woman. I never thought to have come in here a prisoner," she went
on, turning to the soldiers; "I pray you all good fellows and friends, bear me
witness that I come in no traitor, but as true a woman to the queen's majesty
as any is now living, and thereon will I take my death." She threw herself
down upon a wet stone; Lord Chandos begged her to come under shelter out
of the rain: "better sitting here than in a worse place," she cried; "I know not
whither you will bring me."

But it was not in Elizabeth's nature to protract a vain resistance; she rose,
and passed on, and as she approached the room intended for her, the heavy
doors along the corridor were locked and barred behind her. At the grating

of the iron bolts the heart of Lord Sussex sank in him: Sussex knew the
queen's true feelings, and the efforts which were made to lash her into
cruelty; "What mean ye, my lords," he said to Chandos and Gage, "what
will you do?" "she was a king's daughter, and is the queen's sister; go no
further than your commission, which I know what it is."[293]

The chief danger was of murder—of some swift desperate act which
could not be undone; the lords who had so reluctantly permitted Elizabeth
to be imprisoned would not allow her to be openly sacrificed, or indeed
permit the queen to continue in the career of vengeance on which she had
entered. The executions on account of the rebellion had not ceased even yet.
In Kent, London, and in the midland counties, day after day, one, two, or
more persons had been put to death; six gentlemen were, at that very
moment, on their way to Maidstone and Rochester to suffer. The lords, on
the day of Elizabeth's committal, held a meeting while Gardiner was
engaged elsewhere; they determined to remonstrate, and, if necessary, to
insist on a change of course, and Paget undertook to be the bearer of the
message. He found Mary in her oratory after vespers; he told her that the
season might remind a sovereign of other duties besides revenge; already
too much blood had been shed; the noble house of Suffolk was all but
destroyed; and he said distinctly that if she attempted any more executions,
he and his friends would interfere; the hideous scenes had lasted too long,
and, as an earnest of a return to mercy, he demanded the pardon of the six
gentlemen.

Mary, as she lamented afterwards to Renard, was unprepared; she was
pressed in terms which showed that those who made the request did not
intend to be refused—and she consented.[294] The six gentlemen escaped;
and, following up this beginning, the council, in the course of the week,
extorted from her the release of Northampton, Cobham, and one of his sons,
with five others. In a report to the emperor, Renard admitted that, if the
queen attempted to continue her course of justice, there would be
resistance; and the party of the chancellor, being the weakest, would in that
case be overwhelmed. It was the more necessary, therefore, that, by one
means or another, Elizabeth should be disposed of. The queen had
condescended to apologise to him for her second act of clemency, which
she excused as being an Easter custom. It was not for him to find fault, he

said that he had replied, if her majesty was pleased to show mercy at the
holy season; but it was his duty to remind her that he doubted whether the
prince could be trusted with her.

This argument never failed to drive Mary to madness; and, on the other
side, Renard applied to Gardiner to urge despatch in bringing Elizabeth to
trial: as long as she lived, there was no security for the queen, for the
prince, or for religion. Gardiner echoed the same opinion. If others, he said,
would go to work as roundly as himself, all would be well.[295]

In this condition of the political atmosphere parliament assembled on the
2nd of April. The Oxford scheme had been relinquished as impracticable.
The Lord Mayor informed the queen that he would not answer for the peace
of the city in the absence of the court; the Tower might be surprised and the
prisoners released; and to lose the Tower would be to lose the crown. The
queen said that she would not leave London while her sister's fate was
undetermined.[296] The Houses met, therefore, as usual, as Westminster, and
the speech from the throne was read in Mary's presence by the chancellor.

Since the last parliament, Gardiner said, the people of England had given
proofs of unruly humour. The queen was their undoubted sovereign, and a
measure would be submitted to the Lords and Commons to declare, in some
emphatic manner, her claim to her subjects' obedience.

Her majesty desiring, further, in compliance with her subjects' wishes, to
take a husband, she had fixed her choice on the Prince of Spain, as a person
agreeable to herself and likely to be a valuable friend to the realm: the
people, however, had insolently and ignorantly presumed to mutiny against
her intentions, and, in her affection for the commonwealth, her majesty had
consented to submit the articles of the marriage to the approval of
parliament.

Again, her majesty would desire them to take into their consideration the
possible failure of the blood royal, and adopt necessary precautions to
secure an undisturbed succession to the crown. It would be for the
parliament to decide whether the privilege which had been granted to Henry
VIII. of bequeathing the crown by will might not be, with propriety,
extended to her present majesty.[297]

Finally, and at great length, the chancellor spoke of religion. The late
rebellion, he said, was properly a religious rebellion: it was the work of men
who despised the sacraments, and were the enemies of truth, order, and
godliness. A measure would be laid before the legislature for the better
restraint of irregular licence of opinion.

The marriage was to pass quietly. Those of the Lords and Commons who
persevered in their disapproval were a small minority, and did not intend to
appear.[298] The bill, therefore, passed both Houses by the 12th of April.[299]
The marriage articles were those originally offered by the emperor, with the
English clauses attached, and some explanatory paragraphs, that no room
might be left for laxity of interpretation.[300] Lord Bedford and Lord
Fitzwalter had already gone to Plymouth, where a ship was in readiness to
carry them to Spain. They waited only till the parliamentary forms were
completed, and immediately sailed. Lord William Howard would go to sea
with the fleet, at his earliest convenience, to protect the passage, and the
prince might be expected in England by the end of May. The bill for the
queen's authority was carried also without objection. The forms of English
law running only in the name of a king, it had been pretended that a queen
could not be a lawful sovereign. A declaratory statute explained that the
kingly prerogative was the same, whether vested in male or female.[301]
Here, however, unanimity was at an end. The paragraph about the
succession in the queen's speech being obviously aimed at Elizabeth,
produced such an irritation in the council, as well as in parliament, that
Renard expected it would end in actual armed conflict.[302]

From the day of Elizabeth's imprisonment Gardiner had laboured to
extort evidence against her by fair means or foul.[303] She had been
followed to the Tower by her servants. Sir John Gage desired that her food
should be dressed by people of his own. The servants refused to allow
themselves to be displaced,[304] and, to the distress of Renard, angry words
had been addressed to Gage by Lord Howard, so that they could not be
removed by force.[305]

The temptation of life having failed, after all, to induce Wyatt to enlarge
his confession beyond his first acknowledgments, it was determined to
execute him. On the 11th of April he was brought out of his cell, and on his

way to the scaffold he was confronted with Courtenay, to whom he said
something, but how much or what it is impossible to ascertain.[306] Finding
that his death was inevitable, he determined to make the only reparation
which was any longer in his power to Elizabeth. When placed on the
platform, after desiring the people to pray for him, lamenting his crime, and
expressing a hope that he might be the last person to suffer for the rebellion,
he concluded thus:

"Whereas it is said abroad that I should accuse my Lady Elizabeth's
Grace and my Lord Courtenay; it is not so, good people, for I assure you
neither they nor any other now yonder in hold or durance was privy of my
rising or commotion before I began."[307]

The words, or the substance of them, were heard by every one. Weston,
who attended as confessor, shouted, "Believe him not, good people! he
confessed otherwise before the council." "That which I said then I said,"
answered Wyatt, "but that which I say now is true." The executioner did his
office, and Wyatt's work, for good or evil, was ended.

All that the court had gained by his previous confessions was now more
than lost. London rang with the story that Wyatt, in dying, had cleared
Courtenay and Elizabeth.[308] Gardiner still thundered in the Star Chamber
on the certainty of their guilt, and pilloried two decent citizens who had
repeated Wyatt's words; but his efforts were vain, and the hope of a legal
conviction was at an end. The judges declared that against Elizabeth there
was now no evidence;[309] and, even if there had been evidence, Renard
wrote to his master, that the court could not dare to proceed further against
her, from fear of Lord William Howard, who had the whole naval force of
England at his disposal, and, in indignation at Elizabeth's treatment, might
join the French and the exiles.[310] Perplexed to know how to dispose of her,
the ambassador and the chancellor thought of sending her off to Pomfret
Castle; doubtless, if once within Pomfret walls, to find the fate of the
second Richard there: but again the spectre of Lord Howard terrified them.

The threatened escape of her sister, too, was but the beginning of the
queen's sorrows. On the 17th of April Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was tried
at the Guildhall for having been a party to the conspiracy. The confessions
of many of the prisoners had more or less implicated Throgmorton.

Cuthbert Vaughan, who was out with Wyatt, swore in the court that
Throgmorton had discussed the plan of the insurrection with him; and
Throgmorton himself admitted that he had talked to Sir Peter Carew and
Wyatt about the probability of a rebellion. He it was, too, who was to have
conducted Courtenay to Andover on his flight into Devonshire; and the
evidence[311] leaves very little doubt that he was concerned as deeply as any
one who did not actually take up arms. Sir Nicholas, however, defended
himself with resolute pertinacity; he fought through all the charges against
him, and dissected the depositions with the skill of a practised pleader; and
in the end, the jury returned the bold verdict of "Not guilty." Sir Thomas
Bromley urged them to remember themselves. The foreman answered they
had found the verdict according to their consciences.

Their consciences probably found less difficulty in the facts charged
against Throgmorton than in the guilt to be attached to them. The verdict
was intended as a rebuke to the cruelty with which the rebellion had been
punished, and it was received as an insult to the crown. The crowd, as
Throgmorton left the court, threw up their caps and shouted. The queen was
ill for three days with mortification,[312] and insisted that the jurors should
be punished. They were arrested, and kept as prisoners till the following
winter, when they were released on payment of the ruinous fine of £2000.
Throgmorton himself was seized again on some other pretext, and sent
again to the Tower. The council, or Paget's party there, remonstrated against
the arrest; they yielded, however, perhaps that they might make the firmer
stand on more important matters.

Since Elizabeth could not be executed, the court were the more anxious
to carry the Succession Bill. Gardiner's first desire was that Elizabeth
should be excluded by name; but Paget said that this was impossible.[313]
As little could a measure be passed empowering the queen to leave the
crown by will, for that would be but the same thing under another form.
Following up his purpose, notwithstanding, Gardiner brought out in the
House of Lords a pedigree, tracing Philip's descent from John of Gaunt; and
he introduced a bill to make offences against his person high treason. But at
the second reading the important words were introduced, "during the
queen's lifetime;"[314] the bill was read a third time, and then disappeared;
and Paget had been the loudest of its opponents.[315]

Beaten on the succession, the chancellor, in spite of Renard's
remonstrances, brought forward next his Religious Persecution Bills. The
House of Commons went with him to some extent; and, to secure success in
some form or other, he introduced three separate measures, either of which
would answer his purpose— a bill for the restoration of the Six Articles, a
bill to re-enact the Lollard Statute of Henry IV., De Hæretico Comburendo,
and a bill to restore (in more than its original vigour) the Episcopal
Jurisdiction. The Six Articles had so bad a name that the first bill was read
once only, and was dropped; the two others passed the Commons,[316] and,
on the 26th of April, the Bishops' Authority Bill came before the Lords.
Lord Paget was so far in advance of his time that he could not hope to
appeal with a chance of success to his own principles of judicious
latitudinarianism; but he determined, if possible, to prevent Gardiner's
intended cruelties from taking effect, and he spread an alarm that, if the
bishops were restored to their unrestricted powers, under one form or other
the holders of the abbey lands would be at their mercy. To allay the
suspicion, another bill was carried through the Commons, providing
expressly for the safety of the holders of those lands; but the tyranny of the
episcopal courts was so recent, and the ecclesiastics had shown themselves
uniformly so little capable of distinguishing between right and wrong when
the interests of religion were at stake, that the jealousy, once aroused, could
not be checked. The irritation became so hot and so general as to threaten
again the most dangerous consequences; and Paget, pretending to be
alarmed at the excitement which he had raised, urged Renard to use his
influence with the queen to dissolve parliament.[317]

Renard, who was only anxious that the marriage should go off quietly,
agreed in the desirableness of a dissolution. He told the queen that the
reform of religion must be left to a better opportunity; and the prince could
not, and should not, set his foot in a country where parties were for ever on
the edge of cutting each other's throats. It was no time for her to be
indulging Gardiner in humours which were driving men mad, and shutting
her ears to the advice of those who could ruin her if they pleased; she must
think first of her husband. The queen protested that Gardiner was acting by
no advice of hers; Gardiner, she said, was obstinate, and would listen to no
one; she herself was helpless and miserable. But Renard was not to be
moved by misery. At all events, he said, the prince should not come till late

in the summer, perhaps not till autumn, not, in fact, till it could be seen
what form these wild humours would assume; summer was the dangerous
time in England, when the people's blood was apt to boil.[318]

Gardiner, however, was probably not acting without Mary's secret
approbation. Both the queen and the minister especially desired, at that
moment, the passing of the Heresy Bill, and Renard was obliged to content
himself with a promise that the dissolution should be as early as possible.
Though parliament could not meet at Oxford, a committee of Convocation
had been sitting there, with Dr. Weston, the adulterous Dean of Windsor, for
a president. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer had been called upon to defend
their opinions, which had been pronounced false and damnable. They had
been required to recant, and, having refused, they were sentenced (April
20), so far as the power of the court extended, to the punishment of heretics.

Cranmer appealed from the judgment to God Almighty, in whose
presence he would soon stand.

Ridley said the sentence would but send them the sooner to the place
where else they hoped to go.

Latimer said, "I thank God that my life has been prolonged that I may
glorify God by this kind of death."

Hooper, Ferrars, Coverdale, Taylor, Philpot, and Sandars, who were in
the London prisons, were to have been simultaneously tried and sentenced
at Cambridge. These six, however, drew and signed a joint refusal to
discuss their faith in a court before which they were to be brought as
prisoners; and for some reason the proceedings against them were
suspended; but whether they refused or consented was of little moment to
the Bishop of Winchester; they were in his hands—he could try them when
he pleased. A holocaust of heresiarchs was waiting to be offered up, and
before a faggot could be lighted, the necessary powers had to be obtained
from parliament.

The bishop, therefore, was determined, if possible, to obtain those
powers. He had the entire bench of prelates on his side; and Lord Howard,
the Earl of Bedford, and others of the lay lords who would have been on the

side of humanity, were absent. The opposition had to be conducted under
the greatest difficulties. Paget, however, fought the battle, and fought it on
broad grounds: the bishops' bill was read twice; on the third reading, on the
1st of May, he succeeded in throwing it out: the Lollards' bill came on the
day after, and here his difficulty was far greater; for toleration was
imperfectly understood by Catholic or Protestant, and many among the
peers, who hated the bishops, equally hated heresy. Paget, however, spoke
out his convictions, and protested against the iniquity of putting men to
death for their opinions.[319] The bill was read a first time on the day on
which it was introduced; on the 4th of May it was read again,[320] but it
went no further. The next day parliament was dissolved. The peers assured
the queen that they had no desire to throw a shield over heresy; the common
law existed independent of statute, and the common law prescribed
punishments which could still be inflicted.[321] But, so long as heresy was
undefined, Anabaptists, Socinians, or professors of the more advanced
forms of opinion, could alone fall within the scope of punishments merely
traditional.

The tempers of men were never worse than at that moment, Renard
wrote. In the heat of the debate, on the 28th of April, Lord Thomas Grey
was executed as a defiance to the liberal party. Gardiner persuaded the
queen, perhaps not without reason, that he was himself in danger of being
arrested by Paget and Pembroke;[322] and an order was sent to the
Lieutenant of the Tower that if the chancellor was brought thither under
warrant of the council only, he was not to be received.[323]

On the other hand, twelve noblemen and gentlemen undertook to stand
by Mary if she would arrest Paget and Pembroke. The chancellor, Sir
Robert Rochester, and the Marquis of Winchester discussed the feasibility
of seizing them; but Lord Howard and the Channel fleet were thought to
present too formidable an obstacle. With the queen's sanction, however,
they armed in secret. It was agreed that, on one pretence or another, Derby,
Shrewsbury, Sussex, and Huntingdon should be sent out of London to their
counties. Elizabeth, if it could be managed, should be sent to Pomfret, as
Gardiner had before proposed; Lord Howard should be kept at sea; and, if
opportunity offered, Arundel and Paget might, at least, be secured.[324]

But Pomfret was impossible, and vexation thickened on vexation. Lord
Howard was becoming a bugbear at the court. Report now said that two of
the Staffords, whom he had named to command in the fleet, had joined the
exiles in France; and for Lord Howard himself the queen could feel no
security, if he was provoked too far. She was haunted by a misgiving that,
while the prince was under his convoy, he might declare against her, and
carry him prisoner to France; or if Howard could himself be trusted, his
fleet could not. On the eve of sailing for the coast of Spain, a mutiny broke
out at Plymouth. The sailors swore that if they were forced on a service
which they detested, both the admiral and the prince should rue it. Lord
Howard, in reporting to the queen the men's misconduct, said that his own
life was at her majesty's disposal, but he advised her to reconsider the
prudence of placing the prince in their power. Howard's own conduct, too,
was far from reassuring. A few small vessels had been sent from Antwerp to
join the English fleet, under the Flemish admiral Chappelle. Chappelle
complained that Howard treated him with indifference, and insulted his
ships by "calling them cockle-shells." If the crews of the two fleets were on
land anywhere together, the English lost no opportunity of making a
quarrel, "hustling and pushing" the Flemish sailors;[325] and, as if finally to
complete the queen's vexation, Lord Bedford wrote that the prince declined
the protection of her subjects on his voyage, and that his departure was
postponed for a few weeks longer.

The fleet had to remain in the Channel; it could not be trusted elsewhere;
and the necessity of releasing Elizabeth from the Tower was another
annoyance to the queen. A confinement at Woodstock was the furthest
stretch of severity that the country would, for the present, permit. On the
19th of May, Elizabeth was taken up the river. The princess believed herself
that she was being carried off tanquam ovis, as she said—as a sheep for the
slaughter. But the world thought that she was set at liberty, and as her barge
passed under the bridge Mary heard, with indignation, from the palace
windows, three salvoes of artillery fired from the Steelyard, as a sign of the
joy of the people.[326] A letter from Philip would have been a consolation to
her in the midst of the troubles which she had encountered for his sake; but
the languid lover had never written a line to her; or, if he had written, not a
line had reached her hand; only a ship which contained despatches from
him for Renard had been taken, in the beginning of May, by a French

cruiser, and the thought that precious words of affection had, perhaps, been
on their way to her and were lost, was hard to bear.

In vain she attempted to cheer her spirits with the revived ceremonials of
Whitsuntide. She marched day after day, in procession, with canopies and
banners, and bishops in gilt slippers, round St. James's, round St. Martin's,
round Westminster.[327] Sermons and masses alternated now with religious
feasts, now with Diriges for her father's soul. But all was to no purpose; she
could not cast off her anxieties, or escape from the shadow of her subjects'
hatred, which clung to her steps. Insolent pamphlets were dropped in her
path and in the offices of Whitehall; she trod upon them in the passages of
the palace; they were placed by mysterious hands in the sanctuary of her
bedroom. At length, chafed with a thousand irritations, and craving for a
husband who showed so small anxiety to come to her, she fled from
London, at the beginning of June, to Richmond.

The trials of the last six months had begun to tell upon Mary's
understanding: she was ill with hysterical longings; ill with the passions
which Gardiner had kindled and Paget disappointed. A lady who slept in her
room told Noailles that she could speak to no one without impatience, and
that she believed the whole world was in league to keep her husband from
her. She found fault with every one—even with the prince himself. Why
had he not written? she asked again and again. Why had she never received
one courteous word from him? If she heard of merchants or sailors arriving
from Spain, she would send for them and question them; and some would
tell her that the prince was said to have little heart for his business in
England; others terrified her with tales of fearful fights upon the seas; and
others brought her news of the French squadrons that were on the watch in
the Channel.[328] She would start out of her sleep at night, picturing a
thousand terrors, and among them one to which all else were insignificant,
that her prince, who had taken such wild possession of her imagination, had
no answering feeling for herself—that, with her growing years and wasted
figure, she could never win him to love her.[329]

"The unfortunate queen," wrote Henry of France, "will learn the truth at
last. She will wake too late, in misery and remorse, to know that she has

filled the realm with blood for an object which, when she has gained it, will
bring nothing but affliction to herself or to her people."[330]

But the darkest season has its days of sunshine, and Mary's trials were for
the present over. If the statesmen were disloyal, the clergy and the
Universities appreciated her services to the church, and, in the midst of her
trouble, Oxford congratulated her on having been raised up for the
restoration of life and light to England.[331] More pleasant than this pleasant
flattery was the arrival, on the 19th of June, of the Marquis delas Navas
from Spain, with the news that by that time the prince was on his way.

It was even so. Philip had submitted to his unwelcome destiny, and six
thousand troops being required pressingly by the emperor in the Low
Countries, they attended him for his escort. A paper of advices was drawn
for the prince's use by Renard, directing him how to accommodate himself
to his barbarous fortune. Neither soldiers nor mariners would be allowed to
land. The noblemen, therefore, who formed his retinue, were advised to
bring Spanish musketeers, disguised in liveries, in the place of pages and
lacqueys; their arms could be concealed amidst the baggage. The war would
be an excuse for the noblemen being armed themselves, and the prince, on
landing, should have a shirt of mail under his doublet. As to manner, he
must endeavour to be affable: he would have to hunt with the young lords,
and to make presents to them; and, with whatever difficulty, he must learn a
few words of English, to exchange the ordinary salutations. As a friend,
Renard recommended Paget to him; he would find Paget "a man of sense."
[332]

Philip, who was never remarkable for personal courage, may be pardoned
for having come reluctantly to a country where he had to bring men-at-arms
for servants, and his own cook for fear of being poisoned. The sea, too, was
hateful to him, for he suffered miserably from sickness. Nevertheless, he
was coming, and with him such a retinue of gallant gentlemen as the world
has rarely seen together. The Marquis de los Valles, Gonzaga, d'Aguilar,
Medina Celi, Antonio de Toledo, Diego de Mendoza, the Count de Feria,
the Duke of Alva, Count Egmont, and Count Horn—men whose stories are
written in the annals of two worlds: some in letters of glorious light, some
in letters of blood which shall never be washed out while the history of

mankind survives. Whether for evil or good, they were not the meek
innocents for whom Renard had at one time asked so anxiously.

In company with these noblemen was Sir Thomas Gresham, charged with
half a million of money in bullion, out of the late arrivals from the New
World; which the emperor, after taking security from the London
merchants, had lent the queen, perhaps to enable her to make her marriage
palatable by the restoration of the currency.[333]

Thus preciously freighted, the Spanish fleet, a hundred and fifty ships,
large and small, sailed from Corunna at the beginning of July. The voyage
was weary and wretched. The sea-sickness prostrated both the prince and
the troops, and to the sea-sickness was added the terror of the French—a
terror, as it happened, needless, for the English exiles, by whom the prince
was to have been intercepted, had, in the last few weeks, melted away from
the French service, with the exception of a few who were at Scilly. Sir Peter
Carew, for some unknown reason, had written to ask for his pardon, and
had gone to Italy;[334] but the change was recent and unknown, and the
ships stole along in silence, the orders of the prince being that not a salute
should be fired to catch the ear of an enemy.[335] At last, on the 19th of July,
the white cliffs of Freshwater were sighted; Lord Howard lay at the Needles
with the English fleet; and on Friday, the 20th, at three o'clock in the
afternoon, the flotilla was safely anchored in Southampton Water.

The queen was on her way to Winchester, where she arrived the next
morning, and either in attendance upon her, or waiting at Southampton, was
almost the entire peerage of England. Having made up their minds to
endure the marriage, the lords resolved to give Philip the welcome which
was due to the husband of their sovereign, and in the uncertain temper of
the people, their presence might be necessary to protect his person from
insult or from injury.

It was an age of glitter, pomp, and pageantry; the anchors were no sooner
down, than a barge was in readiness, with twenty rowers in the queen's
colours of green and white; and Arundel, Pembroke, Shrewsbury, Derby,
and other lords went off to the vessel which carried the royal standard of
Castile. Philip's natural manner was cold and stiff, but he had been schooled
into graciousness. Exhausted by his voyage, he accepted delightedly the

instant invitation to go on shore, and he entered the barge accompanied by
the Duke of Alva. A crowd of gentlemen was waiting to receive him at the
landing-place. As he stepped out—not perhaps without some natural
nervousness and sharp glances round him—the whole assemblage knelt. A
salute was fired from the batteries, and Lord Shrewsbury presented him
with the order of the Garter.[336] An enthusiastic eye-witness thus describes
Philip's appearance:—

"Of visage he is well favoured, with a broad forehead and grey eyes,
straight-nosed and manly countenance. From the forehead to the point of
his chin his face groweth small. His pace is princely, and gait so straight
and upright as he loseth no inch of his height; with a yellow head and a
yellow beard; and thus to conclude, he is so well proportioned of body, arm,
leg, and every other limb to the same, as nature cannot work a more perfect
pattern, and, as I have learned, of the age of 28 years. His majesty I judge to
be of a stout stomach, pregnant-witted, and of most gentle nature."[337]

Sir Anthony Brown approached, leading a horse with a saddlecloth of
crimson velvet, embroidered with gold and pearls. He presented the steed,
with a Latin speech, signifying that he was his highness's Master of the
Horse; and Philip, mounting, went direct to Southampton church, the
English and Spanish noblemen attending bareheaded, to offer thanks for his
safe arrival. From the church he was conducted to a house which had been
furnished from the royal stores for his reception. Everything was, of course,
magnificent. Only there had been one single oversight. Wrought upon the
damask hangings, in conspicuous letters, were observed the ominous words,
"Henry, by the Grace of God, King of England, France, and Ireland, and
Supreme Head of the Church of England."[338]

Here the prince was to remain till Monday to recover from his voyage;
perhaps to ascertain, before he left the neighbourhood of his own fleet, the
humour of the barbarians among whom he had arrived. In Latin (he was
unable to speak French) he addressed the lords on the causes which had
brought him to England, the chief among those causes being the manifest
will of God, to which he felt himself bound to submit. It was noticed that he
never lifted his cap in speaking to any one,[339] but he evidently
endeavoured to be courteous. With a stomach unrecovered from the sea, and

disdaining precautions, he sate down on the night of his arrival to a public
English supper; he even drained a tankard of ale, as an example, he said, to
his Spanish companions.[340] The first evening passed off well, and he
retired to seek such rest as the strange land and strange people, the altered
diet, and the firing of guns, which never ceased through the summer night,
would allow him.

Another feature of his new country awaited Philip in the morning (July
21); he had come from the sunny plains of Castile; from his window at
Southampton he looked out upon a steady downfall of July rain. Through
the cruel torrent[341] he made his way to the church again to mass, and
afterwards Gardiner came to him from the queen. In the afternoon the sky
cleared, and the Duchess of Alva, who had accompanied her husband, was
taken out in a barge upon Southampton Water. Both English and Spaniards
exerted themselves to be mutually pleasing; but the situation was not of a
kind which it was desirable to protract. Six thousand Spanish troops were
cooped in the close uneasy transports, forbidden to land lest they should
provoke the jealousy of the people; and when, on Sunday (July 22), his
highness had to undergo a public dinner, in which English servants only
were allowed to attend upon him, the Castilian lords, many of whom
believed that they had come to England on a bootless errand, broke out into
murmurs.[342]

Monday came at last; the rain fell again, and the wind howled. The
baggage was sent forward in the morning in the midst of the tempest. Philip
lingered in hopes of a change; but no change came, and after an early dinner
the trumpet sounded to horse. Lords, knights, and gentlemen had thronged
into the town, from curiosity or interest, out of all the counties round.
Before the prince mounted it was reckoned, with uneasiness, that as many
as four thousand cavaliers, under no command, were collected to join the
procession.

A grey gelding was led up for Philip; he wrapped himself in a scarlet
cloak, and started to meet his bride—to complete a sacrifice the least
congenial, perhaps, which ever policy of state extracted from a prince.

The train could move but slowly. Two miles beyond the gates a drenched
rider, spattered with chalk mud, was seen galloping towards them; on

reaching the prince he presented him with a ring from the queen, and
begged his highness, in her majesty's name, to come no further. The
messenger could not explain the cause, being unable to speak any language
which Philip could understand, and visions of commotion instantly
presented themselves, mixed, it may be, with a hope that the bitter duty
might yet be escaped. Alva was immediately at his master's side; they
reined up, and were asking each other anxiously what should next be done,
when an English lord exclaimed in French, with courteous irony, "Our
queen, sire, loves your highness so tenderly that she would not have you
come to her in such wretched weather."[343] The hope, if hope there had
been, died in its birth; before sunset, with drenched garments and draggled
plume, the object of so many anxieties arrived within the walls of
Winchester.

To the cathedral he went first, wet as he was. Whatever Philip of Spain
was entering upon, whether it was a marriage or a massacre, a state intrigue
or a midnight murder, his opening step was ever to seek a blessing from the
holy wafer. He entered, kissed the crucifix, and knelt and prayed before the
altar; then taking his seat in the choir, he remained while the choristers sang
a Te Deum laudamus, till the long aisles grew dim in the summer twilight,
and he was conducted by torch-light to the Deanery.

The queen was at the bishop's palace, but a few hundred yards distant.
Philip, doubtless, could have endured the postponement of an interview till
morning; but Mary could not wait, and the same night he was conducted
into the presence of his haggard bride, who now, after a life of misery,
believed herself at the open gate of Paradise. Let the curtain fall over the
meeting, let it close also over the wedding solemnities which followed with
due splendour two days later. There are scenes in life which we regard with
pity too deep for words. The unhappy queen, unloved, unlovable, yet with
her parched heart thirsting for affection, was flinging herself upon a breast
to which an iceberg was warm; upon a man to whom love was an
unmeaning word, except as the most brutal of passions. For a few months
she created for herself an atmosphere of unreality. She saw in Philip the
ideal of her imagination, and in Philip's feelings the reflex of her own; but
the dream passed away—her love for her husband remained; but remained
only to be a torture to her. With a broken spirit and bewildered

understanding, she turned to Heaven for comfort, and, instead of heaven,
she saw only the false roof of her creed painted to imitate and shut out the
sky.

The scene will change for a few pages to the Low Countries. Charles V.
more than any other person was responsible for this marriage. He had
desired it not for Mary's sake, not for Philip's sake, not for religion's sake;
but that he might be able to assert a decisive preponderance over France;
and, to gain his end, he had already led the queen into a course which had
forfeited the regard of her subjects. She had murdered Lady Jane Grey at
the instigation of his ambassador, and under the same influence she had
done her best to destroy her sister. Yet Charles, notwithstanding, was one of
nature's gentlemen. If he was unscrupulous in the sacrifice of others to his
purposes, he never spared himself; and in the days of his successes he
showed to less advantage than now, when, amidst failing fortunes and
ruined health, his stormy career was closing.

In the spring he had been again supposed to be dying. His military
reputation had come out tarnished from his failure at Metz, and while he
was labouring with imperfect success to collect troops for a summer's
campaign, Henry of France, unable to prevent the English marriage, was
preparing to strike a blow so heavy, as should enable him to dictate peace
on his own terms before England was drawn into the quarrel.

In June two French armies took the field. Pietro Strozzi advanced from
Piedmont into Tuscany. Henry himself, with Guise, Montmorency, and half
the peerage of France, entered the Low Countries, sweeping all opposition
before him. First Marienbourg fell, then Dinant fell, stormed with especial
gallantry. The young French nobles were taught that they must conquer or
die: a party of them flinched in the breach at Dinant, and the next morning
Henry sat in judgment upon them sceptre in hand; some were hanged, the
rest degraded from their rank: "and whereas one privilege of the gentlemen
of France was to be exempt from taylles payable to the crown, they were
made tayllable as any other villains."[344]

From Dinant the French advanced to Namur. When Namur should have
fallen, Brussels was the next aim; and there was nothing, as it seemed,
which could stop them. The imperial army under the Prince of Savoy could

but hover, far outnumbered, on their skirts. The reinforcements from Spain
had not arrived, and a battle lost was the loss of Belgium.

In the critical temper of England, a decisive superiority obtained by
France would be doubly dangerous; and Charles, seeing Philibert perplexed
into uncertain movements which threatened misfortune, disregarding the
remonstrances of his physicians, his ministers, and his generals, started
from his sick bed, flew to the head of his troops, and brought them to
Namur, in the path of the advancing French. Men said that he was rushing
upon destruction. The headstrong humour which had already worked him so
heavy injury was again dragging him into ruin.[345] But fortune had been
disarmed by the greatness with which Charles had borne up against
calamity, or else his supposed rashness was the highest military wisdom.
Before Henry came up he had seized a position at an angle of the Meuse,
where he could defend Namur, and could not be himself attacked, except at
a disadvantage. The French approached only to retire, and, feeling
themselves unable to force the imperial lines, fell back towards the
Boullonnois. Charles followed cautiously. An attack on Renty brought on
an action in which the French claimed the victory; but the emperor held his
ground, and the town could not be taken; and Henry's army, from which
such splendid results had been promised, fell back on the frontier and
dispersed. The voices which had exclaimed against the emperor's rashness
were now as loud in his praise, and the disasters which he was accused of
provoking, it was now found that he only had averted.[346] Neither the
French nor the Imperialists, in their long desperate struggle, can claim
either approval or sympathy; the sufferings which they inflicted upon
mankind were not the less real, the selfishness of their rivalry none the less
reprehensible, because the disunion of the Catholic powers permitted the
Reformation to establish itself. Yet, in this perplexed world the deeds of
men may be without excuse, while, nevertheless, in the men themselves
there may be something to love, and something more to admire.(Back to
Content)

CHAPTER III.

RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.

Mary had restored Catholic orthodoxy, and her passion for Philip had
been gratified. To complete her work and her happiness, it remained to
bring back her subjects to the bosom of the Catholic Church. Reginald Pole
had by this time awoke from some part of his delusions. He had persuaded
himself that he had but to appear with a pardon in his hand to be welcomed
to his country with acclamation: he had ascertained that the English people
were very indifferent to the pardon, and that his own past treasons had
created especial objections to himself. Even the queen herself had grown
impatient with him. He had fretted her with his importunities; his presence
in Flanders had chafed the parliament, and made her marriage more
difficult; while he was supposed to share with the English nobles their
jealousy of a foreign sovereign. So general was this last impression about
him, that his nephew, Lord Stafford's son, who was one of the refugees,
went to seek him in the expectation of countenance and sympathy: and,
farther, he had been in correspondence with Gardiner, and was believed to
be at the bottom of the chancellor's religious indiscretions.[347] Thus his
anxiety to be in England found nowhere any answering desire; and Renard,
who dreaded his want of wisdom, never missed an opportunity of throwing
difficulties in the way. In the spring of 1554 Pole had gone to Paris, where,
in an atmosphere of so violent opposition to the marriage, he had not
thought it necessary to speak in favour of it. The words which Dr. Wotton
heard that he had used were reported to the emperor; and, at last, Renard
went so far as to suggest that the scheme of sending him to England had

been set on foot at Rome by the French party in the Consistory, with a view
of provoking insurrection and thwarting the Imperial policy.[348]

The emperor, taught by his old experiences of Pole, acquiesced in the
views of his ambassador. If England was to be brought back to its
allegiance, the negotiation would require a delicacy of handling for which
the present legate was wholly unfit; and Charles wrote at last to the pope to
suggest that the commission should be transferred to a more competent
person. Impatient language had been heard of late from the legate's lips,
contrasting the vexations of the world with the charms of devotional
retirement. To soften the harshness of the blow, the emperor said that he
understood Pole was himself weary of his office, and wished to escape into
privacy.

The respect of Julius for the legate's understanding was not much larger
than the emperor's; but he would not pronounce the recall without giving
him an opportunity of explaining himself. Cardinal Morone wrote to him to
inquire whether it was true that he had thought of retirement; he informed
him of the emperor's complaints; and, to place his resignation in the easiest
light (while pointing, perhaps, to the propriety of his offering it), he hinted
at Pole's personal unpopularity, and at the danger to which he would be
exposed by going to England.

But the legate could not relinquish the passionate desire of his life; while,
as to the marriage, he was, after all, unjustly suspected. He requested
Morone, in reply, to assure the pope that, much as he loved retirement, he
loved duty more. He appealed to the devotion of his life to the church as an
evidence of his zeal and sincerity; and, although he knew, he said, that God
could direct events at his will and dispense with the service of men, yet, so
long as he had strength to be of use, he would spend it in his Master's cause.
In going to England he was venturing upon a stormy sea; he knew it well;
[349] but, whatever befell him, his life was in God's hands.

A fortnight after (May 25), he wrote again, replying more elaborately to
the emperor's charges. It was true, he admitted, that in his letters to the
queen he had dwelt more upon her religious duties than upon her marriage:
it was true that he had been backward in his demonstrations of pleasure,
because he was a person of few words. But, so far from disapproving of that

marriage, he looked upon it as the distinct work of God; and when his
nephew had come with complaints to him, he had forbidden him his
presence. He had spoken of the rule of a stranger in England as likely to be
a lesson to the people; but he had meant only that, as their disasters had
befallen them through their own king Henry, their deliverance would be
wrought for them by one who was not their own. When the late parliament
had broken up without consenting to the restoration of union, he had
consoled the queen with assuring her that he saw in it the hand of
Providence; the breach of a marriage between an English king and a
Spanish princess had caused the wound which a renewed marriage of a
Spanish king and an English queen was to heal.[350]

The defence was elaborate, and, on the whole, may have been tolerably
true. The pope would not take the trouble to read it, or even to hear it read;
[351] but the substance, as related to him by Morone, convinced him that the
emperor's accusations were exaggerated: to recall a legate at the instance of
a secular sovereign was an undesirable precedent;[352] and the commission
was allowed to stand. Julius wrote to Charles, assuring him that he was
mistaken in the legate's feelings, leaving the emperor at the same time,
however, full power to keep him in Flanders or to send him to England at
his own discretion.

Pole was to continue the instrument of the reconciliation; the conditions
under which the reconciliation could take place were less easy to settle. The
popes, whose powers are unlimited where the exercise of them is
convenient for the interests of the Holy See, have uniformly fallen back
upon their inability where they have been called on to make sacrifices. The
canons of the church forbade, under any pretext, the alienation of
ecclesiastical property; and until Julius could relinquish ex animo all
intention of disturbing the lay holders of the English abbey lands, there was
not a chance that the question of his supremacy would be so much as
entertained by either Lords or Commons.

The vague powers originally granted to the legate were not satisfactory;
and Pole himself, who was too sincere a believer in the Roman doctrines to
endure that worldly objections should stand in the way of the salvation of
souls, wrote himself to the Holy See, entreating that his commission might

be enlarged. The pope in appearance consented. In a second brief, dated
June 28th, he extended the legate's dispensing powers to real property as
well as personal, and granted him general permission to determine any
unforeseen difficulties which might arise.[353] Ormaneto, a confidential
agent, carried the despatch to Flanders, and on Ormaneto's arrival, the
legate, believing that his embarrassments were at last at an end, sent him on
to the Bishop of Arras, to entreat that the perishing souls of the English
people might now be remembered. The pope had given way; the queen was
happily married, and the reasons for his detention were at an end.[354]

Both Arras and the emperor, however, thought more of Philip's security
than of perishing souls. Arras, who understood the ways of the Vatican
better than the legate, desired that, before any steps were taken, he might be
favoured with a copy of these enlarged powers. He wished to know whether
the question of the property was fairly relinquished to the secular powers in
England, and whether the church had finally washed its hands of it;[355] at
all events, he must examine the brief. On inspection, the new commission
was found to contain an enabling clause indeed, as extensive as words could
make it; but the See of Rome reserved to itself the right of sanctioning the
settlement after it had been made;[356] and the reservation had been
purposely made, in order to leave the pope free to act as he might please at
a future time. Morone, writing to Pole a fortnight after the date of the brief,
told him that his holiness was still unable to come to a resolution;[357] while
Ormaneto said openly to Arras, that, although the pope would be as
moderate as possible, yet his moderation must not be carried so far as to
encourage the rest of Christendom in an evil example. Catholics must not
be allowed to believe that they could appropriate church property without
offence, nor must the Holy See appear to be purchasing by concessions the
submission of its rebellious subjects.[358]

This language was not even ambiguous; Pole was desired to wait till an
answer could be received from England; and the emperor wrote to Renard
(August 3), desiring him to lay the circumstances before the queen and his
son. He could believe, he said, that the legate himself meant well, but he
had not the same confidence in those who were urging him forward, and the
pope had given no authority for haste or precipitate movements.[359]

The emperor's letter was laid before a council of state at Windsor, on the
6th of August; and the council agreed with Charles that the legate's
anxieties could not for the present be gratified. He was himself attainted,
and parliament had shown no anxiety that the attainder should be removed.
The reimposition of the pope's authority was a far more ticklish matter than
the restoration of orthodoxy,[360] and the temper of the people was
uncertain. The cardinal had, perhaps, intelligence with persons in England
of a suspicious and dangerous kind, and the execution of his commission
must depend on the pleasure of the next parliament. He was not to suppose
that he might introduce changes in the constitution of the country by the
authority of a papal commission, or try experiments which might put in
peril the sacred person of the prince.[361]

Once more the cup of hope was dashed to the ground, and Reginald Pole
was sent back to his monastery at Dhilinghen like a child unfit to be trusted
with a dangerous plaything. In times of trial his pen was his refuge, and in
an appeal to Philip he poured out his characteristic protest.

"For a whole year," he wrote, "I have been now knocking at the door of
that kingdom, and no person will answer, no person will ask, Who is there?
It is one who has endured twenty years of exile that the partner of your
throne should not be excluded from her rights, and I come in the name of
the vicar of the King of kings, the Shepherd of mankind. Peter knocks at
your door; Peter himself. The door is open to all besides. Why is it closed to
Peter? Why does not that nation make haste now to do Peter reverence?
Why does it leave him escaped from Herod's prison, knocking?

"Strange, too, that this is the house of Mary. Can it be Mary that is so
slow to open? True, indeed, it is, that when Mary's damsel heard the voice
she opened not the door for joy; she ran and told Mary. But Mary came with
those that were with her in the house; and though at first she doubted, yet,
when Peter continued knocking, she opened the door; she took him in, she
regarded not the danger, although Herod was yet alive and was king.

"Is it joy which now withholds Mary, or is it fear? She rejoices, that I
know, but she also fears. Yet why should Mary fear now when Herod is
dead? The providence of God permitted her to fear for awhile, because God
desired that you, sire, who are Peter's beloved child, should share the great

work with her. Do you, therefore, teach her now to cast her fears away. It is
not I only who stand here—it is not only Peter—Christ is here—Christ
waits with me till you will open and take him in. You who are King of
England, are defender of Christ's faith; yet, while you have the ambassadors
of all other princes at your court, you will not have Christ's ambassador;
you have rejected your Christ.

"Go on upon your way. Build on the foundation of worldly policy, and I
tell you, in Christ's words, that the rain will fall, the floods will rise, the
winds will blow, and beat upon that house, and it will fall, and great will be
the fall thereof."[362]

The pleading was powerful, yet it could bear no fruits—the door could
not open till the pope pronounced the magic words which held it closed.
Neither Philip nor Mary was in a position to use violence or force the bars.

After the ceremony at Winchester, the king and queen had gone first to
Windsor, and thence the second week in August they went to Richmond.
The entry into London was fixed for the 18th; after which, should it pass off
without disturbance, the Spanish fleet might sail from Southampton Water.
The prince himself had as yet met with no discourtesy; but disputes had
broken out early between the English and Spanish retinues, and petty taunts
and insolences had passed among them.[363] The prince's luggage was
plundered, and the property stolen could not be recovered nor the thieves
detected. The servants of Alva and the other lords, who preceded their
masters to London, were insulted in the streets, and women and children
called after them that they need not have brought so many things, they
would be soon gone again. The citizens refused to give them lodgings in
their houses, and the friars who had accompanied Philip were advised to
disguise themselves, so intense was the hatred against the religious orders.
[364] The council soon provided for their ordinary comforts, but increase of
acquaintance produced no improvement of feeling.

The entry passed off tolerably. Gog and Magog stood as warders on
London Bridge, and there were the usual pageants in the city. Renard
conceived that the impression produced by Philip had been rather
favourable than otherwise; for the people had been taught to expect some
monster but partially human, and they saw instead a well-dressed cavalier,

who had learnt by this time to carry his hand to his bonnet. Yet, although
there were no open signs of ill-feeling, the day did not end without a
disagreeable incident. The conduit in Gracechurch Street had been newly
decorated: "the nine Worthies" had been painted round the winding turret,
and among them were Henry VIII. and Edward. The first seven carried
maces, swords, or pole-axes. Henry held in one hand a sceptre, in the other
he was presenting a book to his son, on which was written Verbum Dei. As
the train went by, the unwelcome figure caught the eye of Gardiner. The
painter was summoned, called "knave, traitor, heretic," an enemy to the
queen's Catholic proceedings. The offensive Bible was washed out, and a
pair of gloves inserted in its place.[365]

Nor did the irritation of the people abate. The Spaniards, being without
special occupation, were seen much in the streets; and a vague fear so
magnified their numbers that four of them, it was thought, were to be met in
London for one Englishman.[366] The halls of the city companies were
given up for their use; a fresh provocation to people who desired to be
provoked. A Spanish friar was lodged at Lambeth, and it was said at once
he was to be Archbishop of Canterbury; at the beginning of September
twelve thousand Spanish troops were reported to be coming to "fetch the
crown." Rumour and reality inflated each other. The peers, who had
collected for the marriage, dispersed to their counties; and on the 10th of
September, Pembroke, Shrewsbury, and Westmoreland were believed to
have raised a standard of revolt at York. Frays were continually breaking
out in the streets, and there was a scandalous brawl in the cloisters at
Westminster. Brief entries in diaries and council books tell continually of
Englishmen killed, and Spaniards hanged, hanged at Tyburn, or hanged
more conspicuously at Charing Cross; and on the 12th, Noailles reported
that the feeling in all classes, high and low, was as bad as possible.

There was dread, too, that Philip was bent on drawing England into the
war. The French ambassador had been invited to be present at the entry into
London; but the invitation had been sent informally by a common
messenger not more than half an hour before the royal party were to appear.
The brief notice was intended as an affront, and only after some days
Noailles appeared at court to offer his congratulations. When he came at
last, he expressed his master's hope to Philip that the neutrality of England

would continue to be observed. Philip answered with cold significance, that
he would keep his promise and maintain the treaties, as long as by doing so
he should consult the interest of the realm.[367]

Other menacing symptoms were also showing themselves: the claim for
the pensions was spoken of as likely to be revived; the English ships in the
Channel were making the neutrality one-sided, and protecting the Spanish
and Flemish traders; and Philip, already weary of his bride, was urging on
Renard the propriety of his hastening, like an obedient son, to the assistance
of his father. Under pretence of escort he could take with him a few
thousand English cavalry and men-at-arms, who could be used as a menace
to France, and whose presence would show the attitude which England was
about to assume. Sick, in these brief weeks, of maintaining the show of an
affection which he did not feel, and sick of a country where his friends were
insulted if he was treated respectfully himself, he was already panting for
freedom, and eager to utilise the instruments which he had bought so dearly.
[368]

Happily for the queen's peace of mind, Renard was not a man to
encourage impatience. The factions in the council were again showing
themselves; Elizabeth lay undisposed of at Woodstock. Pomfret, Belgium,
even Hungary, had been thought of as a destination for her, and had been
laid aside one after the other, in dread of the people. If she was released, she
would again be dangerous, and it was uncertain how long Lord Howard
would endure her detention. A plan suggested by Lord Paget seemed, after
all, to promise the best—to marry her to Philibert of Savoy, and thus make
use of her as a second link to connect England with the House of Austria.
But here the difficulty would be with the queen, who in that case would
have to recognise her sister's rank and expectations.

The question should be settled before Philip left England, and he must
have faced parliament too, and, if possible, have been crowned. If he went
now, he would never come back; let him court the people advised the keen
Renard; let him play off the people against the lords; there was ill blood
between the rich and poor, let him use the opportunity.

The state of public feeling did not improve when, at the end of
September, Bonner commenced an inquisition into the conduct and

opinions of the clergy of his diocese. In every parish he appointed a person
or persons to examine whether the minister was or ever had been married;
whether, if married and separated from his wife, he continued in secret to
visit her; whether his sermons were orthodox; whether he was a "brawler,
scolder, hawker, hunter, fornicator, adulterer, drunkard, or blasphemer;"
whether he duly exhorted his parishioners to come to mass and confession;
whether he associated with heretics, or had been suspected of associating
with them; his mind, his habits, his society, even the dress that he wore,
were to be made matter of close scrutiny.

The points of inquiry were published in a series of articles which created
an instantaneous ferment. Among the merchants they were attributed to the
king, queen, and Gardiner, and were held to be the first step of a conspiracy
against their liberties. A report was spread at the same time that the king
meditated a seizure of the Tower; barriers were forthwith erected in the
great thoroughfares leading into the city, and no one was allowed to pass
unchallenged.[369]

The Bishop of London was called to account for having ventured so rash
a step without permission of crown or council. He replied that he was but
doing his duty; the council, had he communicated with them, would have
interfered with him, and in the execution of his office he must be governed
by his own conscience.[370] But the attitude of the city was too decided even
for the stubborn Bonner, he gave way sullenly, and suspended the execution
of his order.

Worse clouds than these nevertheless had many times gathered over the
court and dispersed again. It was easy to be discontented; but when the
discontent would pass into action, there was nothing definite to be done;
and between the leading statesmen there were such large differences of
opinion, that they could not co-operate.[371] The court, as Renard saw, could
accomplish everything which they desired with caution and prudence. The
humours of the people might flame out on a sudden if too hastily irritated,
but the opposite tendencies of parties effectually balanced each other; and
even the papal difficulty might be managed, and Pole might in time be
brought over, if only there was no precipitation, and the pope was
compelled to be reasonable.

But prudence was the first and last essential; the legate must be content to
wait, and also Philip must wait. The winter was coming on, and the court,
Renard said, was giving balls; the English and Spanish noblemen were
learning to talk with one another, and were beginning to dance with each
other's wives and daughters. The ill-feeling was gradually abating; and, in
fact, it was not to be believed that God Almighty would have brought about
so considerable a marriage without intending that good should come of it.
[372] The queen believed herself enceinte, and if her hopes were well
founded, a thousand causes of restlessness would be disposed of; but Philip
must not be permitted to harass her with his impatience to be gone. She had
gathered something of his intentions, and was already pretending more
uncertainty than in her heart she felt, lest he should make the assurance of
her prospects an excuse for leaving her. In a remarkable passage, Renard
urged the emperor on no account to encourage him in a step so eminently
injudicious, from a problematic hope of embroiling England and France.
"Let parliament meet," he said, "and pass off quietly, and in February his
highness may safely go. Irreparable injury may and will follow, however,
should he leave England before. Religion will be overthrown, the queen's
person will be in danger, and parliament will not meet. A door will be
opened for the practices of France; the country may throw itself in self-
protection on the French alliance, and an undying hatred will be engendered
between England and Spain. As things now are, prudence and moderation
are more than ever necessary; and we must allow neither the king nor the
queen to be led astray by unwise impatient advisers, who, for the
advancement of their private opinions, or because they cannot have all the
liberty which they desire, are ready to compromise the commonwealth."[373]

So matters stood at the beginning of October, when parliament was about
to be summoned, and the great experiment to be tried whether England
would consent to be re-united to Catholic Christendom. The writs went out
on the 6th, and circulars accompanied them, addressed to those who would
have the conduct of the elections, stating that, whatever false reports might
have been spread, no "alteration was intended of any man's possessions." At
the same time the queen required the mayors of towns, the sheriffs, and
other influential persons to admonish the voters to choose from among
themselves "such as, being eligible by order of the laws, were of a wise,
grave, and Catholic sort; such as indeed meant the true honour of God and

the prosperity of the commonwealth."[374]These general directions were
copied from a form which had been in use under Henry VII., and the
citizens of London set the example of obedience in electing four members
who were in every way satisfactory to the court.[375] In the country the
decisive failure of Carew, Suffolk, and Crofts showed that the weight of
public feeling was still in favour of the queen notwithstanding the Spanish
marriage; and the reaction against the excesses of the Reformation had not
yet reached its limits. On the accession of Mary, the restoration of the mass
had appeared impossible, but it had been effected safely and completely
almost by the spontaneous will of the people. In the spring the pope's name
could not be mentioned in parliament; now, since the queen was bent upon
it, and as she gave her word that property was not to be meddled with, even
the pope seemed no longer absolutely intolerable.

The reports of the elections were everywhere favourable. In the Upper
House, except on very critical points, which would unite the small body of
the lay peers, the court was certain of a majority, being supported of course
by the bishops—and the question of Pole's coming over, therefore, was
once more seriously considered. The pope had been given to understand
that, however inconsistent with his dignity he might consider it to appear to
purchase English submission by setting aside the canons of the church, he
must consent to the English terms, or there was no hope whatever that his
supremacy would be recognised. If in accepting these terms he would agree
to a humiliating reconciliation, only those who objected on doctrinal
grounds to the papal religion were inclined to persist in refusing a return of
his friendship. The dream of an independent orthodox Anglicanism which
had once found favour with Gardiner was fading away. The indifferent and
the orthodox alike desired to put an end to spiritual anarchy; and the
excommunication, though lying lightly on the people, and despised even by
the Catholic powers, had furnished, and might furnish, a pretext for
inconvenient combinations. Singularity of position, where there was no
especial cause for it, was always to be avoided.

These influences would have been insufficient to have brought the
English of themselves to seek for a reunion. They were enough to induce
them to accept it with indifference when offered them on their own
conditions, or to affect for a time an outward appearance of acquiescence.

Philip, therefore, consulted Renard, and Charles invited Pole to Brussels.
Renard, to whom politics were all-important, and religion useful in its
place, but inconvenient when pushed into prominence, adhered to his old
opinion. He advised the "king to write privately to the pope, telling him that
he had already so many embarrassments on his hands that he could not
afford to increase them;" "the changes already made were insincere, and the
legatine authority was odious, not only in England, but throughout Europe;"
"the queen, on her accession, had promised a general toleration,[376] and it
was useless to provoke irritation, when not absolutely necessary." Yet even
Renard spoke less positively than before. "If the pope would make no more
reservations on the land question—if he would volunteer a general
absolution, and submit to conditions, while he exacted none—if he would
sanction every ecclesiastical act which had been done during the schism,
the marriages and baptisms, the ordinations of the clergy, and the new
creations of episcopal sees—above all, if he would make no demand for
money under any pretence, the venture might, perhaps, be made." But,
continued Renard, "his holiness, even then, must be cautious in his words;
he must dwell as lightly as possible on his authority, as lightly as possible
on his claims to be obeyed: in offering absolution, he must talk merely of
piety and love, of the open arms of the church, of the example of the
Saviour, and such other generalities."[377] Finally, Renard still thought the
legate had better remain abroad. The reconciliation, if it could be effected at
all, could be managed better without his irritating presence.

Pole himself had found the emperor more gracious. Charles professed the
greatest anxiety that the papal authority should be restored. He doubted
only if the difficulties could be surmounted. Pole replied that the obstacles
were chiefly two—one respecting doctrine, on which no concession could
be made at all; the other respecting the lands, on which his holiness would
make every concession. He would ask for nothing, he would exact nothing;
he would abandon every shadow of a claim.

If this was the case, the emperor said, all would go well. Nevertheless,
there was the reservation in the brief, and the pope, however generous he
might wish to be, was uncertain of his power. The doctrine was of no
consequence. People in England believed one doctrine as little as another;
[378] but they hated Rome, they hated the religious orders, they hated

cardinals; and, as to the lands, could the church relinquish them?[379] Pole
might believe that she could; but the world would be more suspicious, or
less easy to convince. At all events, the dispensing powers must be clogged
with no reservations; nor could he come to any decision till he heard again
from England.

The legate was almost hopeless; yet his time of triumph—such triumph
as it was—had nearly arrived. The queen's supposed pregnancy had
increased her influence; and, constant herself in the midst of general
indecision, she was able to carry her point. She would not mortify the
legate, who had suffered for his constancy to the cause of her mother, with
listening to Renard's personal objections; and when the character of the
approaching House of Commons had been ascertained, she gained the
consent of the council, a week before the beginning of the session, to send
commissioners to Brussels to see Pole and inspect his faculties. With a
conclusive understanding on the central question, they might tell him that
the hope of his life might be realised, and that he might return to his
country. But the conditions were explicit. He must bring adequate powers
with him, or his coming would be worse than fruitless. If those which he
already possessed were insufficient, he must send them to Rome to be
enlarged;[380] and although the court would receive him as legate de latere,
he had better enter the country only as a cardinal and ambassador, till he
could judge of the state of things for himself.[381] On these terms the
commissioners might conduct him to the queen's presence.

The bearers of this communication were Lord Paget and Sir Edward
Hastings, accompanied, it is curious to observe, by Sir William Cecil.[382]

They presented themselves to the emperor, who, after the report which
they brought with them, made no more difficulty. The enlarged powers had
been sent for three weeks before; but there was no occasion to wait for their
arrival. They might be expected in ten days or a fortnight, and could follow
the legate to England.[383]

The effect on Pole of the commissioners' arrival "there needed not," as
they said themselves, "many words to declare."[384] His eager temperament,
for ever excited either with wild hopes or equally wild despondency, was
now about to be fooled to the top of its bent. On the pope's behalf, he

promised everything; for himself, he would come as ambassador, he would
come as a private person, come in any fashion that might do good, so only
that he might come.

Little time was lost in preparation. Parliament met on the 12th of
November. The opening speech was read, as usual, by Gardiner, and was
well received, although it announced that further measures would be taken
for the establishment of religion, and the meaning of these words was
known to every one. The first measure brought forward was the repeal of
Pole's attainder. It passed easily without a dissentient voice, and no obstacle
of any kind remained to delay his appearance. Only the cautious Renard
suggested that Courtenay should be sent out of the country as soon as
possible, for fear the legate should take a fancy to him; and the Prince of
Savoy had been invited over to see whether anything could be done towards
arranging the marriage with Elizabeth. Elizabeth, indeed, had protested that
she had no intention of marrying; nevertheless, Renard said, she would be
disposed of, as the emperor had advised,[385] could the queen be induced to
consent.

England was ready therefore, and the happy legate set out from Brussels
like a lover flying to his mistress. His emotions are reflected in the journal
of an Italian friend who attended him. The journey commenced on Tuesday,
the 13th; the retinues of Paget and Hastings, with the cardinal's household,
making in all a hundred and twenty horse. The route was by Ghent, Bruges,
and Dunkirk. On the 19th the party reached Gravelines, where, on the
stream which formed the boundary of the Pale, they were received in state
by Lord Wentworth, the Governor of Calais. In the eyes of his enthusiastic
admirers the apostle of the church moved in an atmosphere of marvel. The
Calais bells, which rang as they entered the town, were of preternatural
sweetness. The salutes fired by the ships in the harbour were "wonderful."
The cardinal's lodging was a palace, and as an august omen, the watchword
of the garrison for the night was "God long lost is found."[386] The morning
brought a miracle. A westerly gale had blown for many days. All night long
it had howled through the narrow streets; the waves had lashed against the
piers, and the fishermen foretold a week of storms. At daybreak the wind
went down, the clouds broke, a light air from the eastward levelled the sea,
and filled the sails of the vessel which was to bear them to England. At

noon the party went on board, and their passage was a fresh surprise. They
crossed in three hours and a half, and the distance, as it pictured itself to
imagination, was forty miles.[387] At Dover the legate slept. The next day
Lord Montague came with the Bishop of Ely, bringing letters of
congratulation from the queen and Philip, and an intimation that he was
anxiously looked for. He was again on horseback after breakfast; and as the
news of his arrival spread, respect or curiosity rapidly swelled his train. The
Earl of Huntingdon, who had married his sister, sent his son Lord Hastings,
with his tenants and servants, as an escort. But there was no danger.
Whatever might be the feelings of the people towards the papal legate, they
gave to Reginald Pole the welcome due to an English nobleman.

The November evening had closed in when the cavalcade entered
Canterbury. The streets were thronged, and the legate made his way through
the crowd, amidst the cries of "God save your grace." At the door of the
house—probably the archbishop's palace—where he was to pass the night,
Harpsfeld, the archdeacon, was standing to receive him, with a number of
the clergy; and with the glare of torches lighting up the scene, Harpsfeld
commenced an oration as the legate alighted, so beautiful, so affecting, says
Pole's Italian friend, that all the hearers were moved to tears. The
archdeacon spoke of the mercies of God, and the marvellous workings of
his providence. He dwelt upon the history of the cardinal, whom God had
preserved through a thousand dangers for the salvation of his country; and,
firing up at last in a blaze of enthusiasm, he exclaimed, "Thou art Pole, and
thou art our Polar star, to light us to the kingdom of the heavens. Sky, rivers,
earth, these disfigured walls—all things—long for thee. While thou wert
absent from us all things were sad, all things were in the power of the
adversary. At thy coming all things are smiling, all glad, all tranquil."[388]
The legate listened so far, and then checked the flood of the adoring
eloquence. "I heard you with pleasure," he said, "while you were praising
God. My own praises I do not desire to hear. Give the glory to Him."

From Canterbury, Richard Pate, who, as titular Bishop of Worcester, had
sat at the council of Trent, was sent forward to the queen with an answer to
her letter, and a request for further directions. The legate himself went on
leisurely to Rochester, where he was entertained by Lord Cobham, at
Cowling Castle. So far he had observed the instructions brought to him by

Paget, and had travelled as an ordinary ecclesiastic, without distinctive
splendour. On the night of the 23rd, however, Pate returned from the court
with a message that the legatine insignia might be displayed. A fleet of
barges was in waiting at Gravesend, where Pole appeared early on the 24th;
and, as a further augury of good fortune, he found there Lord Shrewsbury,
with his early friend the Bishop of Durham, who had come to meet him
with the repeal of his attainder, to which the queen had given her assent in
parliament the day before.

To the fluttered hearts of the priestly company the coincidence of the
repeal, the informality of an act of parliament receiving the royal assent
before the close of a session, were further causes of admiration. They
embarked; and the Italians, who had never seen a tidal river, discovered,
miracle of miracles, that they were ascending from the sea, and yet the
stream was with them. The distance to London was soon accomplished.
They passed under the bridge at one o'clock on the top of the tide, the
legate's barge distinguished splendidly by the silver cross upon the bow. In
a few minutes more they were at the palace-stairs at Whitehall, where a pier
was built on arches out into the river, and on the pier stood the Bishop of
Winchester, with the lords of the council.

The king and queen were at dinner, the arrival not being expected till the
afternoon. Philip rose instantly from the table, hurried out, and caught the
legate in his arms. The queen followed to the head of the grand staircase;
and when Pole reached her, she threw herself on his breast, and kissed him,
crying that his coming gave her as much joy as the possession of her
kingdom. The cardinal, in corresponding ecstasy, exclaimed, in the words of
the angel to the Virgin, "Ave Maria gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta
tu in mulieribus."[389] The first rapturous moments over, the king, queen,
and legate proceeded along the gallery, Philip and Pole supporting Mary on
either side, and the legate expatiating on the mysteries of Providence.

"High thanks, indeed," he exclaimed, "your majesty owes to the favour of
the Almighty, seeing that, while he permits you to bring your godly desires
to perfection, he has united at this moment in your favour the two mightiest
powers upon earth—the majesty of the emperor represented in the king
your husband, and the pope's holiness represented in myself." The queen, as

she walked, replied "in words of sweet humility," pouring out gentle
excuses for past delays. The legate, still speaking with ecstatic metaphor,
answered that it was the will of God; God waited till the time was mature,
till he could say to her highness, "Blessed be the fruit of thy womb."[390]

In the saloon they remained standing together for another quarter of an
hour. When the cardinal took his leave for the day, the king; in spite of
remonstrance, re-attended him to the gate. Alva and the Bishop of
Winchester were in waiting to conduct him to Lambeth Palace, which had
been assigned him for a residence. The See of Canterbury was to follow as
soon as Cranmer could be despatched.

Arrived at Lambeth, he was left to repose after his fatigues and
excitements. He had scarcely retired to his apartments when he was
disturbed again by a message from the queen. Lord Montague had hurried
over with the news that the angelic salutation had been already answered.
"The babe had leapt in her womb."[391] Not a moment was lost in
communicating the miracle to the world. Letters of council were drawn out
for Te Deums to be sung in every church in London. The next day being
Sunday, every pulpit was made to ring with the testimony of heaven to the
truth.

On Monday the 26th the cardinal went to the palace for an audience, and
again there was more matter for congratulation. As he was approaching the
king's cabinet, Philip met him with a packet of despatches. The last courier
sent to Rome had returned with unheard-of expedition, and the briefs and
commissions in which the pope relinquished formally his last reservations,
had arrived. Never, exclaimed the Catholic enthusiast, in a fervour of
devout astonishment—never since the days of the apostles had so many
tokens of divine approbation been showered upon a human enterprise. The
moment of its consummation had arrived.[392] Since the thing was to be, no
one wished for delay. Three days sufficed for the few necessary
preparations, and the two Houses of Parliament were invited to be present
unofficially at Whitehall on the afternoon of Wednesday the 28th. In the
morning there was a procession in the city and a Te Deum at St. Paul's.
After dinner, the Great Chamber was thrown open, and the Lords and
Commons crowded in as they could find room. Philip and Mary entered,
and took their seats under the cloth of state; while Pole had a chair assigned
him on their right hand, beyond the edge of the canopy. The queen was
splendidly dressed, and it was observed that she threw out her person to

make her supposed condition as conspicuous as possible.[393] When all were
in their places, the chancellor rose.

"My Lords of the Upper House," he said, "and you my masters of the
Nether House, here is present the Right Reverend Father in God the Lord
Cardinal Pole, come from the Apostolic See of Rome as ambassador to the
king's and queen's majesties, upon one of the weightiest causes that ever
happened in this realm, and which pertaineth to the glory of God and your
universal benefit; the which embassy it is their majesties' pleasure that it be
signified unto you all by his own mouth, trusting that you will accept it in
as benevolent and thankful wise as their highnesses have done, and that you
will give an attent and inclinable ear to him."

The legate then left his chair and came forward. He was now fifty-four
years old, and he had passed but little of his life in England; yet his features
had not wholly lost their English character. He had the arched eye-brow,
and the delicately-cut cheek, and prominent eye of the beautiful Plantagenet
face; a long, brown, curling beard flowed down upon his chest, which it
almost covered; the mouth was weak and slightly open, the lips were full
and pouting, the expression difficult to read. In a low voice, audible only to
those who were near him, he spoke as follows:—"My Lords all, and you
that are the Commons of this present parliament assembled, as the cause of
my repair hither hath been wisely and gravely declared by my Lord
Chancellor, so, before I enter into the particulars of my commission, I have
to say somewhat touching myself, and to give most humble and hearty
thanks to the king's and queen's majesties, and after them to you all—which
of a man exiled and banished from this commonwealth, have restored me to
be a member of the same, and of a man having no place either here or
elsewhere within this realm, have admitted me to a place where to speak
and where to be heard. This I protest unto you all, that though I was exiled
my native country, without just cause, as God knoweth, yet the ingratitude
could not pull from me the affection and desire that I had to your profit and
to do you good.

"But, leaving the rehearsal hereof, and coming more near to the matter of
my commission, I signify unto you all, that my principal travail is for the
restitution of this noble realm to the antient nobility, and to declare unto you

that the See Apostolic, from whence I come, hath a special respect to this
realm above all others; and not without cause, seeing that God himself, as it
were, by providence hath given to this realm prerogative of nobility above
others, which, to make plain unto you, it is to be considered that this island
first of all islands received the light of Christ's religion."

Going into history for a proof of this singular proposition, the legate said
that the Britons had been converted by the See Apostolic, "not one by one,
as in other countries, as clocks increase the hours by distinction of times,"
"but altogether, at once, as it were, in a moment." The Saxons had brought
back heathenism, but had again been soon converted; and the popes had
continued to heap benefit upon benefit on the favoured people, even making
them a present of Ireland, "which pertained to the See of Rome." The
country had prospered, and the people had been happy down to the time of
the late schism; from that unhappy day they had been overwhelmed with
calamities.

The legate dwelt in some detail on the misfortunes of the preceding
years. He then went on: "But, when all light of true religion seemed extinct,
the churches defaced, the altars overthrown, the ministers corrupted, even
like as in a lamp, the light being covered yet it is not quenched—even so in
a few remained the confession of Christ's faith, namely, in the breast of the
queen's excellency, of whom to speak without adulation, the saying of the
prophet may be verified, ecce quasi derelicta: and see how miraculously
God of his goodness preserved her highness contrary to the expectations of
men, that when numbers conspired against her, and policies were devised to
disinherit her, and armed power prepared to destroy her, yet she, being a
virgin, helpless, naked, and unarmed, prevailed, and had the victory of
tyrants. For all these practices and devices, here you see her grace
established in her estate, your lawful queen and governess, born among
you, whom God hath appointed to govern you for the restitution of true
religion and the extirpation of all errors and sects. And to confirm her grace
more strongly in this enterprise, lo how the providence of God hath joined
her in marriage with a prince of like religion, who, being a king of great
might, armour, and force, yet useth towards you neither armour nor force,
but seeketh you by way of love and amity; and as it was a singular favour of

God to conjoin them in marriage, so it is not to be doubted but he shall send
them issue for the comfort and surety of this commonwealth.

"Of all princes in Europe the emperor hath travailed most in the cause of
religion, yet, haply by some secret judgment of God, he hath not obtained
the end. I can well compare him to David, which, though he were a man
elect of God, yet for that he was contaminate with blood and wars, he could
not build the temple of Jerusalem, but left the finishing thereof to Solomon,
who was Rex pacificus. So it may be thought that the appeasing of
controversies of religion in Christendom is not appointed to this emperor,
but rather to his son; who shall perform the building that his father had
begun, which church cannot be builded unless universally in all realms we
adhere to one head, and do acknowledge him to be the vicar of God, and to
have power from above—for all power is of God, according to the saying,
non est potestas nisi in Deo.

"All power being of God, he hath derived that power into two parts here
on earth, which is into the powers imperial and ecclesiastical; and these two
powers, as they be several and distinct, so have they two several effects and
operations. Secular princes be ministers of God to execute vengeance upon
transgressors and evil livers, and to preserve the well-doers and innocents
from injury and violence; and this power is represented in these two most
excellent persons the king's and queen's majesties here present. The other
power is of ministration, which is the power of keys and orders in the
ecclesiastical state; which is by the authority of God's word and example of
the apostles, and of all holy fathers from Christ hitherto attributed and given
to the Apostolic See of Rome by special prerogative: from which See I am
here deputed legate and ambassador, having full and ample commission
from thence, and have the keys committed to my hands. I confess to you
that I have the keys—not as mine own keys, but as the keys of Him that
sent me; and yet cannot I open, not for want of power in me to give, but for
certain impediments in you to receive, which must be taken away before my
commission can take effect. This I protest before you, my commission is
not of prejudice to any person. I am come not to destroy, but to build; I
come to reconcile, not to condemn; I am not come to compel, but to call
again; I am not come to call anything in question already done; but my
commission is of grace and clemency to such as will receive it—for,

touching all matters that be past, they shall be as things cast into the sea of
forgetfulness.

"But the mean whereby you shall receive this benefit is to revoke and
repeal those laws and statutes which be impediments, blocks, and bars to
the execution of my commission. For, like as I myself had neither place nor
voice to speak here amongst you, but was in all respects a banished man, till
such time as ye had repealed those laws that lay in my way, even so cannot
you receive the benefit and grace offered from the Apostolic See until the
abrogation of such laws whereby you had disjoined and dissevered
yourselves from the unity of Christ's Church.

"It remaineth, therefore, that you, like true Christians and provident men,
for the weal of your souls and bodies, ponder what is to be done in this so
weighty a cause, and so to frame your acts and proceedings as they may
first tend to the glory of God, and, next, to the conservation of your
commonwealth, surety, and quietness."

The speech was listened to by such as could hear it with profound
attention, and several persons were observed to clasp their hands again and
again, and raise them convulsively before their faces. When the legate sat
down, Gardiner gave him the thanks of parliament, and suggested that the
two Houses should be left to themselves to consider what they would do.
Pole withdrew with the king and queen, and Gardiner exclaimed: A prophet
has "the Lord raised up among us from among our brethren, and he shall
save us." For the benefit of those who had been at the further end of the
hall, he then recapitulated the substance of what had been said. He added a
few words of exhortation, and the meeting adjourned.

The next day, Thursday, Lords and Commons sat as usual at Westminster.
The repeal of all the acts which directly, or by implication, were aimed at
the papacy, would occupy, it was found, a considerable time; but the
impatient legate was ready to accept a promise as a pledge of performance,
and the general question was therefore put severally in both Houses whether
the country should return to obedience to the Apostolic See. Among the
Peers no difficulty was made at all. Among the Commons, in a house of
360, there were two dissentients—one, whose name is not mentioned, gave
a silent negative vote; the other, Sir Ralph Bagenall, stood up alone to

protest. Twenty years, he said, "that great and worthy prince, King Henry,"
laboured to expel the pope from England. He for one had "sworn to King
Henry's laws," and, "he would keep his oath."[394]

But Bagenall was listened to with smiles. The resolution passed, the very
ease and unanimity betraying the hollow ground on which it rested; and,
again, devout Catholics beheld the evident work of supernatural agency.
Lords and Commons had received separately the same proposition; they
had discussed it, voted on it, and come to a conclusion, each with closed
doors, and the messengers of the two Houses encountered each other on
their way to communicate their several decisions.[395] The chancellor
arranged with Pole the forms which should be observed, and it was agreed
that the Houses should present a joint petition to the king and queen,
acknowledging their past misconduct, engaging to undo the anti-papal
legislation, and entreating their majesties, as undefiled with the offences
which tainted the body of the nation, to intercede for the removal of the
interdict. A committee of Lords and Commons sate to consider the words in
which the supplication should be expressed, and all preparations were
completed by the evening.

And now St. Andrew's Day was come; a day, as was then hoped, which
would be remembered with awe and gratitude through all ages of English
history. Being the festival of the institution of the Order of the Golden
Fleece, high mass was sung in the morning in Westminster Abbey; Philip,
Alva, and Ruy Gomez attended in their robes, with six hundred Spanish
cavaliers. The Knights of the Garter were present in gorgeous costume, and
nave and transept were thronged with the blended chivalry of England and
Castile. It was two o'clock before the service was concluded. Philip returned
to the palace to dinner, and the brief November afternoon was drawing in
when the parliament reassembled at the palace. At the upper end of the
great hall a square platform had now been raised several steps above the
floor, on which three chairs were placed as before; two under a canopy of
cloth of gold, for the king and queen; a third on the right, removed a little
distance from them, for the legate. Below the platform, benches were
placed longitudinally towards either wall. The bishops sat on the side of the
legate, the lay peers opposite them on the left. The Commons sat on rows of
cross benches in front, and beyond them were the miscellaneous crowd of

spectators, sitting or standing as they could find room. The cardinal, who
had passed the morning at Lambeth, was conducted across the water in a
state barge by Lord Arundel and six other peers. The king received him at
the gate, and, leaving his suite in the care of the Duke of Alva, who was
instructed to find them places, he accompanied Philip into the room
adjoining the hall, where Mary, whose situation was supposed to prevent
her from unnecessary exertion, was waiting for them. The royal procession
was formed. Arundel and the Lords passed in to their places. The king and
queen, with Pole in his legate's robes, ascended the steps of the platform,
and took their seats.

When the stir which had been caused by their entrance was over,
Gardiner mounted a tribune; and in the now fast-waning light he bowed to
the king and queen, and declared the resolution at which the Houses had
arrived. Then turning to the Lords and Commons, he asked if they
continued in the same mind. Four hundred voices answered, "We do." "Will
you then," he said, "that I proceed in your names to supplicate for our
absolution, that we may be received again into the body of the Holy
Catholic Church, under the pope, the supreme head thereof?" Again the
voices assented. The chancellor drew a scroll from under his robe, ascended
the platform, and presented it unfolded on his knee to the queen. The queen
looked through it, gave it to Philip, who looked through it also, and returned
it. The chancellor then rose and read aloud as follows:—

"We, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons of the present
parliament assembled, representing the whole body of the realm of
England, and dominions of the same, in our own names particularly, and
also of the said body universally, in this our supplication directed to your
majesties—with most humble suit that it may by your gracious intercession
and means be exhibited to the Most Reverend Father in God the Lord
Cardinal Pole, Legate, sent specially hither from our Most Holy Father
Pope Julius the Third and the See Apostolic of Rome—do declare ourselves
very sorry and repentant for the schism and disobedience committed in this
realm and dominions of the same, against the said See Apostolic, either by
making, agreeing, or executing any laws, ordinances, or commandments
against the supremacy of the said See, or otherwise doing or speaking what
might impugn the same; offering ourselves, and promising by this our

supplication that, for a token and knowledge of our said repentance, we be,
and shall be always, ready, under and with the authority of your majesties,
to do that which shall be in us for the abrogation and repealing of the said
laws and ordinances in this present parliament, as well for ourselves as for
the whole body whom we represent. Whereupon we most humbly beseech
your majesties, as persons undefiled in the offences of this body towards the
Holy See—which nevertheless God by his providence hath made subject to
your majesties—so to set forth this, our most humble suit, that we may
obtain from the See Apostolic, by the said Most Reverend Father, as well
particularly as universally, absolution, release, and discharge from all
danger of such censures and sentences as by the laws of the church we be
fallen in; and that we may, as children repentant, be received into the bosom
and unity of Christ's Church; so as this noble realm, with all the members
thereof, may, in unity and perfect obedience to the See Apostolic and pope
for the time being, serve God and your majesties, to the furtherance and
advancement of his honour and glory."[396]

Having completed the reading, the chancellor again presented the
petition. The king and queen went through the forms of intercession, and a
secretary read aloud, first, the legate's original commission, and, next, the
all-important extended form of it.

Pole's share of the ceremony was now to begin.

He first spoke a few words from his seat: "Much indeed," he said, "the
English nation had to thank the Almighty for recalling them to his fold.
Once again God had given a token of his special favour to the realm; for as
this nation, in the time of the Primitive Church, was the first to be called out
of the darkness of heathenism, so now they were the first to whom God had
given grace to repent of their schism; and if their repentance was sincere,
how would the angels, who rejoice at the conversion of a single sinner,
triumph at the recovery of a great and noble people."

He moved to rise; Mary and Philip, seeing that the crisis was
approaching, fell on their knees, and the assembly dropped at their example;
while, in dead silence, across the dimly-lighted hall, came the low, awful
words of the absolution.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, which with his most precious blood hath
redeemed and washed us from all our sins and iniquities, that he might
purchase unto himself a glorious spouse without spot or wrinkle, whom the
Father hath appointed head over all his Church—he by his mercy absolves
you, and we, by apostolic authority given unto us by the Most Holy Lord
Pope Julius the Third, his vicegerent on earth, do absolve and deliver you,
and every of you, with this whole realm and the dominions thereof, from all
heresy and schism, and from all and every judgment, censure, and pain for
that cause incurred; and we do restore you again into the unity of our
Mother the Holy Church, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost."

Amidst the hushed breathing every tone was audible, and at the pauses
were heard the smothered sobs of the queen. "Amen, amen," rose in answer
from many voices. Some were really affected; some were caught for the
moment with a contagion which it was hard to resist; some threw
themselves weeping in each other's arms. King, queen, and parliament,
rising from their knees, went immediately—the legate leading—into the
chapel of the palace, where the choir, with the rolling organ, sang Te Deum;
and Pole closed the scene with a benediction from the altar.

"Blessed day for England," cries the Italian describer, in a rapture of
devotion. "The people exclaim in ecstasies, we are reconciled to God, we
are brought back to God: the king beholds his realm, so lately torn by
divisions, at the mercy of the first enemy who would seize upon it, secured
on a foundation which never can be shaken: and who can express the joy—
who can tell the exultation of the queen? She has shown herself the
handmaid of the Lord, and all generations shall call her blessed: she has
given her kingdom to God as a thank-offering for those great mercies which
He has bestowed upon her."[397]

And the legate; but the legate has described his emotions in his own
inimitable manner. Pole went back to Lambeth, not to rest, but to pour out
his soul to the Holy Father.

In his last letter he said "he had told his holiness that he had hoped that
England would be recovered to the fold at last; yet he had then some fears

remaining, so far estranged were the minds of the people from the Holy
See, lest at the last moment some compromise might ruin all."

But the godly forwardness of the king and queen had overcome every
difficulty; and on that evening, the day of St. Andrew—of Andrew who first
brought his brother Peter to Christ—the realm of England had been brought
back to its obedience to Peter's See, and through Peter to Christ. The great
act had been accomplished, accomplished by the virtue and the labour of
the inestimable sovereigns with whom God had blessed the world.

"And oh," he said, "how many things, how great things, may the church
our mother, the bride of Christ, promise herself from these her children? Oh
piety! oh antient faith! Whoever looks on them will repeat the words of the
prophet of the church's early offspring; 'This is the seed which the Lord hath
blessed.' How earnestly, how lovingly, did your holiness favour their
marriage; a marriage formed after the very pattern of that of our Most High
King, who, being Heir of the world, was sent down by his Father from his
royal throne, to be at once the Spouse and the Son of the Virgin Mary, and
be made the Comforter and the Saviour of mankind: and, in like manner, the
greatest of all the princes upon earth, the heir of his father's kingdom,
departed from his own broad and happy realms, that he might come hither
into this land of trouble, he, too, to be spouse and son of this virgin; for,
indeed, though spouse he be, he so bears himself towards her as if he were
her son, to aid in the reconciliation of this people to Christ and the church.
[398]

"When your holiness first chose me as your legate, the queen was rising
up as a rod of incense out of trees of myrrh, and as frankincense out of the
desert. And how does she now shine out in loveliness? What a savour does
she give forth unto her people. Yea, even as the prophet saith of the mother
of Christ, "before she was in labour she brought forth, before she was
delivered she hath borne a man-child." Who ever yet hath seen it, who has
heard of the similitude of it? Shall the earth bring forth in a day, or shall a
nation of men be born together? but Mary has brought forth the nation of
England before the time of that delivery for which we all are hoping!"

Unable to exhaust itself in words, the Catholic enthusiasm flowed over in
processions, in sermons, masses, and Te Deums. Gardiner at Paul's Cross,

on the Sunday succeeding, confessed his sins in having borne a part in
bringing about the schism. Pole rode through the city between the king and
queen, with his legate's cross before him, blessing the people. When the
news reached Rome Julius first embraced the messenger, then flung himself
on his knees, and said a Paternoster. The guns at St. Angelo roared in
triumph. There were jubilees and masses of the Holy Ghost, and bonfires,
and illuminations, and pardons, and indulgences. In the exuberance of his
hopes, the pope sent a nuncio to urge that, in the presence of this great
mercy, peace should be made with France, where the king was devoted to
the church; the Catholic powers would then have the command of Europe,
and the heretics could be destroyed.[399] One thing only seemed forgotten,
that the transaction was a bargain. The papal pardon had been thrust upon
criminals, whose hearts were so culpably indifferent that it was necessary to
bribe them to accept it; and the conditions of the compromise, even yet,
were far from concluded.

The sanction given to the secularisation of church property was a cruel
disappointment to the clergy, who cared little for Rome, but cared much for
wealth and power. Supported by a party in the House of Commons who had
not shared in the plunder, and who envied those who had been more
fortunate,[400] the ecclesiastical faction began to agitate for a
reconsideration of the question. Their friends in parliament said that the
dispensation was unnecessary. Every man's conscience ought to be his
guide whether to keep his lands or surrender them. The queen was known to
hold the same opinion, and eager preachers began to sound the note of
restitution.[401] Growing bolder, the Lower House of Convocation presented
the bishops immediately after with a series of remarkable requests. The
pope, in the terms on which he was reinstated, was but an ornamental
unreality; and the practical English clergy desired substantial restorations
which their eyes could see and their hands could handle.

They demanded, therefore, first, that if a statute was brought into
parliament for the assurance of the church estates to the present possessors,
nothing should be allowed to pass prejudicial to their claims "on lands,
tenements, pensions, or tythe rents, which had appertained to bishops, or
other ecclesiastical persons."

They demanded, secondly, the repeal of the Statute of Mortmain, and
afterwards the abolition of lay impropriations, the punishment of heretics,
the destruction of all the English Prayer-books and Bibles, the revival of the
act De Hæretico Comburendo, the re-establishment of the episcopal courts,
the restoration of the legislative functions of Convocation, and the
exemption of the clergy from the authority of secular magistrates.

Finally, they required that the church should be restored absolutely to its
ancient rights, immunities, and privileges; that no Premunire should issue
against a bishop until he had first received notice and warning; that the
judges should define "a special doctrine of Premunire," and that the Statutes
of Provisors should not be wrested from their meaning.[402]

The petition expressed the views of Gardiner, and was probably drawn
under his direction. Had the alienated property been no more than the
estates of the suppressed abbeys, the secular clergy would have acquiesced
without difficulty in the existing disposition of it. But the benefices
impropriated to the abbeys which had been sold or granted with the lands,
they looked on as their own; the cathedral chapters and the bishops' sees,
which had suffered from the second locust flight under Edward, formed part
of the local Anglican Church: and Gardiner and his brother prelates
declared that, if the pope chose to set aside the canons, and permit the
robbing of the religious orders, he might do as he pleased; but that he had
neither right nor powers to sanction the spoliation of the working bishops
and clergy. Thus the feast of reconciliation having been duly celebrated,
both Houses of Parliament became again the theatre of fierce and fiery
conflict.

There were wide varieties of opinion. The lawyers went beyond the
clergy in limiting the powers of the pope; the lawyers also said the pope had
no rights over the temporalities of bishops or abbots, deans, or rectors; but
they did not any more admit the rights of the clergy. The English clergy,
regular and secular, they said, had held their estates from immemorial time
under the English crown, and it was not for any spiritual authority, domestic
or foreign, to decide whether an English king and an English parliament
might interfere to alter the disposition of those estates.

On other questions the clerical party were in the ascendant; They had a
decided majority in the House of Commons; in the Upper House there was
a compact body of twenty bishops; and Gardiner held the proxies of Lord
Rich, Lord Oxford, Lord Westmoreland, and Lord Abergavenny. The queen
had created four new peers; three of whom, Lord North, Lord Chandos, and
Lord Williams, were bigoted Catholics; the fourth, Lord Howard, was
absent with the fleet, and was unrepresented. Lord North held the proxy of
Lord Worcester; and the Marquis of Winchester, Lord Montague, and Lord
Stourton acted generally with the chancellor. Lord Russell was keeping out
of the way, being suspected of heresy; Wentworth was at Calais; Grey was
at Guisnes; and the proxies of the two last noblemen, which in the late
parliament were held by Arundel and Paget, were, for some unknown
reason, now held by no one. Thus, in a house of seventy-three members
only, reduced to sixty-nine by the absence of Howard, Russell, Wentworth,
and Grey, Gardiner had thirty-one votes whom he might count upon as
certain; he knew his power, and at once made fatal use of it.

For two parliaments the liberal party had prevented him from recovering
the power of persecution. He did not attempt to pass the Inquisitorial Act on
which he was defeated in the last session. But the act to revive the Lollard
Statutes was carried through the House of Commons in the second week in
December; on the 15th it was brought up to the Lords; and although those
who had before fought the battle of humanity, struggled again bravely in the
same cause, this time their numbers were too small; they failed, and the
lives of the Protestants were in their enemies' hands.[403] Simultaneously
Gardiner obtained for the bishops' courts their long-coveted privilege of
arbitrary arrest and discretionary punishment, and the clergy obtained, as
they desired, the restoration of their legislative powers. The property
question alone disintegrated the phalanx of orthodoxy, and left an opening
for the principles of liberty to assert themselves. The faithful and the
faithless among the laity were alike participators in church plunder, and
were alike nervously sensitive when the current of the reaction ran in the
direction of a demand for restitution.

Here, therefore, Paget and his friends chose their ground to maintain the
fight.

It has been seen that Pole especially dreaded the appearance of any sort
of composition between the country and the papacy. The submission had, in
fact, been purchased, but the purchase ought to be disguised. As soon,
therefore, as the parliament set themselves to the fulfilment of their promise
to undo the acts by which England had separated itself from Rome, the
legate required a simple statute of repeal. The pope had granted a
dispensation; it was enough, and it should be accepted gratefully: the
penitence of sinners ought not to be mixed with questions of worldly
interest; the returning prodigal, when asking pardon at his father's feet, had
made no conditions; the English nation must not disfigure their obedience
by alluding, in the terms of it, to the pope's benevolence to them.

The holders of the property, on the other hand, thinking more of the
reality than the form, were determined that the Act of Repeal should
contain, as nearly as possible, a true statement of their case. They had made
conditions, and those conditions had been reluctantly complied with; and, to
prevent future errors, the nature of the compact ought to be explained with
the utmost distinctness. They had replaced the bishops in authority, and the
bishops might be made use of at some future time, indirectly or directly, to
disturb the settlement. A fresh pontiff might refuse to recognise the
concessions of his predecessors. The papal supremacy, the secularisation of
the church property, and the authority of the episcopal courts should,
therefore, be interwoven inextricably to stand or fall together; and as the
lawyers denied the authority of the Holy See to pronounce upon the matter
at all, the legal opinion might be embodied also as a further security.

After a week of violent discussion, the lay interest in the House of Lords
found itself the strongest. Pole exclaimed that, if the submission and the
dispensation were tied together, it was a simoniacal compact; the pope's
holiness was bought and sold for a price, he said, and he would sooner go
back to Rome, and leave his work unfinished, than consent to an act so
derogatory to the Holy See. But the protest was vain; if the legate was so
anxious, his anxiety was an additional reason why the opposition should
persevere; if he chose to go, his departure could be endured.[404]

So keen was the debate that there was not so much as a Christmas recess.
Christmas Day was kept as a holyday. On the 26th the struggle began again,

and, fortunately, clouds had risen between the House of Commons and the
court. Finding more difficulty than he expected in embroiling England with
France, Philip, to feel the temper of the people, induced one of the peers to
carry a note to the Lower House to request an opinion whether it was not
the duty of a son to assist his father. An answer was instantly returned that
the question had been already disposed of by the late parliament in the
marriage treaty, and the further discussion of it was unnecessary.[405]
Secretary Bourne, at the instigation of Gardiner, proposed to revive the
claims on the pensions; but he met with no better reception. And the court
made a further blunder. Mary had become so accustomed to success, that
she assured herself she could obtain all that she desired. The object of the
court was to secure the regency for Philip, with full sovereign powers,
should she die leaving a child; should she die childless, to make him her
successor. The first step would be Philip's coronation, which had been long
talked of, and which the House of Commons was now desired to sanction.
The House of Commons returned a unanimous refusal.[406]

The effects of these cross influences on the papal statute, though they
cannot be traced in detail, must have been not inconsiderable. At length, on
the 4th of January, after passing backwards and forwards for a fortnight
between the two Houses, the Great Bill, as it was called, emerged, finished,
in the form of a petition to the crown:—

"Whereas," so runs the preamble,[407] "since the 20th year of King Henry
VIII., of famous memory, much false and erroneous doctrine hath been
taught, preached, and written, partly by divers natural-born subjects of this
realm, and partly being brought in hither from sundry foreign countries,
hath been sown and spread abroad within the same—by reason whereof as
well the spiritualty as the temporalty of your highness's realm and
dominions have swerved from the obedience of the See Apostolic, and
declined from the unity of Christ's Church, and so have continued until such
time as—your majesty being first raised up by God, and set in the seat royal
over us, and then by his divine and gracious Providence knit in marriage
with the most noble and virtuous prince the king our sovereign lord your
husband—the pope's holiness and the See Apostolic sent hither unto your
majesties, as unto persons undefiled, and by God's goodness preserved from
the common infection aforesaid, and to the whole realm, the Most Reverend

Father in God the Lord Cardinal Pole, Legate de Latere, to call us again into
the right way, from which we have all this long while wandered and
strayed; and we, after sundry and long plagues and calamities, seeing, by
the goodness of God, our own errours, have knowledged the same unto the
said Most Reverend Father, and by him have been and are (the rather at the
contemplation of your majesties) received and embraced into the unity of
Christ's Church, upon our humble submission, and promise made for a
declaration of our repentance to repeal and abrogate such acts and statutes
as had been made in parliament since the said 20th year of the said King
Henry VIII., against the supremacy of the See Apostolic, as in our
submission exhibited to the said most Reverend Father in God, by your
majesties appeareth—it may like your majesty, for the accomplishment of
our promise, that all such laws be repealed. That is to say:—

"The Act against obtaining Dispensations from Rome for Pluralities and
non-Residence.[408]

"The Act that no person shall be cited out of the Diocese where he or she
dwelleth.[409]

"The Act against Appeals to the See of Rome.[410]

"The Act against the Payment of Annates and First-fruits to the See of
Rome.[411]

"The Act for the Submission of the Clergy.[412]

"The Act for the Election and Consecration of Bishops.[413]

"The Act against Exactions from the See of Rome.[414]

"The Act of the Royal Supremacy.[415]

"The Act for the Consecration of Suffragan Bishops.[416]

"The Act for the Reform of the Canon Law.[417]

"The Act against the Authority of the Pope.[418]

"The Act for the Release of those who had obtained Dispensations from
Rome.[419]

"The Act authorising the King to appoint Bishops by Letters Patent.[420]

The Act of Precontracts and Degrees of Consanguinity.[421]

The Act for the King's Style.[422]

The Act permitting the Marriage of Doctors of Civil Law."[423]

In the repeal of these statutes the entire ecclesiastical legislation of Henry
VIII. was swept away; and, so far as a majority in a single parliament could
affect them, the work was done absolutely and with clean completeness.

But there remained two other acts collaterally and accidentally affecting
the See of Rome; for the repeal of which the court was no less anxious than
for the repeal of the Act of Supremacy, where the parliament were not so
complaisant.

Throughout the whole reaction under Mary there was one point on which
the laity never wavered. Attempts such as that which has been just
mentioned were made incessantly, directly or indirectly, to alter the
succession and cut off Elizabeth. They were like the fretful and profitless
chafings of waves upon a rock. The two acts on which Elizabeth's claims
were rested[424] touched, in one or other of their clauses, the papal
prerogative, and were included in the list to be condemned. But, of these
acts, "so much only" as affected the See of Rome was repealed. The rest
was studiously declared to continue in force.

Yet, with this reservation, the parliament had gone far in their
concessions, and it remained for them to secure their equivalent.

They reinstated the bishops, but, in giving back a power which had been
so much abused, they took care to protect—not, alas! the innocent lives
which were about to be sacrificed—but their own interests. The bishops and
clergy of the Province of Canterbury having been made to state their case
and their claims, in a petition to the crown, they were then compelled

formally to relinquish those claims; and the petition and the relinquishment
were embodied in the act as the condition of the restoration of the authority
of the church courts.[425] In continuation, the Lords and Commons desired
that, for the removal "of all occasion of contention, suspicion, and trouble,
both outwardly and inwardly, in men's conscience," the pope's holiness, as
represented by the legate, "by dispensation, toleration, or permission, as the
case required," would recognise all such foundations of colleges, hospitals,
cathedrals, churches, schools, or bishoprics as had been established during
the schism, would confirm the validity of all ecclesiastical acts which had
been performed during the same period; and, finally, would consent that all
property, of whatever kind, taken from the church, should remain to its
present possessors—"so as all persons having sufficient conveyance of the
said lands, goods, and chattels by the common laws, or acts, or statutes of
the realm, might, without scruple of conscience, enjoy them without
impeachment or trouble, by pretence of any general council, canon, or
ecclesiastical law, and clear from all dangers of the censures of the church."
The petitions, both of clergy and parliament, the act went on to say, had
been considered by the cardinal; and the cardinal had acquiesced. He had
undertaken, in the pope's name, that the possessors of either lands or goods
should never be molested either then or in time to come, in virtue of any
papal decree, or canon, or council; that if any attempt should be made by
any bishop or other ecclesiastic to employ the spiritual weapons of the
church to extort restitution, such act or acts were declared vain and of none
effect. The dispensation was pronounced, nor could the legate's protests
avail to prevent it from appearing in the act. He was permitted, only in
consideration of the sacrifice, to interweave amidst the legal technicalities
some portion of his own feeling. The impious detainers of holy things,
while permitted to maintain their iniquity, were reminded of the fate of
Belshazzar, and were urged to restore the patines, chalices, and ornaments
of the altars. The impropriators of benefices were implored, in the mercy of
Christ, to remember the souls of the people, and provide for the decent
performance of the services of the churches.[426]

Here the act might have been expected to end. The nature of the
transaction between the parliament and the pope had been made sufficiently
clear. Yet, had nothing more been said, the surrender of their claims by the
clergy would have implied that they had parted with something which they

might have legitimately required. Under the inspiration of the lawyers,
therefore, a series of clauses were superadded, explaining that,
notwithstanding the dispensation, "The title of all lands, possessions, and
hereditaments in their majesties' realms and dominions was grounded in the
laws, statutes, and customs of the same, and by their high jurisdiction,
authority royal, and crown imperial, and in their courts only, might be
impleaded, ordered, tried, and judged, and none otherwise:" and, therefore,
"whosoever, by any process obtained out of any ecclesiastical court within
the realm or without, or by pretence of any spiritual jurisdiction or
otherwise, contrary to the laws of the realm, should inquiet or molest any
person or persons, or body politic, for any of the said lands or things above
specified, should incur the danger of Premunire, and should suffer and incur
the forfeitures and pains contained in the same."[427]

Vainly the clergy had entreated for a limitation or removal of Premunire.
That spectre remained unexorcised in all its shadowy terror; and while it
survived, the penitence of England went no deeper than the lips, however
fine the words and eloquent the phrases in which it was expressed. As some
compensation, the Mortmain Act was suspended for twenty years. Yet, as if
it were in reply to Pole's appeal, a mischievous provision closed the act,
that, notwithstanding anything contained in it, laymen entitled to tithes
might recover them with the same readiness as before the first day of the
present parliament.[428]

Such was the great statute of reconciliation with Rome, with which, in
the inability to obtain a better, the legate was compelled to be satisfied, and
to reconsider his threat of going back to Italy.

This first conflict was no sooner ended than another commenced. The
Commons would not consent that Philip should be crowned; but, as the
queen said she was enceinte, provision had to be made for a regency, and a
bill was introduced into the Upper House which has not survived, but
which, in spirit, was unfavourable to the king.[429] Gardiner, in the course of
the debate, attempted to put in a clause affecting Elizabeth,[430] but the
success was no better than usual. The act went down to the Commons,
where, however, it was immediately cancelled. Though the Commons
would give Philip no rights as king, they were better disposed towards him

than the Lords; and they drew another bill of their own, in which they
declared the father to be the natural and fitting guardian of the child. The
experience of protectorates, they said, had been uniformly unfortunate, and
should the queen die leaving an heir, Philip should be regent of the realm
during the minority; if obliged to be absent on the Continent, he might
himself nominate his deputy;[431] and so long as it should be his pleasure to
remain in England, his person should be under the protection of the laws of
high treason.

Taking courage from the apparent disposition of the House, the friends of
the court proposed that, should the queen die childless, the crown should
devolve absolutely upon him for his life.[432] But in this they were going too
far. The suggestion was listened to coldly; and Philip, who had really
calculated on obtaining from parliament, in some form or other, a security
for his succession, despatched Ruy Gomez to Brussels, to consult the
emperor on the course which should be pursued.[433] On the whole,
however, could the bill of the House of Commons be carried, Renard was
disposed to be contented; the queen was confident in her hopes of an heir,
and it might not be worth while to irritate the people unnecessarily about
Elizabeth.[434] The clause empowering Philip to govern by deputy in his
absence was especially satisfactory.[435]

But the peers, whom the Commons had refused to consult on the new
form of the measure, would not part so easily with their own opinions; they
adopted the phraseology of the Lower House, but this particular and
precious feature in it they pared away. The bill, as it eventually passed,
declared Philip regent till his child should be of age, and so long as he
continued in the realm; but, at the same time, fatally for the objects at which
he was aiming, it bound him again to observe all the articles of the marriage
treaty, "which, during the time that he should hold the government, should
remain and continue in as full force and strength, as if they were newly
inserted and rehearsed in the present act."[436]

The disposition of the House of Lords was the more dangerous, because
the bishops, of course, voted with the government, and the strength of the
opposition, therefore, implied something like unanimity in the lay peers.
The persecuting act had been carried with difficulty, and in the

reconciliation with Rome the legate had been studiously mortified. On the
succession and the coronation the court had been wholly baffled; and in the
Regency Bill they had obtained but half of what they had desired. At the
least Mary had hoped to secure for the king the free disposal of the army
and the finances, and she had not been able so much as to ask for it.
Compelled to rest contented with such advantages as had been secured, the
court would not risk the results of further controversy by prolonging the
session; and on the 16th of January, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the
king and queen came to the House of Lords almost unattended, and with an
evident expression of dissatisfaction dissolved the parliament.[437]

I have been particular in relating the proceedings of this parliament,
because it marks the point where the flood tide of reaction ceased to ascend,
and the ebb recommenced. From the beginning of the Reformation in 1529,
two distinct movements had gone on side by side—the alteration of
doctrines, and the emancipation of the laity from papal and ecclesiastical
domination. With the first, the contemporaries of Henry VIII., the country
gentlemen and the peers, who were the heads of families at the period of
Mary's accession, had never sympathised; and the tyranny of the Protestants
while they were in power had converted a disapproval which time would
have overcome, into active and determined indignation. The papacy was a
mixed question; the Pilgrims of Grace in 1536, and the Cornish rebels in
1549, had demanded the restoration of the spiritual primacy to the See of St.
Peter, and Henry himself, until Pole and Paul III. called on Europe to unite
in a crusade against him, had not determined wholly against some degree of
concession. In the pope, as a sovereign who claimed reverence and tribute,
who interfered with the laws of the land, and maintained at Rome a
supreme court of appeal—who pretended a right to depose kings and
absolve subjects from their allegiance—who held a weapon in
excommunication as terrible to the laity as Premunire was terrible to
ecclesiastics—in the pope under this aspect, only a few insignificant
fanatics entertained any kind of interest.

But experience had proved that to a nation cut off from the centre of
Catholic union, the maintenance of orthodoxy was impossible: the
supremacy of the pope, therefore, came back as a tolerated feature in the
return to the Catholic faith, and the ecclesiastical courts were reinstated in

authority to check unlicensed extravagance of opinion. Their restored
power, however, was over opinion only; wherever the pretensions of the
church would come in collision with the political constitution, wherever
they menaced the independence of the temporal magistrate or the tenure of
property, there the progress of restoration was checked by the rock, and
could eat no further into the soil. The pope and the clergy recovered their
titular rank, and in one direction unhappily they recovered the reality of
power. But the temporal spoils of the struggle remained with the laity, and if
the clergy lifted a hand to retake them, their weapons would be instantly
wrenched from their grasp.

If the genuine friends of human freedom had acquiesced without
resistance in this conclusion, if the nobility had contented themselves with
securing their worldly and political interests, and had made no effort to
restrain or modify the exercise of the authority which they were giving
back, they might be accused of having accepted a dishonourable
compromise. But they did what they could. They worked with such legal
means as were in their power, and for two parliaments they succeeded in
keeping persecution at bay; they failed in the third, but failed only after a
struggle. The Protestants themselves had created, by their own misconduct,
the difficulty of defending them; and armed unconstitutional resistance was
an expedient to be resorted to, only when it had been seen how the clergy
would conduct themselves. English statesmen may be pardoned if they did
not anticipate the passions to which the guardians of orthodoxy were about
to abandon themselves. Parliament had maintained the independence of the
English courts of law. It had maintained the Premunire. It had forbidden the
succession to be tampered with. If this was not everything, it was something
—something which in the end would be the undoing of all the rest.

The court and the bishops, however, were for the present absolute in their
own province. The persecuting acts were once more upon the Statute Book;
and when the realities of the debates in parliament had disappeared, the
cardinal and the queen could again give the rein to their imagination. They
had called up a phantom out of its grave, and they persuaded themselves
that they were witnessing the resurrection of the spirit of truth, that heresy
was about to vanish from off the English soil, like an exhalation of the
morning, at the brightness of the papal return. The chancellor and the clergy

were springing at the leash like hounds with the game in view, fanaticism
and revenge lashing them forward. If the temporal schemes of the court
were thwarted, it was, perhaps, because Heaven desired that exclusive
attention should be given first to the salvation of souls.

For all past political offences, therefore, there was now an amnesty, and
such prisoners as remained unexecuted for Wyatt's conspiracy were released
from the Tower on the 18th of January. On the 25th a hundred and sixty
priests walked in procession through the London streets, chanting litanies,
with eight bishops walking after them, and Bonner carrying the host. On the
28th the cardinal issued his first general instructions. The bishops were
directed to call together their clergy in every diocese in England, and to
inform them of the benevolent love of the Holy Father, and of the arrival of
the legate with powers to absolve them from their guilt. They were to relate
the acts of the late parliament, with the reconciliation and absolution of the
Lords and Commons; and they were to give general notice that authority
had been restored to the ecclesiastical courts, to proceed against the
enemies of the faith, and punish them according to law.

A day was then to be fixed on which the clergy should appear with their
confessions, and be received into the church. In the assignment of their
several penances, a distinction was to be made between those who had
taught heresy and those who had merely lapsed into it.

When the clergy had been reconciled, they were again in turn to exhort
the laity in all churches and cathedrals, to accept the grace which was
offered to them; and that they might understand that they were not at liberty
to refuse the invitation, a time was assigned to them within which their
submissions must be all completed. A book was to be kept in every diocese,
where the names of those who were received were to be entered. A
visitation was to be held throughout the country at the end of the spring, and
all who had not complied before Easter day, or who, after compliance, "had
returned to their vomit", would be proceeded against with the utmost
severity of the law.[438]

The introduction of the Register was the Inquisition under another name.
There was no limit, except in the humanity or the prudence of the bishops,
to the tyranny which they would be enabled to exercise. The cardinal

professed to desire that, before heretics were punished with death, mild
means should first be tried with them;[439] the meaning which he attached to
the words was illustrated in an instant example.

The instructions were the signal for the bishops to commence business.
On the day of their appearance, Gardiner, Bonner, Tunstal, and three other
prelates, formed a court in St. Mary Overy's Church, in Southwark; and
Hooper, and Rogers, a canon of St. Paul's, were brought up before them.

Rogers had been distinguished in the first bright days of Protestantism.
He had been a fellow-labourer with Tyndal and Coverdale, at Antwerp, in
the translation of the Bible. Afterwards, taking a German wife, he lived for
a time at Wittenberg, not unknown, we may be sure, to Martin Luther. On
the accession of Edward, he returned to England, and worked among the
London clergy till the end of the reign; and on Mary's accession he was one
of the preachers at Paul's Cross who had dared to speak against the reaction.
He had been rebuked by the council, and his friends had urged him to fly;
but, like Cranmer, he thought that duty required him to stay at his post, and,
in due time, without, however, having given fresh provocation, he was shut
up in Newgate by Bonner.

Hooper, when the unfortunate garment controversy was brought to an
end, had shown by his conduct in his diocese that in one instance at least
doctrinal fanaticism was compatible with the loftiest excellence. While the
great world was scrambling for the church property, Hooper was found
petitioning the council for leave to augment impoverished livings out of his
own income.[440] In the hall of his palace at Gloucester a profuse hospitality
was offered daily to those who were most in need of it. The poor of the city
were invited by relays to solid meat dinners, and the bishop with the
courtesy of a gentleman dined with them, and treated them with the same
respect as if they had been the highest in the land. He was one of the first
persons arrested after Mary's accession, and the cross of persecution at once
happily made his peace with Ridley. In an affectionate interchange of
letters, the two confessors exhorted each other to constancy in the end
which both foresaw, determining "if they could not overthrow, at least, to
shake those high altitudes" of spiritual tyranny.[441] The Fleet prison had
now been Hooper's house for eighteen months. At first, on payment of

heavy fees to the warden, he had lived in some degree of comfort; but as
soon as his deprivation was declared, Gardiner ordered that he should be
confined in one of the common prisoners' wards; where "with a wicked man
and a wicked woman" for his companions, with a bed of straw and a rotten
counterpane, the prison sink on one side of his cell and Fleet ditch on the
other, he waited till it would please parliament to permit the dignitaries of
the Church to murder him.[442]

These were the two persons with whom the Marian persecution opened.
On their appearance in the court, they were required briefly to make their
submission. They attempted to argue; but they were told that when
parliament had determined a thing, private men were not to call it in
question, and they were allowed twenty-four hours to make up their minds.
As they were leaving the church Hooper was heard to say, "Come, brother
Rogers, must we two take this matter first in hand and fry these faggots?"
"Yea, sir, with God's grace," Rogers answered. "Doubt not," Hooper said,
"but God will give us strength."

They were remanded to prison. The next morning they were brought
again before the court. "The queen's mercy" was offered them, if they
would recant; they refused, and they were sentenced to die. Rogers asked to
be allowed to take leave of his wife and children. Gardiner, with a savage
taunt, rejected the request. The day of execution was left uncertain. They
were sent to Newgate to wait the queen's pleasure. On the 30th, Taylor of
Hadley, Laurence Sandars, rector of All Hallows, and the illustrious
Bradford, were passed through the same forms with the same results.
Another, a notorious preacher, called Cardmaker, flinched, and made his
submission.

Rogers was to "break the ice," as Bradford described it.[443] On the
morning of the 4th of February the wife of the keeper of Newgate came to
his bedside. He was sleeping soundly, and she woke him with difficulty to
let him know that he was wanted. The Bishop of London was waiting, she
said, to degrade him from the priesthood, and he was then to go out and die.
Rubbing his eyes, and collecting himself, he hurried on his clothes. "If it be
thus." he said, "I need not tie my points." Hooper had been sent for also for
the ceremony of degradation. The vestments used in the mass were thrown

over them, and were then one by one removed. They were pronounced
deposed from the priestly office, incapable of offering further sacrifice—
except, indeed, the only acceptable sacrifice which man can ever offer, the
sacrifice of himself. Again Rogers entreated permission to see his wife, and
again he was refused.

The two friends were then parted. Hooper was to suffer at Gloucester,
and returned to his cell; Rogers was committed to the sheriff, and led out to
Smithfield. The Catholics had affected to sneer at the faith of their rivals.
There was a general conviction among them, which was shared probably by
Pole and Gardiner, that the Protestants would all flinch at the last; that they
had no "doctrine that would abide the fire." When Rogers appeared,
therefore, the exultation of the people in his constancy overpowered the
horror of his fate, and he was received with rounds of cheers. His family,
whom he was forbidden to part with in private, were waiting on the way to
see him—his wife with nine little ones at her side and a tenth upon her
breast—and they, too, welcomed him with hysterical cries of joy, as if he
were on his way to a festival.[444] Sir Robert Rochester was in attendance at
the stake to report his behaviour. At the last moment he was offered pardon
if he would give way, but in vain. The fire was lighted. The suffering
seemed to be nothing. He bathed his hands in the flame as "if it was cold
water," raised his eyes to heaven, and died.

The same night a party of the royal guard took charge of Hooper, the
order of whose execution was arranged by a mandate from the crown. As
"an obstinate, false, and detestable heretic," he was to be burned in the city
"which he had infected with his pernicious doctrines;" and "forasmuch as
being a vainglorious person, and delighting in his tongue," he "might
persuade the people into agreement with him, had he liberty to use it," care
was to be taken that he should not speak either at the stake or on his way to
it.[445] He was carried down on horseback by easy stages; and on the
forenoon of Thursday, the 7th, he dined at Cirencester, "at a woman's house
who had always hated the truth, and spoken all evil she could of him." This
woman had shared in the opinion that Protestants had no serious
convictions, and had often expressed her belief that Hooper, particularly,
would fail if brought to the trial. She found that both in him and in his creed
there was more than she had supposed; and "perceiving the cause of his

coming, she lamented his case with tears, and showed him all the friendship
she could."

At five in the evening he arrived at Gloucester. The road, for a mile
outside the town, was lined with people, and the mayor was in attendance,
with an escort, to prevent a rescue. But the feeling was rather of awe and
expectation, and those who loved Hooper best knew that the highest service
which he could render to his faith was to die for it.

A day's interval of preparation was allowed him, with a private room. He
was in the custody of the sheriff; "and there was this difference observed
between the keepers of the bishops' prisons and the keepers of the crown
prisons, that the bishops' keepers were ever cruel; the keepers of the crown
prisons showed, for the most part, such favour as they might."[446] After a
sound night's rest, Hooper rose early, and passed the morning in solitary
prayer. In the course of the day, young Sir Anthony Kingston, one of the
commissioners appointed to superintend the execution, expressed a wish to
see him. Kingston was an old acquaintance, Hooper having been the means
of bringing him out of evil ways. He entered the room unannounced.
Hooper was on his knees, and, looking round at the intruder, did not at first
know him. Kingston told him his name, and then, bursting into tears, said:
—

"Oh, consider; life is sweet and death is bitter; therefore, seeing life may
be had, desire to live, for life hereafter may do good."

Hooper answered:—

"I thank you for your counsel, yet it is not so friendly as I could have
wished it to be. True it is, alas! Master Kingston, that death is bitter and life
is sweet; therefore I have settled myself, through the strength of God's Holy
Spirit, patiently to pass through the fire prepared for me, desiring you and
others to commend me to God's mercy in your prayers."

"Well, my Lord," said Kingston, "then there is no remedy, and I will take
my leave. I thank God that ever I knew you, for God appointed you to call
me, being a lost child. I was both an adulterer and a fornicator, and God, by
your good instruction, brought me to the forsaking of the same."

They parted, the tears on both their faces. Other friends were admitted
afterwards. The queen's orders were little thought of, for Hooper had won
the hearts of the guard on his way from London. In the evening the mayor
and aldermen came, with the sheriffs, to shake hands with him. "It was a
sign of their good will," he said, "and a proof that they had not forgotten the
lessons which he used to teach them." He begged the sheriffs that there
might be "a quick fire, to make an end shortly;" and for himself he would be
as obedient as they could wish.

"If you think I do amiss in anything," he said, "hold up your fingers, and
I have done; for I am not come hither as one enforced or compelled to die; I
might have had my life, as is well known, with worldly gain, if I would
have accounted my doctrine falsehood and heresy."

In the evening, at his own request, he was left alone. He slept undisturbed
the early part of the night. From the time that he awoke till the guard
entered, he was on his knees.

The morning was windy and wet. The scene of the execution was an open
space opposite the college, near a large elm tree, where Hooper had been
accustomed to preach. Several thousand people were collected to see him
suffer; some had climbed the tree, and were seated in the storm and rain
among the leafless branches. A company of priests were in a room over the
college gates, looking out with pity or satisfaction, as God or the devil was
in their hearts.

"Alas!" said Hooper, when he was brought out, "why be all these people
assembled here, and speech is prohibited me?" He had suffered in prison
from sciatica, and was lame, but he limped cheerfully along with a stick,
and smiled when he saw the stake. At the foot of it he knelt; and as he
began to pray, a box was brought, and placed on a stool before his eyes,
which he was told contained his pardon if he would recant.

"Away with it;" Hooper only cried; "away with it!"

"Despatch him, then," Lord Chandos said, "seeing there is no remedy."

He was undressed to his shirt, in the cold; a pound of gunpowder was tied
between his legs, and as much more under either arm; he was fastened with
an iron hoop to the stake, and he assisted with his own hands to arrange the
faggots round him.

The fire was then brought, but the wood was green; the dry straw only
kindled, and burning for a few moments was blown away by the wind. A
violent flame paralysed the nerves at once, a slow one was torture. More
faggots were thrown in, and again lighted, and this time the martyr's face
was singed and scorched; but again the flames sank, and the hot damp
sticks smouldered round his legs. He wiped his eyes with his hands, and
cried, "For God's love, good people, let me have more fire!" A third supply
of dry fuel was laid about him, and this time the powder exploded, but it
had been ill placed, or was not enough. "Lord Jesu, have mercy on me!" he
exclaimed; "Lord Jesu, receive my spirit!" These were his last articulate
words; but his lips were long seen to move, and he continued to beat his
breast with his hands. It was not till after three-quarters of an hour of
torment that he at last expired.

The same day, at the same hour, Rowland Taylor was burnt on Aldham
Common, in Suffolk. Laurance Sandars had been destroyed the day before
at Coventry, kissing the stake, and crying, "Welcome the cross of Christ!
welcome everlasting life!" The first-fruits of the Whitehall pageant were
gathered. By the side of the rhetoric of the hysterical dreamer who presided
in that vain melodrama, let me place a few words addressed by the
murdered Bishop of Gloucester to his friends, a week before his sentence.

"The grace of God be with you, amen. I did write unto you of late, and
told you what extremity the parliament had concluded upon concerning
religion, suppressing the truth, and setting forth the untruth; intending to
cause all men, by extremity, to forswear themselves; and to take again for
the head of the church him that is neither head nor member of it, but a very
enemy, as the word of God and all ancient writers do record. And for lack of
law and authority they will use force and extremity, which have been the
arguments to defend the pope and popery since their authority first began in
the world. But now is the time of trial, to see whether we fear more God or
man. It was an easy thing to hold with Christ whilst the prince and the

world held with him; but now the world hateth him, it is the true trial who
be his.

"Wherefore in the name, and in the virtue, strength, and power of his
Holy Spirit, prepare yourselves in any case to adversity and constancy. Let
us not run away when it is most time to fight. Remember, none shall be
crowned but such as fight manfully; and he that endureth to the end shall be
saved. Ye must now turn your cogitations from the perils you see, and mark
the felicity that followeth the peril—either victory in this world of your
enemies, or else a surrender of this life to inherit the everlasting kingdom.
Beware of beholding too much the felicity or misery of this world; for the
consideration and too earnest love or fear of either of them draweth from
God. Wherefore think with yourselves as touching the felicity of the world,
it is good; but none otherwise than it standeth with the favour of God; it is
to be kept, but yet so far forth as by keeping it we lose not God. It is good
abiding and tarrying still among our friends here, but yet so that we tarry
not therewithal in God's displeasure, and hereafter dwell with the devils in
fire everlasting. There is nothing under God but may be kept, so that God,
being above all things we have, be not lost. Of adversity judge the same.
Imprisonment is painful, but yet liberty upon evil conditions is more
painful. The prisons stink; but yet not so much as sweet houses, where the
fear and true honour of God lack. I must be alone and solitary; it is better so
to be, and have God with me, than to be in company with the wicked. Loss
of goods is great, but loss of God's grace and favour is greater. I am a poor
simple creature, and cannot tell how to answer before such a great sort of
noble, learned, and wise men. It is better to make answer before the pomp
and pride of wicked men, than to stand naked, in the sight of all heaven and
earth, before the just God at the latter day. I shall die by the hands of the
cruel men; but he is blessed that loseth this life full of miseries, and findeth
the life of eternal joys. It is pain and grief to depart from goods and friends;
but yet not so much as to depart from grace and heaven itself. Wherefore
there is neither felicity nor adversity of this world that can appear to be
great, if it be weighed with the joys or pains in the world to come."[447]

Of five who had been sentenced, four were thus despatched. Bradford,
the fifth, was respited, in the hope that the example might tell upon him. Six
more were waiting their condemnation in Bonner's prisons. The enemies of

the church were to submit or die. So said Gardiner, in the name of the
English priesthood, with the passion of a fierce revenge. So said the legate
and the queen, in the delirious belief that they were chosen instruments of
Providence.

So, however, did not say the English lay statesmen. The first and
unexpected effect was to produce a difference of opinion in the court itself.
Philip, to whom Renard had insisted on the necessity of more moderate
measures, found it necessary to clear himself of responsibility; and the day
after Hooper suffered, Alphonso a Castro, the king's chaplain, preached a
sermon in the royal presence, in which he denounced the execution, and
inveighed against the tyranny of the bishops. The Lords of the Council
"talked strangely;" and so deep was the indignation, that the Flemish
ambassador again expected Gardiner's destruction. Paget refused to act with
him in the council any more, and Philip himself talked more and more of
going abroad. Renard, from the tone of his correspondence, believed
evidently at this moment that the game of the church was played out and
lost. He wrote to the emperor to entreat that when the king went he might
not himself be left behind; he was held responsible by the people for the
queen's misdoings; and a party of the young nobility had sworn to kill him.
[448]

Among the people the constancy of the martyrs had called out a burst of
admiration. It was rumoured that bystanders had endeavoured to throw
themselves into the fire to die at their side.[449] A prisoner, on examination
before Bonner, was asked if he thought he could bear the flame. You may
try me, if you will, he said. A candle was brought, and he held his hand,
without flinching, in the blaze.[450] With such a humour abroad, it seemed to
Renard that the Lords had only to give the signal, and the queen and the
bishops would be overwhelmed.

He expected the movement in the spring. It is singular that, precisely as
in the preceding winter, the deliberate intentions of moderate and competent
persons were anticipated and defeated by a partial and premature
conspiracy. At the end of February a confederate revealed a project for an
insurrection, partly religious and partly agrarian. Placards were to be issued
simultaneously in all parts of the country, declaring that the queen's

pregnancy was a delusion, and that she intended to pass upon the nation a
supposititious child; the people were, therefore, invited to rise in arms,
drive out the Spaniards, revolutionise religion, tear down the enclosures of
the commons, and proclaim Courtenay king under the title of Edward VII.
[451] In such a scheme the lords and country gentlemen could bear no part.
They could not risk a repetition of the popular rebellions of the late reign,
and they resolved to wait the issue of the queen's pregnancy, while they
watched over the safety of Elizabeth. The project of the court was now to
send her to Flanders, where she was to remain under charge of the emperor;
if possible, she was to be persuaded to go thither of her own accord; if she
could not be persuaded, she would be otherwise removed. Lord William
Howard, her constant guardian, requested permission to see and speak with
her, and learn her own feelings. He was refused; but he went to her
notwithstanding, and had a long private interview with her; and the court
could only talk bitterly of his treason among themselves, make propositions
to send him to the Tower which they durst not execute, and devise some
other method of dealing with their difficulty.[452]

Meantime, Philip, who had pined for freedom after six weeks' experience
of his bride, was becoming unmanageably impatient. A paper of advice and
exhortation survives, which was addressed on this occasion by the
ambassador to his master, with reflections on the condition of England, and
on the conduct which the king should pursue.

"Your majesty must remember," said Renard, "the purpose for which you
came to England. The French had secured the Queen of Scotland for the
Dauphin. They had afterwards made an alliance with the late king, and
spared no pains to secure the support of England. To counteract their
schemes, and to obtain a counter advantage in the war, the emperor, on the
accession of the queen, resolved that your highness should marry her. Your
highness, it is true, might wish that she was more agreeable;[453] but, on the
other hand, she is infinitely virtuous, and, things being as they are, your
highness, like a magnanimous prince, must remember her condition, and
exert yourself, so far as you conveniently may, to assist her in the
management of the kingdom.

"Your highness must consider that your departure will be misrepresented,
your enemies will speak of it as a flight rather than as a necessary absence.
The French will be busy with their intrigues, and the queen will not be
pleased to lose you. The administration is in confusion, the divisions in the
council are more violent than ever. Religion is unsettled; the heretics take
advantage of these late barbarous punishments to say, that they are to be
converted by fire, because their enemies are unable to convince them by
reason or example. The orthodox clergy are still unreformed, and their
scandalous conduct accords ill with the offices to which they are called.[454]

"Further, your highness will do well to weigh the uncertainty of the
succession. Should the queen's pregnancy prove a mistake, the heretics will
place their hopes in Elizabeth: and here you are in a difficulty whatever be
done; for if Elizabeth be set aside, the crown will go to the Queen of Scots;
if she succeed, she will restore heresy, and naturally attach herself to
France. Some step must be taken about this before you leave the country;
and you must satisfy the queen that you will assist her in her general
difficulties, as a good lord and husband ought to do.[455]

"The council must be reformed, if possible, and the number diminished;
those who remain must be invited to renew their oaths to your majesty.
Regard must be had to the navy, and especially to the admiral Lord William
Howard; and above all there must be no more of this barbarous precipitancy
in putting heretics to death. The people must be won from their errors by
gentleness and by better instruction. Except in cases of especial scandal, the
bishops must not be permitted to irritate them by cruelty, and the legate
must see that a better example is set by the clergy themselves.[456] The debts
of the crown must be attended to; and your majesty should endeavour to do
something which will give you popularity with the masses. Before all
things, attend to the succession.

"You cannot set aside the dispositions of King Henry in favour of
Elizabeth without danger of rebellion. To recognise her as heir-presumptive
without providing her with a husband, who can control her, will be perilous
to the queen. The mean course between the extremes, will be therefore, for
your highness to bring about her marriage with the Prince of Savoy. It will
please the English, provided that her rights of inheritance are not interfered

with; and although they will not go to war for our quarrel, they will not in
that case be unwilling to assist in expelling the French from Piedmont.

"If your majesty approve, the thing can be done without delay. At all
events, before you leave the country, you should see the princess yourself;
give her your advice to be faithful to her sister, and, on your part, promise
that you will be her friend, and assist her where you can find opportunity."
(Back to Content)

CHAPTER IV.

THE MARTYRS.

The protests of Renard against the persecution received no attention.

The inquisition established by the legate was not to commence till Easter;
but the prisons were already abundantly supplied with persons who had
been arrested on various pretexts, and the material was ready in hand to
occupy the interval. The four persons who had first suffered had been
conspicuous among the leaders of the Reformation; but the bishops were for
the most part prudent in their selection of victims, and chose them
principally from among the poor and unfriended.

On the 9th of February, a weaver named Tomkins (the man who had held
his hand in the candle), Pigot, a butcher, Knight, a barber, Hunter, an
apprentice boy of 19, Lawrence, a priest, and Hawkes, a gentleman, were
brought before Bonner in the Consistory at St. Paul's, where they were
charged with denying transubstantiation, and were condemned to die. The
indignation which had been excited by the first executions caused a delay in
carrying the sentence into effect; but as the menace of insurrection died
away the wolves came back to their prey. On the 9th of March, two more
were condemned also, Thomas Causton and Thomas Higbed, men of some
small property in Essex. To disperse the effect, these eight were scattered
about the diocese. Tomkins died at Smithfield on the 16th of March;
Causton and Higbed, Pigot and Knight, in different parts of Essex; Hawkes
suffered later; Lawrence was burnt at Colchester. The legs of the latter had
been crushed by irons in one of Bonner's prisons; he was unable to stand,
and was placed at the stake in a chair. "At his burning, he sitting in the fire,

the young children came about and cried, as well as young children could
speak, Lord strengthen thy servant, and keep thy promise—Lord, strengthen
thy servant, and keep thy promise."[457]

Hunter's case deserves more particular mention. The London apprentices
had been affected deeply by the Reforming preachers. It was to them that
the servant of Anne Askew "made her moan," and gathered subscriptions
for her mistress. William Hunter, who was one of them, had been ordered to
attend mass by a priest when it was re-established; he had refused, and his
master, fearing that he might be brought into trouble, had sent him home to
his family at Brentwood, in Essex.[458] Another priest, going one day into
Brentwood Church, found Hunter reading the Bible there.

Could he expound Scripture, that he read it thus to himself? the priest
asked. He was reading for his comfort, Hunter replied; he did not take on
himself to expound. The Bible taught him how to live, and how to
distinguish between right and wrong.

It was never merry world, the priest said, since the Bible came forth in
English. He saw what Hunter was—he was one of those who disliked the
queen's laws, and he and other heretics would broil for it before all was
over.

The boy's friends thought it prudent that he should fly to some place
where he was not known; but, as soon as he was gone, a Catholic magistrate
in the neighbourhood required his father to produce him, on peril of being
arrested in his place; and, after a struggle of affection, in which the father
offered to shield his son at his own hazard, young Hunter returned and
surrendered.

The magistrate sent him to the Bishop of London, who kept him in prison
three quarters of a year. When the persecution commenced, he was called
up for examination.

Bonner, though a bigot and a ruffian, had, at times, a coarse good-nature
in him, and often, in moments of pity, thrust an easy recantation upon a
hesitating prisoner. He tried with emphatic anxiety to save this young
apprentice. "If thou wilt recant," he said to him, "I will make thee a freeman

in the city, and give thee forty pounds in money to set up thy occupation
withal; or I will make thee steward of mine house, and set thee in office, for
I like thee well."

Hunter thanked him for his kindness; but it could not be, he said; he must
stand to the truth: he could not lie, or pretend to believe what he did not
believe. Bonner said, and probably with sincere conviction, that if he
persisted he would be damned for ever. Hunter said, that God judged more
righteously, and justified those whom man unjustly condemned.

He was therefore to die with the rest; and on Saturday, the 23rd of March,
he was sent to suffer at his native village. Monday being the feast of the
Annunciation, the execution was postponed till Tuesday. The intervening
time he was allowed to spend with his friends "in the parlour of the Swan
Inn." His father prayed that he might continue to the end in the way that he
had begun. His mother said, she was happy to bear a child who could find
in his heart to lose his life for Christ's sake. "Mother," he answered, "for my
little pain which I shall suffer, which is but a short braid, Christ hath
promised me a crown of joy. May you not be glad of that, mother?"

Amidst such words the days passed. Tuesday morning the sheriff's son
came and embraced him, "bade him not be afraid," and "could speak no
more for weeping." When the sheriff came himself for him, he took his
brother's arm and walked calmly to the place of execution, "at the town's
end, where the butts stood."

His father was at the roadside as he passed. "God be with thee, son
William!" the old man said. "God be with thee, good father," the son
answered, "and be of good comfort!"

When he was come to the stake, he took one of the faggots, knelt upon it,
and prayed for a few moments. The sheriff read the pardon with the
conditions. "I shall not recant," he said, and walked to the post, to which he
was chained.

"Pray for me, good people, while you see me alive," he said to the crowd.

"Pray for thee!" said the magistrate who had committed him, "I will no
more pray for thee than I will pray for a dog."

"Son of God," Hunter exclaimed, "shine on me!" The sun broke out from
behind a cloud and blazed in glory on his face.

The faggots were set on fire.

"Look," shrieked a priest, "how thou burnest here, so shalt thou burn in
hell!"

The martyr had a Prayer-book in his hands, which he cast through the
flames to his brother.

"William," said the brother, "think on the holy passion of Christ, and be
not afraid of death."

"I am not afraid," were his last words. "Lord, Lord, Lord, receive my
spirit!"

Ten days later another victim was sacrificed at Carmarthen, whose fate
was peculiarly unprovoked and cruel.

Robert Ferrars, who twenty-seven years before carried a faggot with
Anthony Dalaber in High Street at Oxford, had been appointed by Somerset
Bishop of St. David's. He was a man of large humanity, justice, and
uprightness—neither conspicuous as a theologian nor prominent as a
preacher, but remarkable chiefly for good sense and a kindly imaginative
tenderness. He had found his diocese infected with the general disorders of
the times. The Chapter were indulging themselves to the utmost in
questionable pleasures. The church patronage was made the prey of a nest
of Cathedral lawyers, and, in an evil hour for himself, the bishop
endeavoured to make crooked things straight.

After three years of struggle, his unruly canons were unable to endure
him longer, and forwarded to the Duke of Northumberland an elaborate
series of complaints against him. He was charged with neglecting his books
and his preaching, and spending his time in surveying the lands of the see,

and opening mines. He kept no manner of hospitality, it was said, but dined
at the same table with his servants; and his talk was "not of godliness," "but
of worldly matters, as baking, brewing, enclosing, ploughing, mining,
millstones, discharging of tenants, and such like."

"To declare his folly in riding (these are the literal words of the
accusation), he useth a bridle with white studs and snaffle, white Scottish
stirrups, white spurs; a Scottish pad, with a little staff of three quarters [of a
yard] long.

"He said he would go to parliament on foot; and to his friends that
dissuaded him, alleging that it was not meet for a man in his place, he
answered, I care not for that; it is no sin.

"Having a son, he went before the midwife to the church, presenting the
child to the priest; and giving the name Samuel with a solemn interpretation
of the name,[459] appointed two godfathers and two godmothers contrary to
the ordinance, making his son a monster and himself a laughing-stock.

"He daily useth whistling of his child, and saith that he understood his
whistle when he was but three years old; and being advertised of his friends
that men laughed at his folly, he answered, They whistle their horses and
dogs: they might also be contented that I whistle my child; and so whistleth
him daily, friendly admonition neglected.

"In his visitation, among other his surveys, he surveyed Milford Haven,
where he espied a seal-fish tumbling, and he crept down to the rocks by the
water-side, and continued there whistling by the space of an hour,
persuading the company that laughed fast at him, he made the fish to tarry
there.

"Speaking of the scarcity of herrings, he laid the fault to the covetousness
of fishers, who in time of plenty took so many that they destroyed the
breeders.

"Speaking of the alteration of the coin, he wished that what metal soever
it was made of, the penny should be in weight worth a penny of the same
metal."

Such were the charges against Ferrars, which, notwithstanding, were
considered serious enough to require an answer; and the bishop consented
to reply.

He dined with his servants, he said, because the hall of the palace was in
ruins, and for their comfort he allowed them to eat in his own room. For his
hospitality, he appealed to his neighbours; and for his conversation, he said
that he suited it to his hearers. He talked of religion to religious men; to
men of the world, he talked "of honest worldly things with godly intent."
He saw no folly in having his horse decently appointed; and as to walking
to parliament, it was indifferent to him whether he walked or rode. God had
given him a child, after lawful prayer, begotten in honest marriage; he had
therefore named him Samuel, and presented him to the minister as a poor
member of Christ's Church; it was done openly in the cathedral, without
offending any one. The crime of whistling he admitted, "thinking it better to
bring up his son with loving entertainment," to encourage him to receive
afterwards more serious lessons. He had whistled to the seal; and "such as
meant folly might turn it to their purpose." He had said that the destruction
of the fry of fish prevented fish from multiplying, because he believed it to
be true.

Answered or unanswered, it is scarcely credible that such accusations
should have received attention; but the real offence behind, and is indicated
in a vague statement that he had supposed himself to a premunire. The
exquisite iniquity of the Northumberland administration could not endure a
bishop who had opposed the corrupt administration of patronage; and the
explanation being held as insufficient, Ferrars was summoned to London
and thrown into prison, where Mary's accession found him.

Cut off in this way from the opportunities of escape which were long
open to others, the bishop remained in confinement till the opening of the
persecution. He was deposed from his see by Gardiner's first commission,
as having been married; otherwise, however, Ferrars was unobnoxious
politically and personally. Being in prison, he had been incapable of
committing any fresh offence against the queen, and might reasonably have
been forgotten or passed over. But he had been a bishop, and he was ready
caught to the hands of the authorities; and Mary had been compelled

unwillingly to release a more conspicuous offender, Miles Coverdale, at the
intercession of the King of Denmark. Ferrars was therefore brought before
Gardiner on the 4th of February. On the 14th he was sent into Wales to be
tried by Morgan, his successor at St. David's, and Constantine, the notary of
the diocese, who had been one of his accusers. By these judges, on the 11th
of March, he was condemned and degraded; he appealed to the legate, but
the legate never listened to the prayer of heretics; the legate's mission was
to extirpate them. On Saturday the 30th of March, Ferrars was brought to
the stake in the market-place in Carmarthen.[460]

Rawlins White, an aged Cardiff fisherman, followed Ferrars. In the
course of April, George Marsh, a curate, was burnt at Chester; and on the
20th of April, a man named William Flower, who had been once a monk of
Ely, was burnt in Palace-yard, at Westminster. Flower had provoked his
own fate. He appeared on Easter day in St. Margaret's Church, while mass
was being said; and provoked, as he persuaded himself, by the Holy Spirit,
he flew upon the officiating priest, and stabbed him with a dagger in the
hand; when to the horror of pious Catholics, the blood spurted into the
chalice, and was mixed with the consecrated elements.

Sixteen persons had now been put to death, and there was again a pause
for the sharp surgery to produce its effects.

While Mary was destroying the enemies of the church, Julius the Third
had died at the end of March, and Reginald Pole was again a candidate for
the vacant chair. The courts of Paris and Brussels alike promised him their
support, but alike gave their support to another. They flattered his virtues,
but they permitted Marcellus Cervino, the Cardinal of St. Cross, to be
elected unanimously; and the English legate was told that he must be
contented with the event which God had been pleased to send.[461] An
opportunity, however, seemed to offer itself to him of accomplishing a
service to Europe.

For thirty-five years the two great Catholic powers had been wrestling
with but brief interruption. The advantage to either had been as trifling as
the causes of their quarrel were insignificant. Their revenues were
anticipated, their credit was exhausted, yet year after year languid armies
struggled into collision. Across the Alps in Italy, and along the frontiers of

Burgundy and the Low Countries, towns and villages, and homesteads were
annually sacked, and peasants and their families destroyed—for what it
were vain to ask, except it was for some poor shadow of imagined honour.
Two mighty princes believed themselves justified in the sight of Heaven in
squandering their subjects' treasure and their subjects' blood, because the
pride of each forbade him to be the first in volunteering insignificant
concessions. France had conquered Savoy and part of Piedmont, and had
pushed forward its northern frontier to Marienbourg and Metz: the emperor
held Lombardy, Parma, and Naples, and Navarre was annexed to Spain. The
quarrel might have easily been ended by mutual restitution; yet the Peace of
Cambray, the Treaty of Nice, and the Peace of Crêpy, lasted only while the
combatants were taking breath; and those who would attribute the
extravagances of human folly to supernatural influence might imagine that
the great discord between the orthodox powers had been permitted to give
time for the Reformation to strike its roots into the soil of Europe. But a war
which could be carried on only by loans at sixteen per cent. was necessarily
near its conclusion. The apparent recovery of England to the church revived
hopes which the Peace of Passau and the dissolution of the Council of Trent
had almost extinguished; and, could a reconciliation be effected at last, and
could Philip obtain the disposal of the military strength of England in the
interests of the papacy, it might not even yet be too late to lay the yoke of
orthodoxy on the Germans, and, in a Catholic interpretation of the Parable
of the Supper, "compel them to come in."

Mary, who had heard herself compared to the Virgin, and Pole, who
imagined the Prince of Spain to be the counterpart of the Redeemer of
mankind, indulged their fancy in large expectations. Philip was the
Solomon who was to raise up the temple of the Lord, which the emperor,
who was a man of war, had not been allowed to build: and France, at the
same time, was not unwilling to listen to proposals. The birth of Mary's
child was expected in a few weeks, when England would, as a matter of
course, become more decisively Imperialist, and Henry, whose invasion of
the Netherlands had failed in the previous summer, was ready now to close
the struggle while it could be ended on equal and honourable terms.

A conference was, therefore, agreed upon, in which England was to
mediate. A village in the Calais Pale was selected as the place of assembly,

and Pole, Gardiner, Paget, and Pembroke were chosen to arrange the terms
of a general peace, with the Bishop of Arras, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and
Montmorency. The time pitched upon was that at which, so near as the
queen could judge, she would herself bring into the world the offspring
which was to be the hope of England and mankind; and the great event
should, if possible, precede the first meeting of the plenipotentiaries.

The queen herself commenced her preparations with infinite earnestness,
and, as a preliminary votive offering, she resolved to give back to the
church such of the abbey property as remained in the hands of the crown.
Her debts were now as high as ever. The Flanders correspondence was
repeating the heavy story of loans and bills. Promises to pay were falling
due, and there were no resources to meet them, and the Israelite leeches
were again fastened on the commonwealth.[462] Nevertheless, the sacrifice
should be made; the more difficult it was, the more favourably it would be
received; and, on the 28th of March, she sent for the Lord Treasurer, and
announced her intention. "If he told her that her estate would not bear it, she
must reply," she said, "that she valued the salvation of her soul beyond all
earthly things."[463] As soon as parliament could meet and give its sanction,
she would restore the first-fruits also to the Holy See. She must work for
God as God had worked for her.

About the 20th of April she withdrew to Hampton Court for entire quiet.
The rockers and the nurses were in readiness, and a cradle stood open to
receive the royal infant. Priests and bishops sang Litanies through the
London streets; a procession of ecclesiastics in cloth of gold and tissue
marched round Hampton Court Palace, headed by Philip in person;
Gardiner walked at his side, while Mary gazed from a window.[464] Not
only was the child assuredly coming, but its sex was decided on, and
circulars were drawn and signed both by the king and queen, with blanks
only for the month and day, announcing to ministers of state, to
ambassadors, and to foreign sovereigns, the birth of a prince.[465]

On the 30th, the happy moment was supposed to have arrived; a message
was sent off to London, announcing the commencement of the pains. The
bells were set ringing in all the churches; Te Deum was sung in St. Paul's;
priests wrote sermons; bonfires were piled ready for lighting, and tables

were laid out in the streets.[466] The news crossed the Channel to Antwerp,
and had grown in the transit. The great bell of the cathedral was rung for the
actual birth. The vessels in the river fired salutes. "The regent sent the
English mariners a hundred crowns to drink," and, "they made themselves
in readiness to show some worthy triumph upon the waters."[467]

But the pains passed off without result; and whispers began to be heard,
that there was, perhaps, a mistake of a more considerable kind. Mary,
however, had herself no sort of misgiving. She assured her attendants that
all was well, and that she felt the motion of her child. The physicians
professed to be satisfied, and the priests were kept at work at the Litanies.
Up and down the streets they marched, through city and suburb, park and
square; torches flared along Cheapside at midnight behind the Holy
Sacrament, and five hundred poor men and women from the almshouses
walked two and two, telling their beads in their withered fingers: then all
the boys of all the schools were set in motion, and the ushers and the
masters came after them; clerks, canons, bishops, mayor, aldermen, officers
of guilds.[468] Such marching, such chanting, such praying was never seen
or heard before or since in London streets. A profane person ran one day out
of the crowd, and hung about a priest's neck, where the beads should be, a
string of puddings; but they whipped him, and prayed on. Surely, God
would hear the cry of his people.

In the midst of the suspense the papal chair fell vacant again. The
pontificate of Marcellus lasted three weeks, and Pole a third time offered
himself to the suffrages of the cardinals. The courts were profuse of
compliments as before. Noailles presented him with a note from
Montmorency, containing assurances of the infinite desire of the King of
France for the success of so holy a person.[469] Philip wrote to Rome in his
behalf, and Mary condescended to ask for the support of the French
cardinals.[470] But the fair speeches, as before, were but trifling. The choice
fell on Pole's personal enemy, Cardinal Caraffa, who was French alike in
heart and brain.

The choice of a pope, however, would signify little, if only the child
could be born; but where was the child? The queen put it off strangely. The
conference could be delayed no longer. It opened without the intended

makeweight, and the court of France was less inclined to make concessions
for a peace. The delay began to tell on the bourse at Antwerp. The Fuggers
and the Schertzes drew their purse-strings, and made difficulties in lending
more money to the emperor.[471] The plenipotentiaries had to separate after
a few meetings, having effected nothing, to the especial mortification of
Philip and Mary, who looked to the pacification to enable them to cure
England of its unruly humours. The Duke of Alva (so rumour insisted) was
to bring across the Spanish troops which were in the Low Countries, take
possession of London, and force the parliament into submission.[472] The
English were to be punished, for the infinite insolences in which they had
indulged towards Philip's retinue, by being compelled, whether they liked it
or not, to bestow upon him the crown.[473]

But the peace could not be, nor could the child be born; and the
impression grew daily that the queen had not been pregnant at all. Mary
herself, who had been borne forward to this, the crisis of her fortunes, on a
tide of success, now suddenly found her exulting hopes closing over. From
confidence she fell into anxiety, from anxiety into fear, from fear into
wildness and despondency. She vowed that with the restoration of the
estates, she would rebuild the abbeys at her own cost. In vain. Her women
now understood her condition; she was sick of a mortal disease; but they
durst not tell her; and she whose career had been painted out to her by the
legate, as especial and supernatural, looked only for supernatural causes of
her present state. Throughout May she remained in her apartments waiting
—waiting—in passionate restlessness. With stomach swollen, and features
shrunk and haggard, she would sit upon the floor, with her knees drawn up
to her face, in an agony of doubt; and in mockery of her wretchedness,
letters were again strewed about the place by an invisible agency, telling her
that she was loathed by her people. She imagined they would rise again in
her defence. But if they rose again, it would be to drive her and her husband
from the country.[474]

After the mysterious quickening on the legate's salutation, she could not
doubt that her hopes had been at one time well founded; but for some fault,
some error in herself, God had delayed the fulfilment of his promise. And
what could that crime be? The accursed thing was still in the realm. She had
been raised up, like the judges in Israel, for the extermination of God's

enemies; and she had smitten but a few here and there, when, like the evil
spirits, their name was legion.[475] She had before sent orders round among
the magistrates, to have their eyes upon them. On the 24th of May, when
her distraction was at its height, she wrote a circular to quicken the over-
languid zeal of the bishops.

"Right Reverend Father in God," it ran, "We greet you well; and where of
late we addressed our letters unto the justices of the peace, within every of
the counties within this our realm, whereby, amongst other good
instructions given therein for the good order of the country about, they are
willed to have special regard to such disordered persons as, forgetting their
duty to Almighty God and us, do lean to any erroneous and heretical
opinions; whom, if they cannot by good admonition and fair means reform,
they are willed to deliver unto the ordinary, to be by him charitably
travelled withal, and removed, if it may be, from their naughty opinions; or
else, if they continue obstinate, to be ordered according to the laws
provided in that behalf: understanding now, to our no little marvel, that
divers of the said misordered persons, being, by the justices of the peace,
for their contempt and obstinacy, brought to the ordinary, to be used as is
aforesaid, are either refused to be received at their hands, or, if they be
received, are neither so travelled with as Christian charity requireth, nor yet
proceeded withal according to the order of justice, but are suffered to
continue in their errors, to the dishonour of Almighty God, and dangerous
example of others; like as we find this matter very strange, so have we
thought convenient both to signify this our knowledge, and therewithal also
to admonish you to have in this behalf such regard henceforth unto the
office of a good pastor and bishop, as where any such offenders shall be, by
the said justices of the peace, brought unto you, ye do use your good
wisdom and discretion in procuring to remove them from their errors if it
may be, or else in proceeding against them, if they continue obstinate,
according to the order of the laws, so as, through your good furtherance,
both God's glory may be the better advanced, and the commonwealth more
quietly governed."[476]

Under the fresh impulse of this letter, fifty persons were put to death at
the stake in the three ensuing months,—in the diocese of London, under
Bonner; in the diocese of Rochester, under Maurice Griffin; in the diocese

of Canterbury, where Pole, the archbishop designate, so soon as Cranmer
should be despatched, governed through Harpsfeld, the archdeacon, and
Thornton, the suffragan bishop of Dover. Of these sacrifices, which were
distinguished all of them by a uniformity of quiet heroism in the sufferers,
that of Cardmaker, prebendary of Wells, calls most for notice.

The people, whom the cruelty of the Catholic party was reconverting to
the Reformation with a rapidity like that produced by the gift of tongues on
the day of Pentecost, looked on the martyrs as soldiers are looked at who
are called to accomplish, with the sacrifice of their lives, some great service
for their country. Cardmaker, on his first examination, had turned his back
and flinched. But the consciousness of shame, and the example of others,
gave him back his courage; he was called up again under the queen's
mandate, condemned, and brought out on the 30th of May, to suffer at
Smithfield, with an upholsterer named Warne. The sheriffs produced the
pardons. Warne, without looking at them, undressed at once, and went to
the stake; Cardmaker "remained long talking;" "the people in a marvellous
dump of sadness, thinking he would recant." He turned away at last, and
knelt, and prayed; but he had still his clothes on; "there was no semblance
of burning;" and the crowd continued nervously agitated, till he rose and
threw off his cloak. "Then, seeing this, contrary to their fearful
expectations, as men delivered out of great doubt, they cried out for joy
with so great a shout as hath not been lightly heard a greater, God be
praised; the Lord strengthen thee, Cardmaker. The Lord Jesus receive thy
spirit."[477] Every martyr's trial was a battle; every constant death was a
defeat of the common enemy; and the instinctive consciousness that truth
was asserting itself in suffering, converted the natural emotion of horror
into admiring pride.

Yet, for the great purpose of the court, the burnt-offerings were
ineffectual as the prayers of the priests. The queen was allowed to persuade
herself that she had mistaken her time by two months; and to this hope she
clung herself, so long as the hope could last: but among all other persons
concerned, scarcely one was any longer under a delusion; and the clear-
eyed Renard lost no time in laying the position of affairs before his master.

The marriage of Elizabeth and Philibert had hung fire, from the
invincible unwillingness on the part of Mary to pardon or in any way
recognise her sister;[478] and as long as there was a hope of a child, she had
not perhaps been pressed about it; but it was now absolutely necessary to do
something, and violent measures towards the princess were more
impossible than ever.

"The entire future," wrote Renard to the emperor, on the 27th of June,
"turns on the accouchement of the queen; of which, however, there are no
signs. If all goes well, the state of feeling in the country will improve. If she
is in error, I foresee convulsions and disturbances such as no pen can
describe. The succession to the crown is so unfortunately hampered, that it
must fall to Elizabeth, and with Elizabeth there will be a religious
revolution. The clergy will be put down, the Catholics persecuted, and there
will be such revenge for the present proceedings as the world has never
seen. I know not whether the king's person is safe; and the scandals and
calumnies which the heretics are spreading about the queen are beyond
conception. Some say that she has never been enceinte; some repeat that
there will be a supposititious child, and that there would have been less
delay could a child have been found that would answer the purpose.[479]
The looks of men are grown strange and impenetrable; those in whose
loyalty I had most dependence I have now most reason to doubt. Nothing is
certain, and I am more bewildered than ever at the things which I see going
on around me. There is neither government, nor justice, nor order; nothing
but audacity and malice."[480]

The faint hopes which Renard expressed speedily vanished, and every
one but the queen herself not only knew that she had no child at present, but
that she never could have a child—that her days were numbered, and that if
the Spaniards intended to secure the throne they must obtain it by other
means than the order of inheritance. Could the war be brought to an end,
Mary might live long enough to give her husband an opportunity of
attempting violence; but of peace there was no immediate prospect, and it
remained for the present to make the most of Elizabeth. Setting her
marriage aside, it was doubtful whether the people would permit her longer
confinement after the queen's disappointment; and, willingly or unwillingly,
Mary must be forced to receive her at court again.

The princess was still at Woodstock, where she had remained for a year,
under the harsh surveillance of Sir Henry Bedingfield. Lord William
Howard's visit may have consoled her with the knowledge that she was not
forgotten by the nobility; but her health had suffered from her long
imprisonment, and the first symptom of an approaching change in her
position was the appearance of the queen's physician to take charge of her.

A last effort was made to betray her into an acknowledgment of guilt. "A
secret friend" entreated her to "submit herself to the queen's mercy."
Elizabeth saw the snare. She would not ask for mercy, she said, where she
had committed no offence; if she was guilty, she desired justice, not mercy;
and she knew well she would have found none, could evidence have been
produced against her: but she thanked God she was in no danger of being
proved guilty; she wished she was as safe from secret enemies.

But the plots for despatching her, if they had ever existed, were laid
aside; she was informed that her presence was required at Hampton Court.
The rumour of her intended release spread abroad, and sixty gentlemen,
who had once belonged to her suite, met her on the way at Colebrook, in the
hope that they might return to attendance upon her; but their coming was
premature; she was still treated as a prisoner, and they were ordered off in
the queen's name.

On her arrival at Hampton Court, however, the princess felt that she had
recovered her freedom. She was received by Lord William Howard. The
courtiers hurried to her with their congratulations, and Howard dared and
provoked the resentment of the king and queen by making them kneel and
kiss her hand.[481] Mary could not bring herself at first to endure an
interview. The Bishop of Winchester came to her on the queen's behalf, to
repeat the advice which had been given to her at Woodstock, and to promise
pardon if she would ask for it.

Elizabeth had been resolute when she was alone and friendless, she was
not more yielding now. She repeated that she had committed no offence,
and therefore required no forgiveness; she had rather lie in prison all her life
than confess when there was nothing to be confessed.

The answer was carried to Mary, and the day after the bishop came again.
"The queen marvelled," he said, "that she would so stoutly stand to her
innocence;" if she called herself innocent, she implied that she had been
"unjustly imprisoned;" if she expected her liberty "she must tell another
tale."

But the causes which had compelled the court to send for her, forbade
them equally to persist in an impotent persecution. They had desired only to
tempt her into admissions which they could plead in justification for past or
future severities. They had failed, and they gave way.

A week later, on an evening in the beginning of July, Lady Clarence,
Mary's favourite attendant, brought a message, that the queen was expecting
her sister in her room. The princess was led across the garden in the dusk,
and introduced by a back staircase into the royal apartments. Almost two
years had elapsed since the sisters had last met, when Mary hid the hatred
which was in her heart behind a veil of kindness. There was no
improvement of feeling, but the necessity of circumstances compelled the
form of reconciliation.

Elizabeth dropped on her knees. "God preserve your majesty," she said;
"you will find me as true a subject to your majesty as any; whatever has
been reported of me, you shall not find it otherwise."

"You will not confess," the queen said; "you stand to your truth: I pray
God it may so fall out."

"If it does not," said Elizabeth, "I desire neither favour nor pardon at your
hands."

"Well," Mary bitterly answered, "you persevere in your truth stiffly;
belike you will not confess that you have been wrongly punished?"

"I must not say so, your majesty," Elizabeth replied.

"Belike you will to others?" said the queen.

"No, please your majesty," answered the princess. "I have borne the
burden, and I must bear it. I pray your majesty to have a good opinion of
me, and to think me your true subject, not only from the beginning but
while life lasteth."

The queen did not answer, she muttered only in Spanish, "Sabe Dios,"
"God knows," and Elizabeth withdrew.[482]

It was said that, during the interview, Philip was concealed behind a
curtain, anxious for a sight of the captive damsel whose favour with the
people was such a perplexity to him.

At this time, Elizabeth was beautiful; her haughty features were softened
by misfortune; and as it is certain that Philip, when he left England, gave
special directions for her good treatment, so it is possible that he may have
envied the fortune which he intended for the Prince of Savoy; and the
scheme which he afterwards attempted to execute, of making her his own
wife on the queen's death, may have then suggested itself to him as a
solution of the English difficulty. The magnificent girl, who was already the
idol of the country, must have presented an emphatic contrast with the lean,
childless, haggard, forlorn Mary; and he may easily have allowed his fancy
to play with a pleasant temptation. If it was so, Philip was far too careless of
the queen's feelings to conceal his own. If it was not so, the queen's
haunting consciousness of her unattractiveness must have been aggravated
by the disappointment of her hopes, and she may have tortured herself with
jealousy and suspicion.

At all events, Mary could not overcome her aversion. Elizabeth was set at
liberty, but she was not allowed to remain at the court. She returned to
Ashridge, to be pursued, even there, with petty annoyances. Her first step
when she was again at home was to send for her friend Mrs. Ashley; the
queen instantly committed Mrs. Ashley to the Fleet, and sent three other
officers of her sister's household to the Tower; while a number of gentlemen
suspected of being her adherents, who had remained in London beyond
their usual time of leaving for the country, were ordered imperiously to their
estates.[483]

But neither impatience nor violence could conceal the fatal change which
had passed over Mary's prospects. Not till the end of July could she part
finally from her hopes. Then, at last, the glittering dream was lost for the
waking truth; then at once from the imagination of herself as the virgin
bride who was to bear a child for the recovery of a lost world, she was
precipitated into the poor certainty that she was a blighted and a dying
woman. Sorrow was heaped on sorrow; Philip would stay with her no
longer. His presence was required on the continent, where his father was
about to anticipate the death which he knew to be near, and, after forty
years of battling with the stormy waters, to collect himself for the last great
change in the calm of a monastery in Spain.

It was no new intention. For years the emperor had been in the habit of
snatching intervals of retreat; for years he had made up his mind to
relinquish at some time the labours of life before relinquishing life itself.
The vanities of sovereignty had never any particular charm for Charles V.;
he was not a man who cared "to monarchise and kill with looks," or who
could feel a pang at parting with the bauble of a crown; and when the wise
world cried out in their surprise, and strained their fancies for the cause of
conduct which seemed so strange to them, they forgot that princes who
reign to labour, grow weary like the peasant of the burden of daily toil.

Many influences combined to induce Charles to delay no longer in
putting his resolution in effect.

The Cortes were growing impatient at the prolonged absence both of
himself and Philip, and the presence of the emperor, although in retirement,
would give pleasure to the Spanish people. His health was so shattered, that
each winter had been long expected to be his last; and although he would
not flinch from work as long as he was required at his post, there was
nothing to detain Philip any more in England, unless, or until, the
succession could be placed on another footing. To continue there the
husband of a childless queen, with authority limited to a form, and with no
recognised interest beyond the term of his wife's life, was no becoming
position for the heir of the throne of Spain, of Naples, the Indies, and the
Low Countries.

Philip was therefore now going. He concealed his intention till it was
betrayed by the departure of one Spanish nobleman after another. The queen
became nervous and agitated, and at last he was forced to avow part of the
truth. He told her that his father wanted to see him, but that his absence
would not be extended beyond a fortnight or three weeks; she should go
with him to Dover, and, if she desired, she could wait there for his return.
[484] Her consent was obtained by the mild deceit, and it was considered
afterwards that the journey to Dover might be too much for her, and the
parting might take place at Greenwich.

On the 3rd of August, the king and queen removed for a few days from
Hampton Court to Oatlands; on the way Mary received consolation from a
poor man who met her on crutches, and was cured of his lameness by
looking on her.[485]

On the 26th, the royal party came down the river in their barge, attended
by the legate; they dined at Westminster on their way to Greenwich, and as
rumour had said that Mary was dead, she was carried through the city in an
open litter, with the king and the cardinal at her side. To please Philip, or to
please the people, Elizabeth was invited to the court before the king's
departure; but she was sent by water to prevent a demonstration, while the
archers of the guard who attended on the queen, were in corslet and morion.
[486]

On the 28th, Philip went. Parliament was to sit again in October. It would
then be seen whether anything more could be done about the succession. On
the consent or refusal of the legislature his future measures would depend.
To the queen he left particular instructions, which he afterwards repeated in
writing, to show favour to Elizabeth; and doubting how far he could rely
upon Mary, he gave a similar charge to such of his own suite as he left
behind him.[487] Could he obtain it, he would take the princess's crown for
himself; should he fail, he might marry her; or should this too be
impossible, he would win her gratitude, and support her title against the
dangerous competition of the Queen of Scots and Dauphiness of France.

On these terms the pair who had been brought together with so much
difficulty separated after a little more than a year. The cardinal composed a
passionate prayer for the queen's use during her husband's absence.[488] It is

to be hoped that she was spared the sight of a packet of letters soon after
intercepted by the French, in which her husband and her husband's
countrymen expressed their opinions of the marriage and its consequences.
[489] The truth, however, became known in England, although in a form
under which the queen could turn from it as a calumny.

Before the meeting of parliament, a letter was published, addressed to the
Lords of the Council, by a certain John Bradford.[490] The writer accounted
for his knowledge of the secrets which he had to tell, by saying that he had
lived in the household of one of the Spanish noblemen who were in
attendance on Philip; that he had learnt the language unknown to his master,
and had thus overheard unguarded conversations. He had read letters
addressed to Philip, and letters written by him and by his confidential
friends; and he was able to say, as a thing heard with his own ears, and seen
with his own eyes, that the "Spaniards minded nothing less than the
subversion of the English commonwealth." In fact, he repeated the rumours
of the summer, only more circumstantially, and with fuller details. Under
pretence of improving the fortifications, Philip intended to obtain command
of the principal harbours and ports; he would lay cannon on the land side,
and gradually bring in Spanish troops, the queen playing into his hands; and
as soon as peace could be made with France, he would have the command
of the fleet and the sea, and could do what he pleased.[491]

"I saw," the writer continued, "letters sent from the emperor, wherein was
contained these privities,—that the king should make his excuse to the
queen that he would go to see his father in Flanders, and that immediately
he would return—seeing the good simple queen is so jealous over my son.
(I term it," said Bradford, "as the letter doth.") "We," said the emperor,
"shall make her agree unto all our requests before his return, or else keep
him exercised in our affairs till we may prevail with the council, who,
doubtless, will be won with fair promises and great gifts, politicly placed in
time." "In other letters I have read the cause disputed, that the queen is
bound by the laws of God to endue her husband in all her goods and
possessions, so far as in her lieth; and they think she will do it indeed to the
uttermost of her power. No man can think evil of the queen, though she be
somewhat moved when such things are beaten into her head with
gentlemen; but whether the crown belongs to the queen or the realm, the