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Queen Elizabeth

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Title: Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth

Author: Lucy Aikin

Release date: May 16, 2007 [eBook #21500]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF
THE COURT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH ***

Transcriber's note: A small number of typographical errors found in the
original, printed book have been corrected; neither the language nor the
spelling has been modernized. There are two chapters numbered
thirteen; they have been labeled XIIIa and XIIIb.

Queen Elizabeth
In the dress in which she went to St Pauls, to return thanks for the defeat of
the Spanish Armada.
Engraved by Bond, from the extremely rare print by Crispin de Passe, after
a drawing by Isaac Oliver.

————

MEMOIRS
OF

THE COURT
OF

QUEEN ELIZABETH
By LUCY AIKIN

————
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I. & VOL. II. combined
————
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
——
1818.
PRINTED BY RICHARD AND ARTHUR TAYLOR, SHOE-LANE.

Volume I.

PREFACE.

CHAPTER I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIIIa, XIIIb,

XIV, XV, XVI.

Volume II.

CHAPTER XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV,
XXVI, XXVII.

On The Domestic Architecture of The Reign Of Elizabeth.

INDEX.

PREFACE.

I the literature of our country, however copious, the eye of the curious
n

student may still detect important deficiencies.
We possess, for example, many and excellent histories, embracing every
period of our domestic annals;—biographies, general and particular, which
appear to have placed on record the name of every private individual justly
entitled to such commemoration;—and numerous and extensive collections
of original letters, state-papers and other historical and antiquarian
documents;—whilst our comparative penury is remarkable in royal lives, in
court histories, and especially in that class which forms the glory of French
literature,—memoir.
To supply in some degree this want, as it affects the person and reign of
one of the most illustrious of female and of European sovereigns, is the
intention of the work now offered with much diffidence to the public.
Its plan comprehends a detailed view of the private life of Elizabeth from
the period of her birth; a view of the domestic history of her reign; memoirs
of the principal families of the nobility and biographical anecdotes of the
celebrated characters who composed her court; besides notices of the
manners, opinions and literature of the reign.
Such persons as may have made it their business or their entertainment to
study very much in detail the history of the age of Elizabeth, will doubtless
be aware that in the voluminous collections of Strype, in the edited
Burleigh, Sidney, and Talbot papers, in the Memoirs of Birch, in various
collections of letters, in the chronicles of the times,—so valuable for those
vivid pictures of manners which the pen of a contemporary unconsciously
traces,—in the Annals of Camden, the Progresses of Nichols, and other
large and laborious works which it would be tedious here to enumerate, a
vast repertory existed of curious and interesting facts seldom recurred to for

the composition of books of lighter literature, and possessing with respect
to a great majority of readers the grace of novelty. Of these and similar
works of reference, as well as of a variety of others, treating directly or
indirectly on the biography, the literature, and the manners of the period, a
large collection has been placed under the eyes of the author, partly by the
liberality of her publishers, partly by the kindness of friends.
In availing herself of their contents, she has had to encounter in full force
the difficulties attendant on such a task; those of weighing and comparing
authorities, of reconciling discordant statements, of bringing insulated facts
to bear upon each other, and of forming out of materials irregular in their
nature and abundant almost to excess, a compact and well-proportioned
structure.
How far her abilities and her diligence may have proved themselves
adequate to the undertaking, it remains with a candid public to decide.
Respecting the selection of topics it seems necessary however to remark,
that it has been the constant endeavour of the writer to preserve to her work
the genuine character of Memoirs, by avoiding as much as possible all
encroachments on the peculiar province of history;—that amusement, of a
not illiberal kind, has been consulted at least equally with instruction:—and
that on subjects of graver moment, a correct sketch has alone been
attempted.
By a still more extensive course of reading and research, an additional
store of anecdotes and observations might unquestionably have been
amassed; but it is hoped that of those assembled in the following pages, few
will be found to rest on dubious or inadequate authority; and that a copious
choice of materials, relatively to the intended compass of the work, will
appear to have superseded the temptation to useless digression, or to prolix
and trivial detail.
The orthography of all extracts from the elder writers has been
modernized, and their punctuation rendered more distinct; in other respects
reliance may be placed on their entire fidelity.

MEMOIRS
OF

THE COURT
OF

QUEEN ELIZABETH
Volume I.

CHAPTER I.
1533 TO 1536.
Birth of Elizabeth.—Circumstances attending the marriage of her
parents.—Public entry of Anne Boleyn into London.—Pageants
exhibited.—Baptism of Elizabeth.—Eminent persons present.—
Proposal of marriage between Elizabeth and a French prince.—
Progress of the reformation.—Henry persecutes both parties.—
Death of Catherine of Arragon.—Disgrace of Anne Boleyn.—
Her death.—Confesses an obstacle to her marriage.—
Particulars on this subject.—Elizabeth declared illegitimate.—
Letter of lady Bryan respecting her.—The king marries Jane
Seymour.

O the 7th of September 1533, at the royal palace of Greenwich in Kent,
n

was born, under circumstances as peculiar as her after-life proved eventful
and illustrious, Elizabeth daughter of king Henry VIII. and his queen Anne
Boleyn.
Delays and difficulties equally grievous to the impetuous temper of the
man and the despotic habits of the prince, had for years obstructed Henry in
the execution of his favourite project of repudiating, on the plea of their too
near alliance, a wife who had ceased to find favor in his sight, and
substituting on her throne the youthful beauty who had captivated his
imagination. At length his passion and his impatience had arrived at a pitch
capable of bearing down every obstacle. With that contempt of decorum
which he displayed so remarkably in some former, and many later
transactions of his life, he caused his private marriage with Anne Boleyn to
precede the sentence of divorce which he had resolved that his clergy
should pronounce against Catherine of Arragon; and no sooner had this

judicial ceremony taken place, than the new queen was openly exhibited as
such in the face of the court and the nation.
An unusual ostentation of magnificence appears to have attended the
celebration of these august nuptials. The fondness of the king for pomp and
pageantry was at all times excessive, and on this occasion his love and his
pride would equally conspire to prompt an extraordinary display. Anne, too,
a vain, ambitious, and light-minded woman, was probably greedy of this
kind of homage from her princely lover; and the very consciousness of the
dubious, inauspicious, or disgraceful circumstances attending their union,
might secretly augment the anxiety of the royal pair to dazzle and impose
by the magnificence of their public appearance. Only once before, since the
Norman conquest, had a king of England stooped from his dignity to
elevate a private gentlewoman and a subject to a partnership of his bed and
throne; and the bitter animosities between the queen's relations on one side,
and the princes of the blood and great nobles on the other, which had
agitated the reign of Edward IV., and contributed to bring destruction on the
heads of his helpless orphans, stood as a strong warning against a repetition
of the experiment.
The unblemished reputation and amiable character of Henry's "some-time
wife," had long procured for her the love and respect of the people; her late
misfortunes had engaged their sympathy, and it might be feared that several
unfavorable points of comparison would suggest themselves between the
high-born and high-minded Catherine and her present rival—once her
humble attendant—whose long-known favor with the king, whose open
association with him at Calais, whither she had attended him, whose private
marriage of uncertain date, and already advanced pregnancy, afforded so
much ground for whispered censures.
On the other hand, the personal qualities of the king gave him great power
over popular opinion. The manly beauty of his countenance, the strength
and agility which in the chivalrous exercises of the time rendered him
victorious over all competitors; the splendor with which he surrounded
himself; his bounty; the popular frankness of his manners, all conspired to
render him, at this period of his life, an object of admiration rather than of
dread to his subjects; while the respect entertained for his talents and

learning, and for the conscientious scruples respecting his first marriage
which he felt or feigned, mingled so much of deference in their feelings
towards him, as to check all hasty censures of his conduct. The protestant
party, now considerable by zeal and numbers, foresaw too many happy
results to their cause from the circumstances of his present union, to
scrutinize with severity the motives which had produced it. The nation at
large, justly dreading a disputed succession, with all its long-experienced
evils, in the event of Henry's leaving behind him no offspring but a
daughter whom he had lately set aside on the ground of illegitimacy,
rejoiced in the prospect of a male heir to the crown. The populace of
London, captivated, as usual, by the splendors of a coronation, were also
delighted with the youth, beauty, and affability of the new queen.
The solemn entry therefore of Anne into the city of London was greeted
by the applause of the multitude; and it was probably the genuine voice of
public feeling, which, in saluting her queen of England, wished her, how
much in vain! a long and prosperous life.
The pageants displayed in the streets of London on this joyful occasion,
are described with much minuteness by our chroniclers, and afford ample
indications that the barbarism of taste which permitted an incongruous
mixture of classical mythology with scriptural allusions, was at its height in
the learned reign of our eighth Henry. Helicon and Mount Parnassus
appeared on one side; St. Anne, and Mary the wife of Cleophas with her
children, were represented on the other. Here the three Graces presented the
queen with a golden apple by the hands of their orator Mercury; there the
four cardinal Virtues promised, in set speeches, that they would always be
aiding and comforting to her.
On the Sunday after her public entry, a day not at this period regarded as
improper for the performance of such a ceremonial, Henry caused his queen
to be crowned at Westminster with great solemnity; an honor which he
never thought proper to confer on any of her successors.
In the sex of the child born to them a few months afterwards, the hopes of
the royal pair must doubtless have sustained a severe disappointment: but of
this sentiment nothing was suffered to appear in the treatment of the infant,

whom her father was anxious to mark out as his only legitimate offspring
and undoubted heir to the crown.
She was destined to bear the auspicious name of Elizabeth, in memory of
her grandmother, that heiress of the house of York whose marriage with the
earl of Richmond, then Henry VII., had united the roses, and given lasting
peace to a country so long rent by civil discord. The unfortunate Mary, now
in her sixteenth year, was stripped of the title of princess of Wales, which
she had borne from her childhood, that it might adorn a younger sister; one
too whose birth her interest, her religion, and her filial affection for an
injured mother, alike taught her to regard as base and infamous.
A public and princely christening served still further to attest the
importance attached to this new member of the royal family.
By the king's special command, Cranmer archbishop of Canterbury stood
godfather to the princess; and Shakespeare, by a fiction equally poetical and
courtly, has represented him as breaking forth on this memorable occasion
into an animated vaticination of the glories of the "maiden reign." Happy
was it for the peace of mind of the noble personages there assembled, that
no prophet was empowered at the same time to declare how few of them
should live to share its splendors; how awfully large a proportion of their
number should fall, or behold their nearest connexions falling, untimely
victims of the jealous tyranny of Henry himself, or of the convulsions and
persecutions of the two troubled reigns destined to intervene before those
halcyon days which they were taught to anticipate!
For the purpose of illustrating the truth of this remark, and at the same
time of introducing to the reader the most distinguished personages of
Henry's court, several of whom will afterwards be found exerting different
degrees of influence on the character or fortunes of the illustrious subject of
this work, it may be worth while to enumerate in regular order the
performers in this august ceremonial. The circumstantial Holinshed, to
whom we are indebted for their names and offices, will at the same time
furnish some of those minute particulars which serve to bring the whole
pompous scene before the eye of fancy.

Early in the afternoon, the lord-mayor and corporation of London, who
had been summoned to attend, took boat for Greenwich, where they found
many lords, knights, and gentlemen assembled. The whole way from the
palace to the friery was strown with green rushes, and the walls were hung
with tapestry, as was the Friers' church in which the ceremony was
performed.
A silver font with a crimson canopy was placed in the middle of the
church; and the child being brought into the hall, the long procession set
forward. It began with citizens walking two-and-two, and ended with
barons, bishops, and earls. Then came, bearing the gilt basins, Henry earl of
Essex, the last of the ancient name of Bourchier who bore the title. He was
a splendid nobleman, distinguished in the martial games and gorgeous
pageantries which then amused the court: he also boasted of a royal lineage,
being sprung from Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of Edward III.; and
perhaps he was apprehensive lest this distinction might hereafter become as
fatal to himself as it had lately proved to the unfortunate duke of
Buckingham. But he perished a few years after by a fall from his horse; and
leaving no male issue, the king, to the disgust of this great family, conferred
the title on the low-bred Cromwel, then his favorite minister.
The salt was borne by Henry marquis of Dorset, the unfortunate father of
lady Jane Grey; who, after receiving the royal pardon for his share in the
criminal plot for setting the crown on the head of his daughter, again took
up arms in the rebellion of Wyat, and was brought to expiate this treason on
the scaffold.
William Courtney marquis of Exeter followed with the taper of virgin
wax; a nobleman who had the misfortune to be very nearly allied to the
English throne; his mother being a daughter of Edward IV. He was at this
time in high favor with the king his cousin, who, after setting aside his
daughter Mary, had even declared him heir-apparent, to the prejudice of his
own sisters: but three years after he fell a victim to the jealousy of the king,
on a charge of corresponding with his proscribed kinsman cardinal Pole: his
honors and estates were forfeited; and his son, though still a child, was
detained in close custody.

The chrism was borne by lady Mary Howard, the beautiful daughter of the
duke of Norfolk; who lived not only to behold, but, by the evidence which
she gave on his trial, to assist in the most unmerited condemnation of her
brother, the gallant and accomplished earl of Surry. The king, by a trait of
royal arrogance, selected this lady, descended from our Saxon monarchs
and allied to all the first nobility, for the wife of his base-born son created
duke of Richmond; but it does not appear that the spirit of the Howards was
high enough in this reign to feel the insult as it deserved.
The royal infant, wrapped in a mantle of purple velvet, having a long train
furred with ermine, was carried by one of her godmothers, the dowager-
duchess of Norfolk. Anne Boleyn was this lady's step-grand-daughter: but
in this alliance with royalty she had little cause to exult; still less in the
closer one which was afterwards formed for her by the elevation of her own
grand-daughter Catherine Howard. On discovery of the ill conduct of this
queen, the aged duchess was overwhelmed with disgrace; she was even
declared guilty of misprision of treason, and committed to custody, but was
released by the king after the blood of Catherine and her paramours had
quenched his fury.
The dowager-marchioness of Dorset was the other godmother at the font:
—of the four sons of this lady, three perished on the scaffold; her grand-
daughter lady Jane Grey shared the same fate; and the surviving son died a
prisoner during the reign of Elizabeth, for the offence of distributing a
pamphlet asserting the title of the Suffolk line to the crown.
The marchioness of Exeter was the godmother at the confirmation, who
had not only the affliction to see her husband brought to an untimely end,
and her only son wasting his youth in captivity, but, being herself attainted
of high treason some time afterwards, underwent a long and arbitrary
imprisonment.
On either hand of the duchess of Norfolk walked the dukes of Norfolk and
Suffolk, the only nobles of that rank then existing in England.
Their names occur in conjunction on every public occasion, and in almost
every important transaction, civil and military, of the reign of Henry VIII.,

but the termination of their respective careers was strongly contrasted. The
duke of Suffolk had the extraordinary good fortune never to lose that favor
with his master which he had gained as Charles Brandon, the partner of his
youthful pleasures. What was a still more extraordinary instance of felicity,
his marriage with the king's sister brought to him neither misfortunes nor
perils, and he did not live to witness those which overtook his grand-
daughters. He died in peace, lamented by a sovereign who knew his worth.
The duke of Norfolk, on the contrary, was powerful enough by birth and
connexions to impress Henry with fears for the tranquillity of his son's
reign. The memory of former services was sacrificed to present alarm.
Almost with his last breath he ordered his old and faithful servant to the
scaffold; but even Henry was no longer absolute on his death-bed. For once
he was disobeyed, and Norfolk survived him; but the long years of his
succeeding captivity were poorly compensated by a brief and tardy
restoration to liberty and honors under Mary.
One of the child's train-bearers was the countess of Kent. This was
probably the widow of the second earl of that title and of the name of Grey:
she must therefore have been the daughter of the earl of Pembroke, a
zealous Yorkist who was slain fighting in the cause of Edward IV. Henry
VIII. was doubtless aware that his best hereditary title to the crown was
derived from his mother, and during his reign the Yorkist families enjoyed
at least an equal share of favor with the Lancastrians, whom his father had
almost exclusively countenanced.
Thomas Boleyn earl of Wiltshire, the proud and happy grandfather of the
princely infant, supported the train on one side. It is not true that he
afterwards, in his capacity of a privy councillor, pronounced sentence of
death on his own son and daughter; even Henry was not inhuman enough to
exact this of him; but he lived to witness their cruel and disgraceful end,
and died long before the prosperous days of his illustrious grandchild.
On the other side the train was borne by Edward Stanley third earl of
Derby. This young nobleman had been a ward of Wolsey, and was carefully
educated by that splendid patron of learning in his house and under his own
eye. He proved himself a faithful and loyal subject to four successive

sovereigns; stood unshaken by the tempests of the most turbulent times; and
died full of days in the possession of great riches, high hereditary honors,
and universal esteem, in 1574.
A splendid canopy was supported over the infant by four lords, three of
them destined to disastrous fates. One was her uncle, the elegant,
accomplished, viscount Rochford, whom the impartial suffrage of posterity
has fully acquitted of the odious crime for which he suffered by the
mandate of a jealous tyrant.
Another was lord Hussey; whom a rash rebellion brought to the scaffold a
few years afterwards. The two others were brothers of that illustrious family
of Howard, which furnished in this age alone more subjects for tragedy than
"Thebes or Pelops' line" of old. Lord William, uncle to Catherine Howard,
was arbitrarily adjudged to perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture of goods
for concealing her misconduct; but Henry was pleased soon after to remit
the sentence: he lived to be eminent in the state under the title of lord
Howard of Effingham, and died peacefully in a good old age. Lord Thomas
suffered by the ambition so frequent in his house, of matching with the
blood royal. He formed a secret marriage with the lady Margaret Douglas,
niece to the king; on discovery of which, he was committed to a close
imprisonment, whence he was only released by death.
After the ceremony of baptism had been performed by Stokesly bishop of
London, a solemn benediction was pronounced upon the future queen by
Cranmer, that learned and distinguished prelate, who may indeed be
reproached with some too courtly condescensions to the will of an
imperious master, and what is worse, with several cruel acts of religious
persecution; but whose virtues were many, whose general character was
mild and benevolent, and whose errors and weaknesses were finally
expiated by the flames of martyrdom.
In the return from church, the gifts of the sponsors, consisting of cups and
bowls, some gilded, and others of massy gold, were carried by four persons
of quality: Henry Somerset second earl of Worcester, whose father,
notwithstanding his illegitimacy, had been acknowledged as a kinsman by
Henry VII., and advanced to the peerage; lord Thomas Howard the younger,

a son of the duke of Norfolk who was restored in blood after his father's
attainder, and created lord Howard of Bindon; Thomas Ratcliffe lord
Fitzwalter, afterwards earl of Sussex; and sir John Dudley, son of the
detested associate of Empson, and afterwards the notorious duke of
Northumberland, whose crimes received at length their due recompense in
that ignominious death to which his guilty and extravagant projects had
conducted so many comparatively innocent victims.
We are told, that on the same day and hour which gave birth to the
princess Elizabeth, a son was born to this "bold bad man," who received the
name of Robert, and was known in after-times as earl of Leicester. It was
believed by the superstition of the age, that this coincidence of their
nativities produced a secret and invincible sympathy which secured to
Dudley, during life, the affections of his sovereign lady. It may without
superstition be admitted, that this circumstance, seizing on the romantic
imagination of the princess, might produce a first impression, which
Leicester's personal advantages, his insinuating manners, and consummate
art of feigning, all contributed to render deep and permanent.
The personal history of Elizabeth may truly be said to begin with her
birth; for she had scarcely entered her second year when her marriage—that
never-accomplished project, which for half a century afterwards inspired so
many vain hopes and was the subject of so many fruitless negotiations, was
already proposed as an article of a treaty between France and England.
Henry had caused an act of succession to be passed, by which his divorce
was confirmed, the authority of the pope disclaimed, and the crown settled
on his issue by Anne Boleyn. But, as if half-repenting the boldness of his
measures, he opened a negotiation almost immediately with Francis I., for
the purpose of obtaining a declaration by that king and his nobility in favor
of his present marriage, and the intercession of Francis for the revocation of
the papal censures fulminated against him. And in consideration of these
acts of friendship, he offered to engage the hand of Elizabeth to the duke
d'Angoulême, third son of the French king. But Francis was unable to
prevail upon the new pope to annul the acts of his predecessor; and
probably not wishing to connect himself more closely with a prince already

regarded as a heretic, he suffered the proposal of marriage to fall to the
ground.
The doctrines of Zwingle and of Luther had at this time made
considerable progress among Henry's subjects, and the great work of
reformation was begun in England. Several smaller monasteries had been
suppressed; the pope's supremacy was preached against by public authority;
and the parliament, desirous of widening the breach between the king and
the pontiff, declared the former, head of the English church. After some
hesitation, Henry accepted the office, and wrote a book in defence of his
conduct. The queen was attached, possibly by principle, and certainly by
interest, to the antipapal party, which alone admitted the validity of the
royal divorce, and consequently of her marriage; and she had already
engaged her chaplain Dr. Parker, a learned and zealous reformist, to keep a
watchful eye over the childhood of her daughter, and early to imbue her
mind with the true principles of religious knowledge.
But Henry, whose passions and interests alone, not his theological
convictions, had set him in opposition to the old church establishment, to
the ceremonies and doctrines of which he was even zealously attached,
began to be apprehensive that the whole fabric would be swept away by the
strong tide of popular opinion which was now turned against it, and he
hastened to interpose in its defence. He brought to the stake several persons
who denied the real presence, as a terror to the reformers; whilst at the same
time he showed his resolution to quell the adherents of popery, by causing
bishop Fisher and sir Thomas More to be attainted of treason, for refusing
such part of the oath of succession as implied the invalidity of the king's
first marriage, and thus, in effect, disallowed the authority of the papal
dispensation in virtue of which it had been celebrated.
Thus were opened those dismal scenes of religious persecution and
political cruelty from which the mind of Elizabeth was to receive its early
and indelible impressions.
The year 1536, which proved even more fertile than its predecessor in
melancholy incidents and tragical catastrophes, opened with the death of
Catherine of Arragon; an event equally welcome, in all probability, both to

the sufferer herself, whom tedious years of trouble and mortification must
have rendered weary of a world which had no longer a hope to flatter her;
and to the ungenerous woman who still beheld her, discarded as she was,
with the sentiments of an enemy and a rival. It is impossible to contemplate
the life and character of this royal lady, without feelings of the deepest
commiseration. As a wife, the bitter humiliations which she was doomed to
undergo were entirely unmerited; for not only was her modesty
unquestioned, but her whole conduct towards the king was a perfect model
of conjugal love and duty. As a queen and a mother, her firmness, her
dignity, and her tenderness, deserved a far other recompense than to see
herself degraded, on the infamous plea of incest, from the rank of royalty,
and her daughter, so long heiress to the English throne, branded with
illegitimacy, and cast out alike from the inheritance and the affections of her
father. But the memory of this unhappy princess has been embalmed by the
genius of Shakespeare, in the noble drama of which he has made her the
touching and majestic heroine; and let not the praise of magnanimity be
denied to the daughter of Anne Boleyn, in permitting those wrongs and
those sufferings which were the price of her glory, nay of her very
existence, to be thus impressively offered to the compassion of her people.
Henry was moved to tears on reading the tender and pious letter addressed
to him by the dying hand of Catherine; and he marked by several small but
expressive acts, the respect, or rather the compunction, with which the
recollection of her could not fail to inspire him. Anne Boleyn paid to the
memory of the princess-dowager of Wales—such was the title now given to
Catherine—the unmeaning compliment of putting on yellow mourning; the
color assigned to queens by the fashion of France: but neither humanity nor
discretion restrained her from open demonstrations of the satisfaction
afforded her by the melancholy event.
Short was her unfeeling triumph. She brought into the world a few days
afterwards, a dead son; and this second disappointment of his hopes
completed that disgust to his queen which satiety, and perhaps also a
growing passion for another object, was already beginning to produce in the
mind of the king.

It is traditionally related, that at Jane Seymour's first coming to court, the
queen, espying a jewel hung round her neck, wished to look at it; and struck
with the young lady's reluctance to submit it to her inspection, snatched it
from her with violence, when she found it to contain the king's picture,
presented by himself to the wearer. From this day she dated her own decline
in the affections of her husband, and the ascendancy of her rival. However
this might be, it is certain that the king about this time began to regard the
conduct of his once idolized Anne Boleyn with an altered eye. That easy
gaiety of manner which he had once remarked with delight, as an indication
of the innocence of her heart and the artlessness of her disposition, was now
beheld by him as a culpable levity which offended his pride and alarmed his
jealousy. His impetuous temper, with which "once to suspect was once to be
resolved," disdained to investigate proofs or to fathom motives; a pretext
alone was wanting to his rising fury, and this he was not long in finding.
On May-day, then observed at court as a high festival, solemn justs were
held at Greenwich, before the king and queen, in which viscount Rochford,
the queen's brother, was chief challenger, and Henry Norris principal
defender. In the midst of the entertainment, the king suddenly rose and
quitted the place in anger; but on what particular provocation is not
certainly known. Saunders the Jesuit, the great calumniator of Anne Boleyn,
says that it was on seeing his consort drop her handkerchief, which Norris
picked up and wiped his face with. The queen immediately retired, and the
next day was committed to custody. Her earnest entreaties to be permitted
to see the king were disregarded, and she was sent to the Tower on a charge
of treason and adultery.
Lord Rochford, Norris, one Smeton a musician, and Brereton and another
gentleman of the bed-chamber, were likewise apprehended, and brought to
trial on the accusation of criminal intercourse with the queen. They were all
convicted; but from the few particulars which have come down to us, it
seems to be justly inferred, that the evidence produced against some at least
of these unhappy gentlemen, was slight and inconclusive. Lord Rochford is
universally believed to have fallen a victim to the atrocious perjuries of his
wife, who was very improperly admitted as a witness against him, and
whose infamous conduct was afterwards fully brought to light. No absolute

criminality appears to have been proved against Weston and Brereton; but
Smeton confessed the fact. Norris died much more generously: he protested
that he would rather perish a thousand times than accuse an innocent
person; that he believed the queen to be perfectly guiltless; he, at least,
could accuse her of nothing; and in this declaration he persisted to the last.
His expressions, if truly reported, seem to imply that he might have saved
himself by criminating the queen: but besides the extreme improbability
that the king would have shown or promised any mercy to such a
delinquent, we know in fact that the confession of Smeton did not obtain for
him even a reprieve: it is therefore absurd to represent Norris as having died
in vindication of the honor of the queen; and the favor afterwards shown to
his son by Elizabeth, had probably little connexion with any tenderness for
the memory of her mother, a sentiment which she certainly exhibited in no
other circumstance.
The trial and condemnation of the queen followed. The process was
conducted with that open disregard of the first principles of justice and
equity then universal in all cases of high treason: no counsel were assigned
her, no witnesses confronted with her, and it does not appear that she was
even informed of Smeton's confession: but whether, after all, she died
innocent, is a problem which there now exist no means of solving, and
which it is somewhat foreign from the purpose of this work to discuss.
One part of this subject, however, on account of the intimate relation
which it bears to the history of Elizabeth, and the influence which it may be
presumed to have exercised in the formation of her character, must be
treated somewhat at large.
The common law of England, by an anomaly truly barbarous, denounced,
against females only, who should be found guilty of high treason, the
punishment of burning. By menaces of putting into execution this horrible
sentence, instead of commuting it for decapitation, Anne Boleyn was
induced to acknowledge some legal impediment to her marriage with the
king; and on this confession alone, Cranmer, with his usual subserviency,
gratified his royal master by pronouncing that union null and void, and its
offspring illegitimate.

What this impediment, real or pretended, might be, we only learn from a
public declaration made immediately afterwards by the earl of
Northumberland, stating, that whereas it had been pretended, that a
precontract had subsisted between himself and the late queen, he has
declared upon oath before the lords of the council, and taken the sacrament
upon it, that no such contract had ever passed between them. In explanation
of this protest, the noble historian of Henry VIII.[1] furnishes us with the
following particulars. That the earl of Northumberland, when lord Percy,
had made proposals of marriage to Anne Boleyn, which she had accepted,
being yet a stranger to the passion of the king; that Henry, unable to bear
the idea of losing her, but averse as yet to a declaration of his sentiments,
employed Wolsey to dissuade the father of lord Percy from giving his
consent to their union, in which he succeeded; the earl of Northumberland
probably becoming aware how deeply the personal feelings of the king
were concerned: that lord Percy, however, refused to give up the lady,
alleging in the first instance that he had gone too far to recede with honor;
but was afterwards compelled by his father to form another matrimonial
connexion. It should appear by this statement, that some engagement had in
fact subsisted between Northumberland and Anne; but there is no necessity
for supposing it to have been a contract of that solemn nature which,
according to the law as it then stood, would have rendered null the
subsequent marriage of either party. The protestation of the earl was
confirmed by the most solemn sanctions; which there is no ground for
supposing him capable of violating, especially as on this occasion, so far
from gaining any advantage by it, he was likely to give high offence to the
king. If then, as appears most probable, the confession by which Anne
Boleyn disinherited and illegitimatised her daughter was false; a perjury so
wicked and cowardly must brand her memory with everlasting infamy:—
even should the contrary have been the fact, the transaction does her little
honor; in either case it affords ample justification to that daughter in
leaving, as she did, her remains without a monument and her conduct
without an apology.
The precarious and equivocal condition to which the little Elizabeth was
reduced by the divorce and death of her mother, will be best illustrated by
the following extracts of a letter addressed soon after the event, by lady

Bryan her governess, to lord Cromwel. It may at the same time amuse the
modern reader to remark the minute details on which, in that day, the first
minister of state was expected to bestow his personal attention.
"...My lord, when your lordship was last here, it pleased you to say, that I
should not mistrust the king's grace, nor your lordship. Which word was
more comfort to me than I can write, as God knoweth. And now it
boldeneth me to show you my poor mind. My lord, when my lady Mary's
grace was born, it pleased the king's grace to [appoint] me lady mistress,
and made me a baroness. And so I have been to the children his grace have
had since.
"Now, so it is, my lady Elizabeth is put from that degree she was afore;
and what degree she is at now, I know not but by hearsay. Therefore I know
not how to order her, nor myself, nor none of hers that I have the rule of;
that is, her women and her grooms. Beseeching you to be good lord to my
lady and to all hers; and that she may have some rayment. For she hath
neither gown, nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor no manner of linen, nor
foresmocks, nor kerchiefs, nor sleeves, nor rails, nor body-stitchets, nor
mufflers, nor biggins. All these, her grace's mostake[2], I have driven off as
long as I can, that, by my troth, I cannot drive it no lenger. Beseeching you,
my lord, that you will see that her grace may have that is needful for her, as
my trust is ye will do—that I may know from you by writing how I shall
order myself; and what is the king's grace's pleasure and yours, that I shall
do in every thing.

"My lord, Mr. Shelton saith he is the master of this house: what fashion
that shall be, I cannot tell; for I have not seen it before.—I trust your
lordship will see the house honourably ordered, howsomever it hath been
ordered aforetime.
"My lord, Mr. Shelton would have my lady Elizabeth to dine and sup
every day at the board of estate. Alas! my lord, it is not meet for a child of
her age to keep such rule yet. I promise you, my lord, I dare not take it upon
me to keep her in health and she keep that rule. For there she shall see

divers meats and fruits, and wine: which would be hard for me to restrain
her grace from it. Ye know, my lord, there is no place of correction there.
And she is yet too young to correct greatly. I know well, and she be there, I
shall nother bring her up to the king's grace's honour, nor hers; nor to her
health, nor my poor honesty. Wherefore I show your lordship this my
desire. Beseeching you, my lord, that my lady may have a mess of meat to
her own lodging, with a good dish or two, that is meet for her grace to eat
of.
"God knoweth my lady hath great pain with her great teeth, and they come
very slowly forth: and causeth me to suffer her grace to have her will, more
than I would. I trust to God and her teeth were well graft, to have her grace
after another fashion than she is yet: so as I trust the king's grace shall have
great comfort in her grace. For she is as toward a child, and as gentle of
conditions, as ever I knew any in my life. Jesu preserve her grace! As for a
day or two at a hey time, or whensomever it shall please the king's grace to
have her set abroad, I trust so to endeavour me, that she shall so do, as shall
be to the king's honour and hers; and then after to take her ease again.
"Good my lord, have my lady's grace, and us that be her poor servants in
your remembrance.
"From Hunsdon." (No date of time.)

On the day immediately following the death of the unfortunate Anne
Boleyn, the king was publicly united in marriage to Jane Seymour; and an
act of parliament soon after passed by which the lady Elizabeth was
declared incapable of succeeding to the crown, which was now settled on
the offspring of Henry by his present queen.

CHAPTER II.
1536 TO 1542.
Vague notions of hereditary succession to the English throne.—
Henry's jealousy of the royal family.—Imprisonment of lord T.
Howard and lady M. Douglas.—After-fortunes of this lady.—
Princess Mary reconciled with her father.—Dissolution of
monasteries proceeds.—Insurrections in Lincolnshire and
Yorkshire.—Remarkable trait of the power of the nobles.—
Rebellion of T. Fitzgerald.—Romantic adventures of Gerald
Fitzgerald.—Birth of prince Edward.—Death of the queen.—
Rise of the two Seymours.—Henry's views in their advancement.
—His enmity to cardinal Pole.—Causes of it.—Geffrey Pole
discloses a plot.—Trial and death of lord Montacute, the
marquis of Exeter, sir Edward Nevil, and sir N. Carew.—
Particulars of these persons.—Attainder of the marchioness of
Exeter and countess of Salisbury.—Application of these
circumstances to the history of Elizabeth.—Decline of the
protestant party.—Its causes.—Cromwel proposes the king's
marriage with Anne of Cleves.—Accomplishments of this lady.—
Royal marriage.—Cromwel made earl of Essex.—Anger of the
Bourchier family.—Justs at Westminster.—The king determines
to dissolve his marriage.—Permits the fall of Cromwel.—Is
divorced.—Behaviour of the queen.—Marriage of the king to
Catherine Howard.—Ascendency of the papists.—Execution of
the countess of Salisbury—of lord Leonard Grey.—Discovery of
the queen's ill-conduct.—Attainders passed against her and
several others.

N othing could be more opposite to the strict principles of hereditary
succession than the ideas entertained, even by the first lawyers of the time

of Henry VIII., concerning the manner in which a title to the crown was to
be established and recognised.
When Rich, the king's solicitor, was sent by his master to argue with sir
Thomas More on the lawfulness of acknowledging the royal supremacy; he
inquired in the course of his argument, whether sir Thomas would not own
for king any person whatever,—himself for example,—who should have
been declared so by parliament? He answered, that he would. Rich then
demanded, why he refused to acknowledge a head of the church so
appointed? "Because," replied More, "a parliament can make a king and
depose him, and that every parliament-man may give his consent thereunto,
but a subject cannot be bound so in case of supremacy[3]." Bold as such
doctrine respecting the power of parliaments would now be thought, it
could not well be controverted at a time when examples were still recent of
kings of the line of York or Lancaster alternately elevated or degraded by a
vote of the two houses, and when the father of the reigning sovereign had
occupied the throne in virtue of such a nomination more than by right of
birth.
But the obvious inconveniences and dangers attending the exercise of this
power of choice, had induced the parliaments of Henry VIII. to join with
him in various acts for the regulation of the succession. It was probably
with the concurrence of this body, that in 1532 he had declared his cousin,
the marquis of Exeter, heir to the crown; yet this very act, by which the king
excluded not only his daughter Mary, but his two sisters and their children,
every one of whom had a prior right according to the rules at present
received, must have caused the sovereignty to be regarded rather as elective
in the royal family than properly hereditary—a fatal idea, which converted
every member of that family possessed of wealth, talents, or popularity, into
a formidable rival, if not to the sovereign on the throne, at least to his next
heir, if a woman or a minor, and which may be regarded as the immediate
occasion of those cruel proscriptions which stained with kindred blood the
closing years of the reign of Henry, and have stamped upon him to all
posterity the odious character of a tyrant.
The first sufferer by the suspicions of the king was lord Thomas Howard,
half-brother to the duke of Norfolk, who was attainted of high treason in the

parliament of 1536, for having secretly entered into a contract of marriage
with lady Margaret Douglas, the king's niece, through which alliance he
was accused of aiming at the crown. For this offence he was confined in the
Tower till his death; but on what evidence of traitorous designs, or by what
law, except the arbitrary mandate of the monarch confirmed by a
subservient parliament, it would be difficult to say. That his marriage was
forbidden by no law, is evident from the passing of an act immediately
afterwards, making it penal to marry any female standing in the first degree
of relationship to the king, without his knowledge and consent.
The lady Margaret was daughter to Henry's eldest sister, the queen-
dowager of Scotland, by her second husband the earl of Angus. She was
born in England, whither her mother had been compelled to fly for refuge
by the turbulent state of her son's kingdom, and the ill success of her own
and her husband's struggles for the acquisition of political power. In the
English court the lady Margaret had likewise been educated, and had
formed connexions of friendship; whilst her brother James V. laboured
under the antipathy with which the English then regarded those northern
neighbours, with whom they were involved in almost perpetual hostilities.
It might easily therefore have happened, in case of the king's death without
male heirs, that in spite of the power recently bestowed on him by
parliament of disposing of the crown by will, which it is very uncertain how
he would have employed, a connexion with the potent house of Howard
might have given the title of lady Margaret a preference over that of any
other competitor. Henry was struck with this danger, however distant and
contingent: he caused his niece, as well as her spouse, to be imprisoned; and
though he restored her to liberty in a few months, and the death of Howard,
not long afterwards, set her free from this ill-starred engagement, she
ventured not to form another, till the king himself, at the end of several
years, gave her in marriage to the earl of Lenox; by whom she became the
mother of lord Darnley, and through him the progenitrix of a line of princes
destined to unite another crown to the ancient inheritance of the
Plantagenets and the Tudors.
The princess Mary, after the removal of Anne Boleyn, who had exercised
towards her the utmost insolence and harshness, ventured upon some

overtures towards a reconciliation with her father; but he would accept them
on no other conditions than her adopting his religious creed, acknowledging
his supremacy, denying the authority of the pope, and confessing the
unlawfulness of her mother's marriage. It was long before motives of
expediency, and the persuasion of friends, could wring from Mary a
reluctant assent to these cruel articles: her compliance was rewarded by the
return of her father's affection, but not immediately by her reinstatement in
the order of succession. She saw the child of Anne Boleyn still a
distinguished object of the king's paternal tenderness; the new queen was
likely to give another heir to the crown; and whatever hopes she, with the
catholic party in general, had founded on the disgrace of his late spouse,
became frustrated by succeeding events.
The death of Catherine of Arragon seemed to have removed the principal
obstacles to an agreement between the king and the pope; and the holy
father now deigned to make some advances towards a son whom he hoped
to find disposed to penitence: but they were absolutely rejected by Henry,
who had ceased to dread his spiritual thunders. The parliament and the
convocation showed themselves prepared to adopt, without hesitation, the
numerous changes suggested by the king in the ancient ritual; and
Cromwel, with influence not apparently diminished by the fall of the late
patroness of the protestant party, presided in the latter assembly with the
title of vicegerent, and with powers unlimited.
The suppression of monasteries was now carried on with increasing rigor,
and thousands of their unfortunate inhabitants were mercilessly turned out
to beg or starve. These, dispersing themselves over the country, in which
their former hospitalities had rendered them generally popular, worked
strongly on the passions of the many, already discontented at the imposition
of new taxes, which served to convince them that the king and his courtiers
would be the only gainers by the plunder of the church; and formidable
insurrections were in some counties the result. In Lincolnshire the
commotions were speedily suppressed by the interposition of the earl of
Shrewsbury and other loyal noblemen; but it was necessary to send into
Yorkshire a considerable army under the duke of Norfolk. Through the
dexterous management of this leader, who was judged to favor the cause of

the revolters as much as his duty to his sovereign and a regard to his own
safety would permit, little blood was shed in the field; but much flowed
afterwards on the scaffold, where the lords Darcy and Hussey, sir Thomas
Percy, brother to the earl of Northumberland, and several private gentlemen,
suffered as traitors.
The suppression of these risings strengthened, as usual, the hands of
government, but at the expense of converting into an object of dread, a
monarch who in the earlier and brighter period of his reign had been
regarded with sentiments of admiration and love.
In lord Herbert's narrative of this insurrection, we meet with a passage too
remarkable to be omitted. "But the king, who was informed from divers
parts, but chiefly from Yorkshire, that the people began there also to take
arms, and knowing of what great consequence it might be if the great
persons in those parts, though the rumour were false, should be said to join
with him, had commanded George earl of Shrewsbury, Thomas Manners
earl of Rutland, and George Hastings earl of Huntingdon, to make a
proclamation to the Lincolnshire-men, summoning and commanding them
on their allegiance and peril of their lives to return; which, as it much
disheartened them, so many stole away," &c.
In this potency of the hereditary aristocracy of the country, and
comparative feebleness, on some occasions at least, of the authority of the
most despotic sovereign whom England had yet seen on the throne, we
discern at once the excuse which Henry would make to himself for his
severities against the nobility, and the motive of that extreme popularity of
manners by which Elizabeth aimed at attaching to herself the affections of
the middling and lower orders of her subjects.
Soon after these events, Henry confirmed the new impressions which his
subjects had received of his character, by an act of extraordinary, but not
unprovoked, severity, which involved in destruction one of the most ancient
and powerful houses among the peerage of Ireland, that of Fitzgerald earl of
Kildare. The nobleman who now bore this title had married for his second
wife lady Elizabeth Grey, daughter of the first marquis of Dorset, and first-
cousin to the king by his mother; he had been favored at court, and was at

this time lord deputy of Ireland. But the country being in a very disturbed
state, and the deputy accused of many acts of violence, he had obeyed with
great reluctance a summons to answer for his conduct before the king in
council, leaving his eldest son to exercise his office during his absence. On
his arrival, he was committed to the Tower, and his son, alarmed by the
false report of his having lost his head, broke out immediately into a furious
rebellion. After a temporary success, Thomas Fitzgerald was reduced to
great difficulties: at the same time a promise of pardon was held out to him;
and confiding in it he surrendered himself to lord Leonard Grey, brother to
the countess his step-mother. His five uncles, also implicated in the guilt of
rebellion, were seized by surprise, or deceived into submission. The whole
six were then conveyed to England in the same ship; and all, in spite of the
entreaties and remonstrances of lord Leonard Grey, who considered his own
honor as pledged for the safety of their lives, were hanged at Tyburn.
The aged earl had died in the Tower on receiving news of his son's rash
enterprise; and a posthumous attainder being issued against him, his lands
and goods were forfeited. The king however, in pity to the widow, and as a
slight atonement for so cruel an injustice, permitted one of her daughters to
retain some poor remains of the family plate and valuables; and another of
them, coming to England, appears to have received her education at
Hunsdon palace with the princesses Mary and Elizabeth her relations. Here
she was seen by Henry earl of Surry, whose chaste and elegant muse has
handed her down to posterity as the lovely Geraldine, the object of his
fervent but fruitless devotion. She was married first to sir Anthony Brown,
and afterwards became the wife of the earl of Lincoln, surviving by many
years her noble and unfortunate admirer.
The countess of Kildare, and the younger of her two sons, likewise
remained in England obscure and unmolested; but the merciless rancour of
Henry against the house of Fitzgerald still pursued its destitute and
unoffending heir, who was struggling through a series of adventures the
most perilous and the most romantic.
This boy, named Gerald, then about twelve years old, had been left by his
father at a house in Kildare, under the care and tuition of Leverous a priest
who was his foster-brother. The child was lying ill of the small-pox, when

the news arrived that his brother and uncles had been sent prisoners to
England: but his affectionate guardian, justly apprehensive of greater
danger to his young charge, wrapped him up as carefully as he could, and
conveyed him away with all speed to the house of one of his sisters, where
he remained till he was quite recovered. Thence his tutor removed him
successively into the territories of two or three different Irish chieftains,
who sheltered him for about three quarters of a year, after which he carried
him to his aunt the lady Elenor, at that time widow of a chief named
Maccarty Reagh.
This lady had long been sought in marriage by O'Donnel lord of
Tyrconnel, to whose suit she had been unpropitious: but wrought upon by
the hope of being able to afford effectual protection to her unfortunate
nephew, she now consented to an immediate union; and taking Gerald along
with her to her new home in the county of Donegal, she there hospitably
entertained him for about a year. But the jealous spirit of the implacable
king seemed to know no rest while this devoted youth still breathed the air
of liberty, and he caused a great reward to be offered for his apprehension,
which the base-minded O'Donnel immediately sought to appropriate by
delivering him up. Fortunately the lady Elenor discovered his intentions in
time, and instantly causing her nephew to disguise his person, and storing
him, like a bountiful aunt, with "sevenscore portugueses," she put him
under the charge of Leverous and an old servant of his father's, and shipped
him on board a vessel bound for St. Malo's.
Having thus secured his escape, she loftily expostulated with her husband
on his villainy in plotting to betray her kinsman, whom she had stipulated
that he should protect to the utmost of his power; and she bid him know,
that as the danger of the youth had alone induced her to form any
connection with him, so the assurance of his safety should cause her to
sequester herself for ever from the society of so base and mercenary a
wretch: and hereupon, collecting all that belonged to her, she quitted
O'Donnel and returned to her own country.
Gerald, in the mean time, arrived without accident in Bretagne, and was
favorably received by the governor of that province, when the king of
France, being informed of his situation, gave him a place about the dauphin.

Sir John Wallop however, the English embassador, soon demanded him, in
virtue of a treaty between the two countries for the delivering up of
offenders and proscribed persons; and while the king demurred to the
requisition, Gerald consulted his safety by making a speedy retreat into
Flanders. Thither his steps were dogged by an Irish servant of the
embassador's; but the governor of Valenciennes protected him by
imprisoning this man, till the youth himself generously begged his release;
and he reached the emperor's court at Brussels, without further molestation.
But here also the English embassador demanded him; the emperor however
excused himself from giving up a fugitive whose youth sufficiently attested
his innocence, and sent him privately to the bishop of Liege, with a pension
of a hundred crowns a month. The bishop entertained him very honorably,
placing him in a monastery, and watching carefully over the safety of his
person, till, at the end of half a year, his mother's kinsman, cardinal Pole,
sent for him into Italy.
Before he would admit the young Irishman to his presence, the cardinal
required him to learn Italian; and allowing him an annuity, placed him first
with the bishop of Verona, then with a cardinal, and afterwards with the
duke of Mantua. At the end of a year and a half he invited him to Rome, and
soon becoming attached to him, took him into his house, and for three years
had him instructed under his own eye in all the accomplishments of a
finished gentleman. At the end of this time, when Gerald had nearly
attained the age of nineteen, his generous patron gave him the choice either
of pursuing his studies or of travelling to seek his adventures. The youth
preferred the latter; and repairing to Naples, he fell in with some knights of
Rhodes, whom he accompanied to Malta, and thence to Tripoli, a place at
that time possessed by the order, whence they carried on fierce war against
the "Turks and miscreants," spoiling and sacking their villages and towns,
and taking many prisoners whom they sold to the Christians for slaves. In
these proceedings, the young adventurer took a strenuous and valiant part,
much to his profit; for in less than a year he returned to Rome laden with a
rich booty. "Proud was the cardinal to hear of his prosperous exploits," and
increased his pension to three hundred pounds a year. Shortly after, he
entered into the service of Cosmo duke of Florence, and remained three
years his master of the horse.

The tidings of Henry's death at length put an end to his exile, and he
hastened to London in the company of some foreign embassadors, and still
attended by his faithful guardian Leverous. Appearing at king Edward's
court in a mask, or ball, he had the good fortune to make a deep impression
on the heart of a young lady, daughter to sir Anthony Brown, whom he
married; and through the intercession of her friends was restored to a part of
his inheritance by the young monarch, who also knighted him. In the next
reign, the interest of cardinal Pole procured his reinstatement in all the titles
and honors of his ancestors. He was a faithful and affectionate subject to
queen Elizabeth, in whose reign he turned protestant; was by her greatly
favored, and finally died in peace in 1585.[4]
That ill-directed restlessness which formed so striking a feature in the
character of Henry VIII. had already prompted him to interfere, as we have
seen, on more than one occasion, with the order of succession; and the
dangerous consequences of these capricious acts with respect to the several
branches of the royal family have already been observed. To the people at
large also, his instability on so momentous a point was harassing and
alarming, and they became as much at a loss to conjecture what successor,
as what religion, he would at last bequeath them.
Under such circumstances, great indeed must have been the joy in the
court and in the nation on the occurrence of an event calculated to end all
doubts and remove all difficulties—the birth of a prince of Wales.
This auspicious infant seemed to strangle in his cradle the serpents of civil
discord. Every lip hastened to proffer him its homage; every heart united, or
seemed at least to unite, in the general burst of thankfulness and
congratulation.
The zealous papists formed the party most to be suspected of insincerity in
their professions of satisfaction; but the princess Mary set them an excellent
example of graceful submission to what was inevitable, by soliciting the
office of godmother. Her sister was happily too young to be infected with
court-jealousies, or to behold in a brother an unwelcome intruder, who came
to snatch from her the inheritance of a crown: between Elizabeth and
Edward an attachment truly fraternal sprung up with the first dawnings of

reason; and notwithstanding the fatal blow given to her interests by the act
of settlement extorted from his dying hand, this princess never ceased to
cherish his memory, and to mention him in terms of affectionate regret.
The conjugal felicities of Henry were destined to be of short duration, and
before he could receive the felicitations of his subjects on the birth of his
son, the mother was snatched away by death. The queen died deeply
regretted, not only by her husband, but by the whole court, whom she had
attached by the uncommon sweetness of her disposition. To the princess
Mary her behaviour had been the reverse of that by which her predecessor
had disgraced herself; and the little Elizabeth had received from her marks
of a maternal tenderness. Jane Seymour was accounted a favourer of the
protestant cause; but as she was apparently free from the ambition of
interfering in state affairs, her death had no further political influence than
what resulted from the king's marriage thus becoming once more an object
of speculation and court intrigue. It did not even give a check to the
advancement of her two brothers, destined to act and to suffer so
conspicuously in the fierce contentions of the ensuing minority; for the king
seemed to regard it as a point of policy to elevate those maternal relations
of his son, on whose care he relied to watch over the safety of his person in
case of his own demise, to a dignity and importance which the proudest
nobles of the land might view with respect or fear. Sir Edward Seymour,
who had been created lord Beauchamp the year before, was now made earl
of Hertford; and high places at court and commands in the army attested the
favor of his royal brother-in-law. Thomas Seymour, afterwards lord high-
admiral, attained during this reign no higher dignity than that of
knighthood; but considerable pecuniary grants were bestowed upon him;
and whilst he saw his wealth increase, he was secretly extending his
influence, and feeding his aspiring spirit with fond anticipations of future
greatness.
All now seemed tranquil: but a discerning eye might already have beheld
fresh tempests gathering in the changeful atmosphere of the English court.
The jealousies of the king, become too habitual to be discarded, had in fact
only received a new direction from the birth of his son: his mind was
perpetually haunted with the dread of leaving him, a defenceless minor, in

the hands of contending parties in religion, and of a formidable and factious
nobility; and for the sake of obviating the distant and contingent evils which
he apprehended from this source, he showed himself ready to pour forth
whole rivers of the best blood of England.
The person beyond all comparison most dreaded and detested by Henry at
this juncture was his cousin Reginald Pole, for whom when a youth he had
conceived a warm affection, whose studies he had encouraged by the gift of
a deanery and the hope of further church-preferment, and of whose
ingratitude he always believed himself entitled to complain. It was the long-
contested point of the lawfulness of Henry's marriage with his brother's
widow, which set the kinsmen at variance. Pole had from the first refused to
concur with the university of Paris, in which he was then residing, in its
condemnation of this union: afterwards, alarmed probably at the king's
importunities on the subject, he had obtained the permission then necessary
for leaving England, to which he had returned, and travelled into Italy. Here
he formed friendships with the most eminent defenders of the papal
authority, now incensed to the highest degree against Henry, on account of
his having declared himself head of the English church; and both his
convictions and his passions becoming still more strongly engaged on the
side which he had already espoused, he published a work on the unity of the
church, in which the conduct of his sovereign and benefactor became the
topic of his vehement invective.
The offended king, probably with treacherous intentions, invited Pole to
come to England, and explain to him in person certain difficult passages of
his book: but his kinsman was too wary to trust himself in such hands; and
his refusal to obey this summons, which implied a final renunciation of his
country and all his early prospects, was immediately rewarded by the pope,
through the emperor's concurrence, with a cardinal's hat and the
appointment of legate to Flanders. But alarmed, as well as enraged, at
seeing the man whom he regarded as his bitterest personal enemy placed in
a situation so convenient for carrying on intrigues with the disaffected
papists in England, Henry addressed so strong a remonstrance to the
governess of the Netherlands, as caused her to send the cardinal out of the

country before he had begun to exercise the functions of his legantine
office.
From this time, to maintain any intercourse or correspondence with Pole
was treated by the king as either in itself an act of treason, or at least as
conclusive evidence of traitorous intentions. He believed that the darkest
designs were in agitation against his own government and his son's
succession; and the circumstance of the cardinal's still declining to take any
but deacon's orders, notwithstanding his high dignity in the church,
suggested to him the suspicion that his kinsman aimed at the crown itself,
through a marriage with the princess Mary, of whose legitimacy he had
shown himself so strenuous a champion. What foundation there might be
for such an idea it is difficult to determine.
There is an author who relates that the lady Mary was educated with the
cardinal under his mother, and hints that an early attachment had thus been
formed between them[5]: A statement manifestly inaccurate, since Pole was
sixteen years older than the princess; though it is not improbable that Mary,
during some period of her youth, might be placed under the care of the
countess of Salisbury, and permitted to associate with her son on easy and
affectionate terms. It is well known that after Mary's accession, Charles V.
impeded the journey of Pole into England till her marriage with his son
Philip had been actually solemnized; but this was probably rather from a
persuasion of the inexpediency of the cardinal's sooner opening his
legantine commission in England, than from any fear of his supplanting in
Mary's affections his younger rival, though some have ascribed to the
emperor the latter motive.
When however it is recollected, that in consequence of Henry's having
caused a posthumous judgement of treason to be pronounced against the
papal martyr Becket, his shrine to be destroyed, his bones burned, and his
ashes scattered, the pope had at length, in 1538, fulminated against him the
long-suspended sentence of excommunication, and made a donation of his
kingdom to the king of Scots, and thus impressed the sanction of religion on
any rebellious attempts of his Roman-catholic subjects,—it would be too
much to pronounce the apprehensions of the monarch to have been
altogether chimerical. But his suspicion appears, as usual, to have gone

beyond the truth, and his anger to have availed itself of slight pretexts to
ruin where he feared and hated.
Such was the state of his mind when the treachery or weakness of Geffrey
Pole furnished him with intelligence of a traitorous correspondence carried
on with his brother the cardinal by several persons of distinction attached to
the papal interest, and in which he had himself been a sharer. On his
information, the marquis of Exeter, viscount Montacute, sir Edward Nevil,
and sir Nicholas Carew, were apprehended, tried and found guilty of high
treason. Public opinion was at this time nothing; and notwithstanding the
rank, consequence and popularity of the men whose lives were sacrificed on
this occasion; notwithstanding that secret consciousness of his own ill-will
towards them, which ought to have rendered Henry more than usually
cautious in his proceedings,—not even an attempt was made to render their
guilt clear and notorious to the nation at large; and posterity scarcely even
knows of what designs they were accused; to overt acts it is quite certain
that they had not proceeded.
Henry lord Montacute was obnoxious on more than one account: he was
the brother of cardinal Pole; and as eldest son of Margaret, sole surviving
child of the duke of Clarence and heiress to her brother the earl of Warwick,
he might be regarded as succeeding to those claims on the crown which
under Henry VII. had proved fatal to the last-mentioned unfortunate and ill-
treated nobleman. During the early part of this reign, however, he, in
common with other members of the family of Pole, had received marks of
the friendship of Henry. In 1514, his mother was authorized to assume the
title of countess of Salisbury, and he that of viscount Montacute,
notwithstanding the attainder formerly passed against the great house of
Nevil, from whom these honors were derived. In 1521 lord Montacute had
been indicted for concealing the treasons, real or pretended, of the duke of
Buckingham; but immediately on his acquittal he was restored to the good
graces of his sovereign, and, two years after, attended him on an expedition
to France.
It is probable that lord Montacute was popular; he was at least a partisan
of the old religion, and heir to the vast possessions which his mother
derived from the king-making earl of Warwick her maternal grandfather;

sufficient motives with Henry for now wishing his removal. If the plot in
which he was charged by his perfidious brother with participating, had in
view the elevation of the cardinal to a matrimonial crown by his union with
the princess Mary, which seems to have been insinuated, lord Montacute
must at least stand acquitted of all design of asserting his own title; yet it
may justly be suspected that his character of representative of the house of
Clarence, was by Henry placed foremost in the catalogue of his offences.
A similar remark applies still more forcibly to the marquis of Exeter. Son
of Catherine, youngest daughter of Edward IV., and so lately declared his
heir by Henry himself, it is scarcely credible that any inducement could
have drawn this nobleman into a plot for disturbing the succession in favour
of a claim worse founded than his own; and that the blood which he
inherited was the true object of Henry's apprehensions from him, evidently
appeared to all the world by his causing the son of the unhappy marquis, a
child at this period, to be detained a state prisoner in the Tower during the
remainder of his reign.
Sir Edward Nevil was brother to lord Abergavenny and to the wife of lord
Montacute—a connection likely to bring him into suspicion, and perhaps to
involve him in real guilt; but it must not be forgotten that he was a lineal
descendant of the house of Lancaster by Joan daughter of John of Gaunt.
The only person not of royal extraction who suffered on this occasion was
sir Nicholas Carew, master of the horse, and lately a distinguished favourite
of the king; of whom it is traditionally related, that though accused as an
accomplice in the designs of the other noble delinquents, the real offence
for which he died, was the having retorted, with more spirit than prudence,
some opprobrious language with which his royal master had insulted him as
they were playing at bowls together[6]. The family of Carew was however
allied in blood to that of Courtney, of which the marquis of Exeter was the
head.
But the attempt to extirpate all who under any future circumstances might
be supposed capable of advancing claims formidable to the house of Tudor,
must have appeared to Henry himself a task almost as hopeless as cruel.
Sons and daughters of the Plantagenet princes had in every generation
freely intermarried with the ancient nobles of the land; and as fast as those

were cut off whose connection with the royal blood was nearest and most
recent, the pedigrees of families pointed out others, and others still, whose
relationship grew into nearness by the removal of such as had stood before
them, and presented to the affrighted eyes of their persecutor, a hydra with
still renewed and multiplying heads.
Not content with these inflictions,—sufficiently severe it might be thought
to intimidate the papal faction,—Henry gratified still further his stern
disposition by the attainder of the marchioness of Exeter and the aged
countess of Salisbury. The marchioness he soon after released; but the
countess was still detained prisoner under a sentence of death, which a
parliament, atrocious in its subserviency, had passed upon her without form
of trial, but which the king did not think proper at present to carry into
execution, either because he chose to keep her as a kind of hostage for the
good behaviour of her son the cardinal, or because, tyrant as he had
become, he had not yet been able to divest himself of all reverence or pity
for the hoary head of a female, a kinswoman, and the last who was born to
the name of Plantagenet.
It is melancholy, it is even disgusting, to dwell upon these acts of legalized
atrocity, but let it be allowed that it is important and instructive. They form
unhappily a leading feature of the administration of Henry VIII. during the
latter years of his reign; they exhibit in the most striking point of view the
sentiments and practices of the age; and may assist us to form a juster
estimate of the character and conduct of Elizabeth, whose infant mind was
formed to the contemplation of these domestic tragedies, and whose fame
has often suffered by inconsiderate comparisons which have placed her in
parallel with the enlightened and humanized sovereigns of more modern
days, rather than with the stern and arbitrary Tudors, her barbarous
predecessors.
It is remarkable that the protestant party at the court of Henry, so far from
gaining strength and influence by the severities exercised against the
adherents of cardinal Pole and the ancient religion, was evidently in a
declining state. The feeble efforts of its two leaders Cromwel and Cranmer,
of whom the first was deficient in zeal, the last in courage, now experienced
irresistible counteraction from the influence of Gardiner, whose uncommon

talents for business, joined to his extreme obsequiousness, had rendered
him at once necessary and acceptable to his royal master. The law of the Six
Articles, which forbade under the highest penalties the denial of several
doctrines of the Romish church peculiarly obnoxious to the reformers, was
probably drawn up by this minister. It was enacted in the parliament of
1539: a vast number of persons were soon after imprisoned for
transgressing it; and Cranmer himself was compelled, by the clause which
ordained the celibacy of the clergy, to send away his wife.
Under these circumstances Cromwel began to look on all sides for
support; and recollecting with regret the powerful influence exerted by
Anne Boleyn in favor of the good cause, and even the gentler and more
private aid lent to it by the late queen, he planned a new marriage for his
sovereign, with a lady educated in the very bosom of the protestant
communion. Political considerations favored the design; since a treaty
lately concluded between the emperor and the king of France rendered it
highly expedient that Henry, by way of counterpoise, should strengthen his
alliance with the Smalcaldic league. In short, Cromwel prevailed. Holbein,
whom the king had appointed his painter on the recommendation of sir
Thomas More, and still retained in that capacity, was sent over to take the
portrait of Anne sister of the duke of Cleves; and rashly trusting in the
fidelity of the likeness, Henry soon after solicited her hand in marriage.
"The lady Anne," says a historian, "understood no language but Dutch, so
that all communication of speech between her and our king was intercluded.
Yet our embassador, Nicholas Wotton doctor of law, employed in the
business, hath it, that she could both read and write in her own language,
and sew very well; only for music, he said, it was not the manner of the
country to learn it[7]." It must be confessed that for a princess this list of
accomplishments appears somewhat scanty; and Henry, unfortunately for
the lady Anne, was a great admirer of learning, wit and talents, in the
female sex, and a passionate lover of music, which he well understood.
What was still worse, he piqued himself extremely on his taste in beauty,
and was much more solicitous respecting the personal charms of his
consorts than is usual with sovereigns; and when, on the arrival of his
destined bride in England, he hastened to Rochester to gratify his

impatience by snatching a private view of her, he found that in this capital
article he had been grievously imposed upon. The uncourteous comparison
by which he expressed his dislike of her large and clumsy person is well
known. Bitterly did he lament to Cromwel the hard fortune which had
allotted him so unlovely a partner, and he returned to London very
melancholy. But the evil appeared to be now past remedy; it was contrary to
all policy to affront the German princes by sending back their
countrywoman after matters had gone so far, and Henry magnanimously
resolved to sacrifice his own feelings, once in his life, for the good of his
country. Accordingly, he received the princess with great magnificence and
with every outward demonstration of satisfaction, and was married to her at
Greenwich in January 1540.
Two or three months afterwards, the king, notwithstanding his secret
dissatisfaction, rewarded Cromwel for his pains in concluding this union by
conferring on him the vacant title of earl of Essex;—a fatal gift, which
exasperated to rage the mingled jealousy and disdain which this low-born
and aspiring minister had already provoked from the ancient nobility, by
intruding himself into the order of the garter, and which served to heap
upon his devoted head fresh coals of wrath against the day of retribution
which was fast approaching. The act of transferring this title to a new
family, could in fact be no otherwise regarded by the great house of
Bourchier, which had long enjoyed it, than either as a marked indignity to
itself, or as a fresh result of the general Tudor system of depressing and
discountenancing the blood of the Plantagenets, from which the Bourchiers,
through a daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, were descended. The late earl
had left a married daughter, to whom, according to the customary courtesy
of English sovereigns in similar circumstances, the title ought to have been
continued; and as this lady had no children, the earl of Bath, as head of the
house, felt himself also aggrieved by the alienation of family honors which
he hoped to have seen continued to himself and his posterity.
In honor, probably, of the recent marriage of the king, unusually splendid
justs were opened at Westminster on May-day; in which the challengers
were headed by sir John Dudley, and the defenders by the earl of Surry.
This entertainment was continued for several successive days, during which

the challengers, according to the costly fashion of ancient hospitality, kept
open house at their common charge, and feasted the king and queen, the
members of both houses, and the lord-mayor and aldermen with their wives.
But scenes of pomp and festivity had no power to divert the thoughts of
the king from his domestic grievance,—a wife whom he regarded with
disgust: on the contrary, it is probable that this season of courtly revelry
encreased his disquiet, by giving him opportunities of beholding under the
most attractive circumstances the charms of a youthful beauty whom he was
soon seized with the most violent desire of placing beside him on the throne
which he judged her worthy to adorn.
No considerations of rectitude or of policy could longer restrain the
impetuous monarch from casting off the yoke of a detested marriage: and as
a first step towards emancipation, he determined to permit the ruin of its
original adviser, that unpopular minister, but vigorous and serviceable
instrument of arbitrary power, whom he had hitherto defended with
pertinacity against all attacks.
No sooner was the decline of his favor perceived, and what so quickly
perceived at courts? than the ill-fated Cromwel found himself assailed on
every side. His active agency in the suppression of monasteries had brought
upon him, with the imputation of sacrilege, the hatred of all the papists;—a
certain coldness, or timidity, which he had manifested in the cause of
religious reformation in other respects, and particularly the enactment of the
Six Articles during his administration, had rendered him an object of
suspicion or dislike to the protestants;—in his new and undefined office of
royal vicegerent for the exercise of the supremacy, he had offended the
whole body of the clergy;—and he had just filled up the measure of his
offences against the nobility by procuring a grant of the place of lord high-
steward, long hereditary in the great house of the Veres earls of Oxford. The
only voice raised in his favor was that of Cranmer, who interceded with
Henry in his behalf in a letter eloquent, touching, and even courageous,
times and persons considered. Gardiner and the duke of Norfolk urged on
his accusation; the parliament, with its accustomed subserviency, proceeded
against him by attainder; and having voted him guilty of heresy and treason,
left it in the choice of the king to bring him either to the block or the stake

for whichever he pleased of these offences; neither of which was proved by
evidence, or even supported by reasonable probabilities. But against this
violation in his person of the chartered rights of Englishmen, however
flagrant, the unfortunate earl of Essex had forfeited all right to appeal, since
it was himself who had first advised the same arbitrary mode of proceeding
in the cases of the marchioness of Exeter, of the countess of Salisbury, and
of several persons of inferior rank connected with them; on whom capital
punishment had already been inflicted.
With many private virtues, Essex, like his great master Wolsey, and like
the disgraced ministers of despotic princes in general, perished unpitied;
and the king and the faction of Gardiner and of the Howards seemed
equally to rejoice in the free course opened by his removal to their further
projects. The parliament was immediately ordered to find valid a certain
frivolous pretext of a prior contract, on which its master was pleased to
demand a divorce from Ann of Cleves; and the marriage was unanimously
declared null, without any opportunity afforded to the queen of bringing
evidence in its support.
The fortitude, or rather phlegm, with which her unmerited degradation
was supported by the lady Anne, has in it something at once extraordinary
and amusing. There is indeed a tradition that she fainted on first receiving
the information that her marriage was likely to be set aside; but the shock
once over, she gave to the divorce, without hesitation or visible reluctance,
that assent which was required of her. Taking in good part the pension of
three thousand pounds per annum, and the title of his sister which her ex-
husband was graciously pleased to offer her, she wrote to her brother the
elector to entreat him still to live in amity with the king of England, against
whom she had no ground of complaint; and she continued, till the day of
her death, to make his country her abode. Through the whole affair she gave
no indication of wounded pride; unless her refusal to return in the character
of a discarded and rejected damsel, to the home which she had so lately
quitted in all the pomp and triumph of a royal bride, is to be regarded as
such. But even for this part of her conduct a different motive is with great
plausibility assigned by a writer, who supposes her to have been swayed by
the prudent consideration, that the regular payment of her pension would

better be secured by her remaining under the eyes and within the protection
of the English nation.
A very few weeks after this apparently formidable business had been thus
readily and amicably arranged, Catherine Howard niece to the duke of
Norfolk, and first cousin to Anne Boleyn, was declared queen. This lady,
beautiful, insinuating, and more fondly beloved by the king than any of her
predecessors, was a catholic, and almost all the members of the council who
now possessed office or influence were attached, more or less openly, to the
same communion. In consequence, the penalties of the Six Articles were
enforced with great cruelty against the reformers; but this did not exempt
from punishment such as, offending on the other side, ventured to deny the
royal supremacy; the only difference was, that the former class of culprits
were burned as heretics, the latter hanged as traitors.
The king soon after seized the occasion of a trifling insurrection in
Yorkshire, of which sir John Nevil was the leader, to complete his
vengeance against cardinal Pole, by bringing to a cruel and ignominious
end the days of his venerable and sorrow-stricken mother, who had been
unfortunate enough thus long to survive the ruin of her family. The strange
and shocking scene exhibited on the scaffold by the desperation of this
illustrious and injured lady, is detailed by all our historians: it seems almost
incredible that the surrounding crowd were not urged by an unanimous
impulse of horror and compassion to rush in and rescue from the murderous
hands of the executioner the last miserable representative of such a line of
princes. But the eyes of Henry's subjects were habituated to these scenes of
blood; and they were viewed by some with indifference, and by the rest
with emotions of terror which effectually repressed the generous
movements of a just and manly indignation.
In public causes, to be accused and to suffer death were now the same
thing; and another eminent victim of the policy of the English Tiberius
displayed in a novel and truly portentous manner his utter despair of the
justice of the country and the mercy of his sovereign.
Lord Leonard Grey, late deputy of Ireland, was accused of favouring the
escape of that persecuted child his nephew Gerald Fitzgerald, of

corresponding with cardinal Pole, and of various other offences called
treasonable. Being brought before a jury of knights, "he saved them," says
lord Herbert, "the labour of condemning him, and without more ado
confessed all. Which, whether this lord, who was of great courage, did out
of desperation or guilt, some circumstances make doubtful; and the rather,
that the articles being so many, he neither denied nor extenuated any of
them, though his continual fighting with the king's enemies, where occasion
was, pleaded much on his part. Howsoever, he had his head cut off[8]."
The queen and her party were daily gaining upon the mind of the king;
and Cranmer himself, notwithstanding the high esteem entertained for him
by Henry, had begun to be endangered by their machinations, when an
unexpected discovery put into his hands the means of baffling all their
designs, and producing a total revolution in the face of the court.
It was towards the close of the year 1541 that private information was
conveyed to the primate of such disorders in the conduct of the queen
before her marriage as could not fail to plunge her in infamy and ruin.
Cranmer, if not exceedingly grieved, was at least greatly perplexed by the
incident:—at first sight there appeared to be equal danger in concealing or
discovering circumstances of a nature so delicate, and the archbishop was
timid by nature, and cautious from the experience of a court. At length, all
things well weighed, he judiciously preferred the hazard of making the
communication at once, without reserve, and directly, to the person most
interested; and, forming into a narrative facts which his tongue dared not
utter to the face of a prince whose anger was deadly, he presented it to him
and entreated him to peruse it in secret.
Love and pride conspired to persuade the king that his Catherine was
incapable of having imposed upon him thus grossly, and he at once
pronounced the whole story a malicious fabrication; but the strict inquiry
which he caused to be instituted for the purpose of punishing its authors,
not only established the truth of the accusations already brought, but served
also to throw the strongest suspicions on the conjugal fidelity of the queen.
The agonies of Henry on this occasion were such as in any other husband
would have merited the deepest compassion: with him they were quickly

succeeded by the most violent rage; and his cry for vengeance was, as
usual, echoed with alacrity by a loyal and sympathizing parliament. Party
animosity profited by the occasion and gave additional impulse to their
proceedings. After convicting by attainder the queen and her paramours,
who were soon after put to death, the two houses proceeded also to attaint
her uncle, aunt, grandmother, and about ten other persons, male and female,
accused of being accessary or privy to her disorders before marriage, and of
not revealing them to the king when they became acquainted with his
intention of making her his consort; an offence declared to be misprision of
treason by an ex post facto law. But this was an excess of barbarity of
which Henry himself was ashamed: the infamous lady Rochford was the
only confident who suffered capitally; the rest were released after
imprisonments of longer or shorter duration; yet a reserve of bitterness
appears to have remained stored up in the heart of the king against the
whole race of Howard, which the enemies of that illustrious house well
knew how to cherish and augment against a future day.

CHAPTER III.
1542 TO 1547.
Rout of Solway and death of James V. of Scotland.—Birth of
queen Mary.—Henry projects to marry her to his son.—Offers
the hand of Elizabeth to the earl of Arran.—Earl of Lenox
marries lady M. Douglas.—Marriage of the king to Catherine
Parr.—Her person and acquirements.—Influence of her conduct
on Elizabeth.—Henry joins the emperor against Francis I.—His
campaign in France.—Princess Mary replaced in order of
succession, and Elizabeth also.—Proposals for a marriage
between Elizabeth and Philip of Spain.—The duke of Norfolk
and earl of Hertford heads of the catholic and protestant parties.
Circumstances which give a preponderance to the latter.—
Disgrace of the duke.—Trial of the earl of Surry.—His death and
character.—Sentence against the duke of Norfolk.—Death of
Henry.

I the month of December 1542, shortly after the rout of Solway, in which
n

the English made prisoners the flower of the Scottish nobility, the same
messenger brought to Henry VIII. the tidings that the grief and shame of
this defeat had broken the heart of king James V., and that his queen had
brought into the world a daughter, who had received the name of Mary, and
was now queen of Scotland. Without stopping to deplore the melancholy
fate of a nephew whom he had himself brought to destruction, Henry
instantly formed the project of uniting the whole island under one crown, by
the marriage of this infant sovereign with the prince his son. All the Scottish
prisoners of rank then in London were immediately offered the liberty of
returning to their own country on the condition, to which they acceded with
apparent alacrity, of promoting this union with all their interest; and so
confident was the English monarch in the success of his measures, that

previously to their departure, several of them were carried to the palace of
Enfield, where young Edward then resided, that they might tender homage
to the future husband of their queen.
The regency of Scotland at this critical juncture was claimed by the earl of
Arran, who was generally regarded as next heir to the crown, though his
legitimacy had been disputed; and to this nobleman,—but whether for
himself or his son seems doubtful,—Henry, as a further means of securing
the important object which he had at heart, offered the hand of his daughter
Elizabeth. So early were the concerns and interests blended, of two
princesses whose celebrated rivalry was destined to endure until the life of
one of them had become its sacrifice! So remarkably, too, in this first
transaction was contrasted the high preeminence from which the Scottish
princess was destined to hurl herself by her own misconduct, with the
abasement and comparative insignificance out of which her genius and her
good fortune were to be employed in elevating the future sovereign of
England.
Born in the purple of her hereditary kingdom, the monarchs of France and
England made it an object of eager contention which of them should
succeed in encircling with a second diadem the baby brows of Mary; while
the hand of Elizabeth was tossed as a trivial boon to a Scottish earl of
equivocal birth, despicable abilities, and feeble character. So little too was
even this person flattered by the honor, or aware of the advantages, of such
a connection, that he soon after renounced it by quitting the English for the
French party. Elizabeth in consequence remained unbetrothed, and her
father soon afterwards secured to himself a more strenuous ally in the earl
of Lenox, also of the blood-royal of Scotland, by bestowing upon this
nobleman the hand, not of his daughter, but of his niece the lady Margaret
Douglas.
Undeterred by his late severe disappointment Henry was bent on entering
once more into the marriage state, and his choice now fell on Catherine
Parr, sprung from a knightly family possessed of large estates in
Westmoreland, and widow of lord Latimer, a member of the great house of
Nevil.

A portrait of this lady still in existence, exhibits, with fine and regular
features, a character of intelligence and arch simplicity extremely
captivating. She was indeed a woman of uncommon talent and address; and
her mental accomplishments, besides the honor which they reflect on
herself, inspire us with respect for the enlightened liberality of an age in
which such acquirements could be placed within the ambition and
attainment of a private gentlewoman, born in a remote county, remarkable
even in much later times for a primitive simplicity of manners and domestic
habits. Catherine was both learned herself, and, after her elevation a zealous
patroness of learning and of protestantism, to which she was become a
convert. Nicholas Udal master of Eton was employed by her to translate
Erasmus's paraphrase of the four gospels; and there is extant a Latin letter
of hers to the princess Mary, whose conversion from popery she seems to
have had much at heart, in which she entreats her to permit this work to
appear under her auspices. She also printed some prayers and meditations,
and there was found among her papers, after her death, a piece entitled "The
lamentations of a sinner bewailing her blind life," in which she deplores the
years that she had passed in popish observances, and which was afterwards
published by secretary Cecil.
It is a striking proof of the address of this queen, that she conciliated the
affection of all the three children of the king, letters from each of whom
have been preserved addressed to her after the death of their father.
Elizabeth in particular maintained with her a very intimate and frequent
intercourse; which ended however in a manner reflecting little credit on
either party, as will be more fully explained in its proper place.
The adroitness with which Catherine extricated herself from the snare in
which her own religious zeal, the moroseness of the king, and the enmity of
Gardiner had conspired to entangle her, has often been celebrated. May it
not be conjectured, that such an example, given by one of whom she
entertained a high opinion, might exert no inconsiderable influence on the
opening mind of Elizabeth, whose conduct in the many similar dilemmas to
which it was her lot to be reduced, partook so much of the same character
of politic and cautious equivocation?

Henry discovered by experiment that it would prove a much more difficult
matter than he had apprehended to accomplish, either by force or
persuasion, the marriage of young Edward with the queen of Scots; and
learning that it was principally to the intrigues of Francis I., against whom
he had other causes also of complaint, that he was likely to owe the
disappointment of this favourite scheme, he determined on revenge. With
this design he turned his eyes on the emperor; and finding Charles perfectly
well disposed to forget all ancient animosities in sympathy with his newly-
conceived indignation against the French king, he entered with him into a
strict alliance. War was soon declared against France by the new
confederates; and after a campaign in which little was effected, it was
agreed that Charles and Henry, uniting their efforts, should assail that
kingdom with a force which it was judged incapable of resisting, and
without stopping at inferior objects, march straight to Paris. Accordingly, in
July 1544, preceded by a fine army, and attended by the flower of his
nobility splendidly equipped, Henry took his departure for Calais in a ship
the sails of which were made of cloth of gold.
He arrived in safety, and enjoyed the satisfaction of dazzling with his
magnificence the count de Buren whom the emperor sent with a body of
horse to meet him; quarrelled soon after with that potentate, who found it
his interest to make a separate peace; took the towns of Montreuil and
Boulogne, neither of them of any value to him, and returned.
So foolish and expensive a sally of passion, however characteristic of the
disposition of this monarch, would not merit commemoration in this place,
but for the important influence which it unexpectedly exerted on the fortune
and expectations of Elizabeth through the following train of circumstances.
The emperor, whose long enmity with Henry had taken its rise from what
he justly regarded as the injuries of Catherine of Arragon his aunt, in whose
person the whole royal family of Spain had been insulted, had required of
him as a preliminary to their treaty a formal acknowledgement of the
legitimacy of his daughter Mary. This Henry could not, with any regard to
consistency, grant; but desirous to accede as far as he conveniently could to
the wishes of his new ally, he consented to stipulate, that without any
explanation on this point, his eldest daughter should by act of parliament be

reinstated in the order of succession. At the same time, glad to relent in
behalf of his favorite child, and unwilling perhaps to give the catholic party
the triumph of asserting that he had virtually declared his first marriage
more lawful than his second, he caused a similar privilege to be extended to
Elizabeth, who was thus happily restored to her original station and
prospects, before she had attained sufficient maturity of age to suffer by the
cruel and mortifying degradation to which she had been for several years
subjected.
Henceforth, though the act which declared null the marriage of the king
with Anne Boleyn remained for ever unrepealed, her daughter appears to
have been universally recognised on the footing of a princess of England;
and so completely were the old disputes concerning the divorce of
Catherine consigned to oblivion, that in 1546, when France, Spain and
England had concluded a treaty of peace, proposals passed between the
courts of London and Madrid for the marriage of Elizabeth with Philip
prince of Spain; that very Philip afterwards her brother-in-law and in
adversity her friend and protector, then a second time her suitor, and
afterwards again to the end of his days the most formidable and implacable
of her enemies. On which side, or on what assigned objections, this treaty
of marriage was relinquished, we do not learn; but as the demonstrations of
friendship between Charles and Henry after their French campaign were
full of insincerity, it may perhaps be doubted whether either party was ever
bent in earnest on the completion of this extraordinary union.
The popish and protestant factions which now divided the English court,
had for several years acknowledged as their respective leaders the duke of
Norfolk and the earl of Hertford. To the latter of these, the painful
impression left on Henry's mind by the excesses of Catherine Howard, the
religious sentiments embraced by the present queen, the king's increasing
jealousy of the ancient nobility of the country, and above all the visible
decline of his health, which brought into immediate prospect the accession
of young Edward under the tutelage of his uncle, had now conspired to give
a decided preponderancy. The aged duke, sagacious, politic, and deeply
versed in all the secrets and the arts of courts, saw in a coalition with the
Seymours the only expedient for averting the ruin of his house; and he

proposed to bestow his daughter the duchess of Richmond in marriage on
sir Thomas Seymour, while he exerted all his authority with his son to
prevail upon him to address one of the daughters of the earl of Hertford. But
Surry's scorn of the new nobility of the house of Seymour, and his
animosity against the person of its chief, was not to be overcome by any
plea of expedience or threatening of danger. He could not forget that it was
at the instance of the earl of Hertford that he, with some other nobles and
gentlemen, had suffered the disgrace of imprisonment for eating flesh in
Lent; that when a trifling defeat which he had sustained near Boulogne had
caused him to be removed from the government of that town, it was the earl
of Hertford who ultimately profited by his misfortune, in succeeding to the
command of the army. Other grounds of offence the haughty Surry had also
conceived against him; and choosing rather to fall, than cling for support to
an enemy at once despised and hated, he braved the utmost displeasure of
his father, by an absolute refusal to lend himself to such a scheme of
alliance. Of this circumstance his enemies availed themselves to instil into
the mind of the king a suspicion that the earl of Surry aspired to the hand of
the princess Mary; they also commented with industrious malice on his
bearing the arms of Edward the Confessor, to which he was clearly entitled
in right of his mother, a daughter of the duke of Buckingham, but which his
more cautious father had ceased to quarter after the attainder of that
unfortunate nobleman.
The sick mind of Henry received with eagerness all these suggestions, and
the ruin of the earl was determined[9]. An indictment of high treason was
preferred against him: his proposal of disproving the charge, according to a
mode then legal, by fighting his principal accuser in his shirt, was
overruled; his spirited, strong and eloquent defence was disregarded—a
jury devoted to the crown brought in a verdict of guilty; and in January
1547, at the early age of seven-and-twenty, he underwent the fatal sentence
of the law.
No one during the whole sanguinary tyranny of Henry VIII. fell more
guiltless, or more generally deplored by all whom personal animosity or the
spirit of party had not hardened against sentiments of compassion, or
blinded to the perception of merit. But much of Surry has survived the

cruelty of his fate. His beautiful songs and sonnets, which served as a model
to the most popular poets of the age of Elizabeth, still excite the admiration
of every student attached to the early literature of our country. Amongst
other frivolous charges brought against him on his trial, it was mentioned
that he kept an Italian jester, thought to be a spy, and that he loved to
converse with foreigners and conform his behaviour to them. For his
personal safety, therefore, it was perhaps unfortunate that a portion of his
youth had been passed in a visit to Italy, then the focus of literature and
fount of inspiration; but for his surviving fame, and for the progress of
English poetry, the circumstance was eminently propitious; since it is from
the return of this noble traveller that we are to date not only the introduction
into our language of the Petrarchan sonnet, and with it of a tenderness and
refinement of sentiment unknown to the barbarism of our preceding
versifiers; but what is much more, that of heroic blank verse; a noble
measure, of which the earliest example exists in Surry's spirited and faithful
version of one book of the Æneid.
The exalted rank, the splendid talents, the lofty spirit of this lamented
nobleman seemed to destine him to a station second to none among the
public characters of his time; and if, instead of being cut off by the hand of
violence in the morning of life, he had been permitted to attain a length of
days at all approaching to the fourscore years of his father, it is probable
that the votary of letters would have been lost to us in the statesman or the
soldier. Queen Mary, who sought by her favor and confidence to revive the
almost extinguished energies of his father, and called forth into premature
distinction the aspiring boyhood of his son, would have intrusted to his
vigorous years the highest offices and most weighty affairs of state. Perhaps
even the suspicions of her father might have been verified by the event, and
her own royal hand might itself have become the reward of his virtues and
attachment.
Elizabeth, whose maternal ancestry closely connected her with the house
of Howard, might have sought and found, in her kinsman the earl of Surry,
a counsellor and friend deserving of all her confidence and esteem; and it is
possible that he, with safety and effect, might have placed himself as a
mediator between the queen and that formidable catholic party of which his

misguided son, fatally for himself, aspired to be regarded as the leader, and
was in fact only the instrument. But the career of ambition, ere he had well
entered it, was closed upon him for ever; and it is as an accomplished
knight, a polished lover, and above all as a poet, that the name of Surry now
lives in the annals of his country.
Of the five children who survived to feel the want of his paternal
guidance, one daughter, married to the earl of Westmorland, was honorably
distinguished by talents, erudition, and the patronage of letters; but of the
two sons, the elder was that unfortunate duke of Norfolk who paid on the
scaffold the forfeit of an inconsiderate and guilty enterprise; and the
younger, created earl of Northampton by James I., lived to disgrace his birth
and fine talents by every kind of baseness, and died just in time to escape
punishment as an accomplice in Overbury's murder.
The duke of Norfolk had been declared guilty of high treason on grounds
equally frivolous with his son; but the opportune death of Henry VIII. on
the day that his cruel and unmerited sentence was to have been carried into
execution, saved his life, when his humble submissions and pathetic
supplications for mercy had failed to touch the callous heart of the expiring
despot. The jealousies however, religious and political, of the council of
regency, on which the administration devolved, prompted them to refuse
liberty to the illustrious prisoner after their weakness or their clemency had
granted him his life. During the whole reign of Edward VI. the duke was
detained under close custody in the Tower; his estates were confiscated, his
blood attainted, and for this period the great name of Howard disappears
from the page of English history.

CHAPTER IV.
1547 TO 1549.
Testamentary provisions of Henry VIII.—Exclusion of the Scottish
line.—Discontent of the earl of Arundel.—His character and
intrigues.—Hertford declared protector—becomes duke of
Somerset.—Other titles conferred.—Thomas Seymour made
lord-admiral—marries the queen dowager.—His discontent and
intrigues.—His behaviour to Elizabeth.—Death of the queen.—
Seymour aspires to the hand of Elizabeth—conspires against his
brother—is attainted—put to death.—Particulars of his
intercourse with Elizabeth.—Examinations which she underwent
on this subject.—Traits of her early character.—Verses on
admiral Seymour.—The learning of Elizabeth.—Extracts from
Ascham's Letters respecting her, Jane Grey, and other learned
ladies.—Two of her letters to Edward VI.

T death of Henry VIII., which took place on January 28th 1547, opened
he

a new and busy scene, and affected in several important points the situation
of Elizabeth.
The testament by which the parliament had empowered the king to
regulate the government of the country during his son's minority, and even
to settle the order of succession itself, with as full authority as the
distribution of his private property, was the first object of attention; and its
provisions were found strongly characteristic of the temper and maxims of
its author. He confirmed the act of parliament by which his two daughters
had been rendered capable of inheriting the crown, and appointed to each of
them a pension of three thousand pounds, with a marriage-portion of ten
thousand pounds, but annexed the condition of their marrying with the
consent of such of his executors as should be living. After them, he placed

in order of succession Frances marchioness of Dorset, and Eleanor countess
of Cumberland, daughters of his younger sister the queen-dowager of
France by Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk; and failing the descendants of
these ladies he bequeathed the crown to the next heir. By this disposition he
either totally excluded, or at least removed from their rightful place, his
eldest and still surviving sister the queen-dowager of Scotland, and all her
issue;—a most absurd and dangerous indulgence of his feelings of enmity
against the Scottish line, which might eventually have involved the nation
in all the horrors of a civil war, and from which in fact the whole calamitous
destinies of the house of Suffolk, which the progress of this work will
record, and in some measure also the long misfortunes of the queen of Scots
herself, will be found to draw their origin. Sixteen executors named in the
will were to exercise in common the royal functions till young Edward
should attain the age of eighteen; and to these, twelve others were added as
a council of regency, invested however with no other privilege than that of
giving their opinions when called upon. The selection of the executors and
counsellors was in perfect unison with the policy of the Tudors. The great
officers of state formed of necessity a considerable portion of the former
body, and four of these, lord Wriothesley the chancellor, the earl of Hertford
lord-chamberlain, lord St. John master of the household, and lord Russel
privy-seal, were decorated with the peerage; but with the exception of sir
John Dudley, who had lately acquired by marriage the rank of viscount
Lisle, these were the only titled men of the sixteen. Thus it appeared, that
not a single individual amongst the hereditary nobility of the country
enjoyed in a sufficient degree the favor and confidence of the monarch, to
be associated in a charge which he had not hesitated to confer on persons of
no higher importance than the principal gentlemen of the bed-chamber, the
treasurer of Calais, and the dean of Canterbury.
Even the council reckoned among its members only two peers: one of
them the brother of the queen-dowager, on whom, since the fall of
Cromwel, the title of earl of Essex had at length been conferred in right of
his wife, the heiress of the Bourchiers: the other, the earl of Arundel,
premier earl of England and last of the ancient name of Fitzalan; a
distinguished nobleman, whom vast wealth, elegant tastes acquired in
foreign travel, and a spirit of magnificence, combined to render one of the

principal ornaments of the court, while his political talents and experience
of affairs qualified him to assume a leading station in the cabinet. The
loyalty and prudence of the Fitzalans must have been conspicuous for ages,
since no attainder, during so long a period of greatness, had stained the
honor of the race; and the moderation or subserviency of the present earl
had been shown by his perfect acquiescence in all the measures of Henry,
notwithstanding his private preference of the ancient faith: to crown his
merits, his blood appears to have been unmingled with that of the
Plantagenets. Notwithstanding all this, the king had thought fit to name him
only a counsellor, not an executor. Arundel deeply felt the injury; and
impatience of the insignificance to which he was thus consigned, joined to
his disapprobation of the measures of the regency with respect to religion,
threw him into intrigues which contributed not a little to the turbulence of
this disastrous period.
It was doubtless the intention of Henry, that the religion of the country, at
least during the minority of his son, should be left vibrating on the same
nice balance between protestantism and popery on which it had cost him so
much pains to fix it; and with a view to this object he had originally
composed the regency with a pretty equal distribution of power between the
adherents of the two communions. But the suspicion, or disgust, which
afterwards caused him to erase the name of Gardiner from the list,
destroyed the equipoise, and rendered the scale of reformation decidedly
preponderant. In vain did Wriothesley, a man of vigorous talents and
aspiring mind, struggle with Hertford for the highest place in the
administration; in vain did Tunstal bishop of Durham,—no bigot, but a firm
papist,—check with all the authority that he could venture to exert, the bold
career of innovation on which he beheld Cranmer full of eagerness to enter;
in vain did the catholics invoke to their aid the active interference of
Dudley; he suffered them to imagine that his heart was with them, and that
he watched an opportunity to interpose with effect in their behalf, whilst, in
fact, he was only waiting till the fall of one of the Seymours by the hand of
the other should enable him to crush the survivor, and rise to uncontrolled
authority on the ruins of both.

The first attempt of the protestant party in the regency showed their
intentions; its success proved their strength, and silenced for the present all
opposition. It was proposed, and carried by a majority of the executors, that
the earl of Hertford should be declared protector of the realm, and governor
of the king's person; and the new dictator soon after procured the
ratification of this appointment, which overturned some of the most
important clauses of the late king's will, by causing a patent to be drawn and
sanctioned by the two houses which invested him, during the minority, with
all the prerogatives ever assumed by the most arbitrary of the English
sovereigns, and many more than were ever recognised by the constitution.
As if in compensation for any disrespect shown to the memory of the
deceased monarch by these proceedings, the executors next declared their
intention of fulfilling certain promises made by him in his last illness, and
which death alone had prevented him from carrying into effect. On this
plea, they bestowed upon themselves and their adherents various titles of
honor, and a number of valuable church preferments, now first conferred
upon laymen, the protector himself unblushingly assuming the title of duke
of Somerset, and taking possession of benefices and impropriations to a
vast amount. Viscount Lisle was created earl of Warwick, and Wriothesley
became earl of Southampton;—an empty dignity, which afforded him little
consolation for seeing himself soon after, on pretence of some irregular
proceedings in his office, stripped of the post of chancellor, deprived of his
place amongst the other executors of the king, who now formed a privy
council to the protector, and consigned to obscurity and insignificance for
the short remnant of his days. Sir Thomas Seymour ought to have been
consoled by the share allotted him in this splendid distribution, for the
mortification of having been named a counsellor only, and not an executor.
He was made lord Seymour of Sudley, and soon after, lord high-admiral—
preferments greatly exceeding any expectations which his birth or his
services to the state could properly authorize. But he measured his claims
by his nearness to the king; he compared these inferior dignities with the
state and power usurped by his brother, and his arrogant spirit disdained as
a meanness the thought of resting satisfied or appeased. Circumstances soon
arose which converted this general feeling of discontent in the mind of
Thomas Seymour into a more rancorous spirit of envy and hostility against

his brother, and gradually involved him in a succession of dark intrigues,
which, on account of the embarrassments and dangers in which they
eventually implicated the princess Elizabeth, it will now become necessary
to unravel. The younger Seymour, still in the prime of life, was endowed in
a striking degree with those graces of person and manner which serve to
captivate the female heart, and his ambition had sought in consequence to
avail itself of a splendid marriage.
It is said that the princess Mary herself was at first the object of his hopes
or wishes: but if this were really the case, she must speedily have quelled
his presumption by the lofty sternness of her repulse; for it is impossible to
discover in the history of his life at what particular period he could have
been occupied with such a design.
Immediately after the death of Henry, he found means to revive with such
energy in the bosom of the queen-dowager, an attachment which she had
entertained for him before her marriage with the king, that she consented to
become his wife with a precipitation highly indecorous and reprehensible.
The connexion proved unfortunate on both sides, and its first effect was to
embroil him with his brother.
The protector, of a temper still weaker than his not very vigorous
understanding, had long allowed himself to be governed both in great and
small concerns by his wife, a woman of little principle and of a disposition
in the highest degree violent, imperious, and insolent. Nothing could be
more insupportable to the spirit of this lady, who prided herself on her
descent from Thomas of Woodstock, and now saw her husband governing
the kingdom with all the prerogatives and almost all the splendor of royalty,
than to find herself compelled to yield precedency to the wife of his
younger brother; and unable to submit patiently to a mortification from
which, after all, there was no escape, she could not forbear engaging in
continual disputes on the subject with the queen-dowager. Their husbands
soon were drawn in to take part in this senseless quarrel, and a serious
difference ensued between them. The protector and council soon after
refused to the lord-admiral certain grants of land and valuable jewels which
he claimed as bequests to his wife from the late king, and the, perhaps, real

injury, thus added to the slights of which he before complained, gave fresh
exasperation to the pride and turbulence of his character.
Taking advantage of the protector's absence on that campaign in Scotland
which ended with the victory of Pinkey, he formed partisans among the
discontented nobles, won from his brother the affections of the young king,
and believing every thing ripe for an attack on his usurped authority, he
designed to bring forward in the ensuing parliament a proposal for
separating, according to ancient precedent, the office of guardian of the
king's person from that of protector of the realm, and for conferring upon
himself the former. But he discovered too late that he had greatly
miscalculated his forces; his proposal was not even permitted to come to a
hearing. Having rendered himself further obnoxious to the vengeance of the
administration by menaces thrown out in the rage of disappointment, he
saw himself reduced, in order to escape a committal to the Tower, to make
submissions to his brother. An apparent reconciliation took place; and the
admiral was compelled to change, but not to relinquish, his schemes of
ambition.
The princess Elizabeth had been consigned on the death of her father to
the protection and superintendance of the queen-dowager, with whom, at
one or other of her jointure-houses of Chelsea or Hanworth, she usually
made her abode. By this means it happened, that after the queen's
remarriage she found herself domesticated under the roof of the lord-
admiral; and in this situation she had soon the misfortune to become an
object of his marked attention.
What were, at this particular period, Seymour's designs upon the princess,
is uncertain; but it afterwards appeared from the testimony of eye-
witnesses, that neither respect for her exalted rank, nor a sense of the high
responsibility attached to the character of a guardian, with which
circumstances invested him, had proved sufficient to restrain him from
freedoms of behaviour towards her, which no reasonable allowance for the
comparative grossness of the age can reduce within the limits of propriety
or decorum. We learn that, on some occasions at least, she endeavoured to
repel his presumption by such expedients as her youthful inexperience
suggested; but her governess and attendants, gained over or intimidated,

were guilty of a treacherous or cowardly neglect of duty, and the queen
herself appears to have been very deficient in delicacy and caution till
circumstances arose which suddenly excited her jealousy[10]. A violent scene
then took place between the royal step-mother and step-daughter, which
ended, fortunately for the peace and honor of Elizabeth, in an immediate
and final separation.
There is no ground whatever to credit the popular rumor that the queen,
who died in childbed soon after this affair, was poisoned by the admiral; but
there is sufficient proof that he was a harsh and jealous husband; and he did
not probably at this juncture regard as unpropitious on the whole, an event
which enabled him to aspire to the hand of Elizabeth, though other and
more intricate designs were at the same time hatching in his busy brain, to
which his state of a widower seemed at first to oppose some serious
obstacles.
Lady Jane Grey, eldest daughter of the marchioness of Dorset, who had
been placed immediately after the two princesses in order of succession,
had also resided in the house of the lord-admiral during the lifetime of the
queen-dowager, and he was anxious still to retain in his hands a pledge of
such importance. To the applications of the marquis and marchioness for
her return, he pleaded that the young lady would be as secure under the
superintendance of his mother, whom he had invited to reside in his house,
as formerly under that of the queen, and that a mark of the esteem of friends
whom he so highly valued, would in this season of his affliction be doubly
precious to him. He caused a secret agent to insinuate to the weak marquis,
that if the lady Jane remained under his roof, it might eventually be in his
power to marry her to the young king; and finally, as the most satisfactory
proof of the sincerity of his professions of regard, he advanced to this
illustrious peer the sum of five hundred pounds in ready money, requiring
no other security for its repayment than the person of his fair guest, or
hostage. Such eloquence proved irresistible: lady Jane was suffered to
remain under this very singular and improper protection, and report for
some time vibrated between the sister and the cousin of the king as the real
object of the admiral's matrimonial projects. But in his own mind there
appears to have been no hesitation between them. The residence of lady

Jane in his house was no otherwise of importance to him, than as it
contributed to insure to him the support of her father, and as it enabled him
to counteract a favorite scheme of the protector's, or rather of his duchess's,
for marrying her to their eldest son. With Elizabeth, on the contrary, he
certainly aimed at the closest of all connexions, and he was intent on
improving by every means the impression which his dangerous powers of
insinuation had already made on her inexperienced heart.
Mrs. Ashley, her governess, he had long since secured in his interests; his
next step was to gain one Parry, her cofferer, and through these agents he
proposed to open a direct correspondence with herself. His designs
prospered for some time according to his desires; and though it seems never
to have been exactly known, except to the parties themselves, what degree
of secret intelligence Elizabeth maintained with her suitor; it cannot be
doubted that she betrayed towards him sentiments sufficiently favorable to
render the difficulty of obtaining that consent of the royal executors which
the law required, the principal obstacle, in his own opinion, to the
accomplishment of his wishes. It was one, however, which appeared
absolutely insuperable so long as his brother continued to preside over the
administration with authority not to be resisted; and despair of gaining his
object by fair and peaceful means, soon suggested to the admiral further
measures of a dark and dangerous character.
By the whole order of nobility the protector, who affected the love of the
commons, was envied and hated; but his brother, on the contrary, had
cultivated their friendship with assiduity and success; and he now took
opportunities of emphatically recommending it to his principal adherents,
the marquis of Northampton (late earl of Essex), the marquis of Dorset, the
earl of Rutland, and others, to go into their counties and "make all the
strength" there which they could. He boasted of the command of men which
he derived from his office of high-admiral; provided a large quantity of
arms for his followers; and gained over the master of Bristol mint to take
measures for supplying him, on any sudden emergency, with a large sum of
money. He likewise opened a secret correspondence with the young king,
and endeavoured by many accusations, true or false, to render odious the
government of his brother. But happily those turbulent dispositions and

inordinate desires which prompt men to form plots dangerous to the peace
and welfare of a community, are rarely found to co-exist with the sagacity
and prudence necessary to conduct them to a successful issue; and to this
remark the admiral was not destined to afford an exception. Though he
ought to have been perfectly aware that his late attempt had rendered him
an object of the strongest suspicion to his brother, and that he was
surrounded by his spies, such was the violence and presumption of his
temper, that he could not restrain himself from throwing out vaunts and
menaces which served to put his enemies on the track of the most important
discoveries; and in the midst of vain schemes and flattering anticipations,
he was surprised on the sudden by a warrant for his committal to the Tower.
His principal agents were also seized, and compelled to give evidence
before the council. Still the protector seemed reluctant to proceed to
extremities against his brother; but his own impetuous temper and the ill
offices of the earl of Warwick conspired to urge on his fate.
Far from submitting himself as before to the indulgence of the protector,
and seeking to disarm his indignation by promises and entreaties, Seymour
now stood, as it were, at bay, and boldly demanded a fair and equal trial,—
the birthright of Englishmen. But this was a boon which it was esteemed on
several accounts inexpedient, if not dangerous, to grant. No overt act of
treason could be proved against him: circumstances might come out which
would compromise the young king himself, whom a strong dislike of the
restraint in which he was held by his elder uncle had thrown pretty
decidedly into the party of the younger. The name of the lady Elizabeth was
implicated in the transaction further than it was delicate to declare. An
acquittal, which the far-extended influence of the lord-admiral over all
classes of men rendered by no means impossible, would probably be the
ruin of the protector;—and in the end it was decided to proceed against him
by the arbitrary and odious method of attainder.
Several of those peers, on whose support he had placed the firmest
reliance, rose voluntarily in their places, and betrayed the designs which he
had confided to them. The depositions before the council were declared
sufficient ground for his condemnation; and in spite of the opposition of
some spirited and upright members of the house of commons, a sentence

was pronounced, in obedience to which, in March 1549, he was conducted
to the scaffold.
The timely removal of this bad and dangerous man, however illegal and
unwarrantable the means by which it was accomplished, deserves to be
regarded as the first of those signal escapes with which the life of Elizabeth
so remarkably abounds. Her attachment for Seymour, certainly the earliest,
was perhaps also the strongest, impression of the tender kind which her
heart was destined to receive; and though there may be a probability that in
this, as in subsequent instances, where her inclinations seemed most to
favor the wishes of her suitors, her characteristic caution would have
interfered to withhold her from an irrevocable engagement, it might not
much longer have been in her power to recede with honor, or even, if the
designs of Seymour had prospered, with safety.
The original pieces relative to this affair have fortunately been preserved,
and furnish some very remarkable traits of the early character of Elizabeth,
and of the behaviour of those about her.
The confessions of Mrs. Ashley and of Parry before the privy-council,
contain all that is known of the conduct of the admiral towards their lady
during the lifetime of the queen. They seem to cast upon Mrs. Ashley the
double imputation of having suffered such behaviour to pass before her
eyes as she ought not to have endured for a moment, and of having
needlessly disclosed to Parry particulars respecting it which reflected the
utmost disgrace both on herself, the admiral, and her pupil. Yet we know
that Elizabeth, so far from resenting any thing that Mrs. Ashley had either
done or confessed, continued to love and favor her in the highest degree,
and after her accession promoted her husband to a considerable office:—a
circumstance which affords ground for suspicion that some important
secrets were in her possession respecting later transactions between the
princess and Seymour which she had faithfully kept. It should also be
observed in palliation of the liberties which she accused the admiral of
allowing to himself, and the princess of enduring, that the period of
Elizabeth's life to which these particulars relate was only her fourteenth
year.

We are told that she refused permission to the admiral to visit her after he
became a widower, on account of the general report that she was likely to
become his wife; and not the slightest trace was at this time found of any
correspondence between them, though Harrington afterwards underwent an
imprisonment for having delivered to her a letter from the admiral. Yet it is
stated that the partiality of the young princess betrayed itself by many
involuntary tokens to those around her, who were thus encouraged to
entertain her with accounts of the admiral's attachment, and to inquire
whether, if the consent of the council could be obtained, she would consent
to admit his addresses. The admiral is represented to have proceeded with
caution equal to her own. Anxious to ascertain her sentiments, earnestly
desirous to accomplish so splendid an union, but fully sensible of the
inutility as well as danger of a clandestine connexion, he may be thought
rather to have regarded her hand as the recompense which awaited the
success of all his other plans of ambition, than as the means of obtaining
that success; and it seemed to have been only by distant hints through the
agents whom he trusted, that he had ventured as yet to intimate to her his
views and wishes; but it is probable that much of the truth was by these
agents suppressed.
The protector, rather, as it seems, with the desire of criminating his brother
than of clearing the princess, sent sir Robert Tyrwhitt to her residence at
Hatfield, empowered to examine her on the whole matter; and his letters to
his employer inform us of many particulars. When, by the base expedient of
a counterfeit letter, he had brought her to believe that both Mrs. Ashley and
Parry were committed to the Tower, "her grace was," as he expresses it,
"marvellously abashed, and did weep very tenderly a long time, demanding
whether they had confessed any thing or not." Soon after, sending for him,
she related several circumstances which she said she had forgotten to
mention when the master of the household and master Denny came from
the protector to examine her. "After all this," adds he, "I did require her to
consider her honor, and the peril that might ensue, for she was but a subject;
and I further declared what a woman Mrs. Ashley was, with a long
circumstance, saying that if she would open all things herself, that all the
evil and shame should be ascribed to them, and her youth considered both
with the king's majesty, your grace, and the whole council. But in no way

she will not confess any practice by Mrs. Ashley or the cofferer concerning
my lord-admiral; and yet I do see it in her face that she is guilty, and do
perceive as yet that she will abide the storms or she accuse Mrs. Ashley.
"Upon sudden news that my lord great-master and master Denny was
arrived at the gate, the cofferer went hastily to his chamber, and said to my
lady his wife, 'I would I had never been born, for I am undone,' and wrung
his hands, and cast away his chain from his neck, and his rings from his
fingers. This is confessed by his own servant, and there is divers witnesses
of the same."
The following day Tyrwhitt writes, that all he has yet gotten from the
princess was by gentle persuasion, whereby he began to grow with her in
credit, "for I do assure your grace she hath a good wit, and nothing is gotten
off her but by great policy."
A few days after, he expresses to the protector his opinion that there had
been some secret promise between the princess, Mrs. Ashley, and the
cofferer, never to confess till death; "and if it be so," he observes, "it will
never be gotten of her but either by the king's majesty or else by your
grace." On another occasion he confirms this idea by stating that he had
tried her with false intelligence of Parry's having confessed, on which she
called him "false wretch," and said that it was a great matter for him to
make such a promise and break it. He notices the exact agreement between
the princess and the other two in all their statements, but represents it as a
proof that "they had set the knot before." It appears on the whole, that sir
Robert with all his pains was not able to elicit a single fact of decisive
importance; but probably there was somewhat more in the matter than we
find acknowledged in a letter from Elizabeth herself to the protector. She
here states, that she did indeed send her cofferer to speak with the lord-
admiral, but on no other business than to recommend to him one of her
chaplains, and to request him to use his interest that she might have Durham
Place for her town house; that Parry on his return informed her, that the
admiral said she could not have Durham Place, which was wanted for a
mint, but offered her his own house for the time of her being in London;
and that Parry then inquired of her, whether, if the council would consent to
her marrying the admiral, she would herself be willing? That she refused to

answer this question, requiring to know who bade him ask it. He said, No
one; but from the admiral's inquiries what she spent in her house, and
whether she had gotten her patents for certain lands signed, and other
questions of a similar nature, he thought "that he was given that way rather
than otherwise." She explicitly denies that her governess ever advised her to
marry the admiral without the consent of the council; but relates with great
apparent ingenuousness, the hints which Mrs. Ashley had thrown out of his
attachment to her, and the artful attempts which she had made to discover
how her pupil stood affected towards such a connexion.
The letter concludes with the following wise and spirited assertion of
herself. "Master Tyrwhitt and others have told me, that there goeth rumours
abroad which be greatly both against my honor and honesty, (which above
all things I esteem) which be these; that I am in the Tower, and with child
by my lord admiral. My lord, these are shameful slanders, for the which,
besides the desire I have to see the king's majesty, I shall most humbly
desire your lordship that I may come to the court after your first
determination, that I may show myself there as I am."
That the cofferer had repeated his visits to the admiral oftener than was at
first acknowledged either by his lady or himself, a confession afterwards
addressed by Elizabeth to the protector seems to show; but even with this
confession Tyrwhitt declares himself unsatisfied.
Parry, in that part of his confession where he relates what passed between
himself and the lord-admiral when he waited upon him by his lady's
command, takes notice of the earnest manner in which the admiral had
urged her endeavouring to procure, by way of exchange, certain crown
lands which had been the queen's, and seem to have been adjacent to his
own, from which, he says, he inferred, that he wanted to have both them
and his lady for himself. He adds, that the admiral said he wished the
princess to go to the duchess of Somerset, and by her means make suit to
the protector for the lands, and for a town house, and "to entertain her grace
for her furtherance." That when he repeated this to her, Elizabeth would not
at first believe that he had said such words, or could wish her so to do; but
on his declaring that it was true, "she seemed to be angry that she should be

driven to make such suits, and said, 'In faith I will not come there, nor begin
to flatter now.'"
Her spirit broke out, according to Tyrwhitt, with still greater vehemence,
on the removal of Mrs. Ashley, whom lady Tyrwhitt succeeded in her
office:—the following is the account which he gives of her behaviour.
"Pleaseth it your grace to be advertised, that after my wife's repair hither,
she declared to the lady Elizabeth's grace, that she was called before your
grace and the council and had a rebuke, that she had not taken upon her the
office to see her well governed, in the lieu of Mrs. Ashley. Her answer was,
that Mrs. Ashley was her mistress, and that she had not so demeaned herself
that the council should now need to put any mo mistresses unto her.
Whereunto my wife answered, seeing she did allow Mrs. Ashley to be her
mistress, she need not to be ashamed to have any honest woman to be in
that place. She took the matter so heavily that she wept all that night and
lowered all the next day, till she received your letter; and then she sent for
me and asked me whether she was best to write to you again or not: I said,
if she would make answer that she would follow the effect of your letter, I
thought it well done that she should write; but in the end of the matter I
perceived that she was very loth to have a governor; and to avoid the same,
said the world would note her to be a great offender, having so hastily a
governor appointed her. And all is no more, she fully hopes to recover her
old mistress again. The love she yet beareth her is to be wondered at. I told
her, if she would consider her honor and the sequel thereof, she would,
considering her years, make suit to your grace to have one, rather than to
make delay to be without one one hour. She cannot digest such advice in no
way; but if I should say my phantasy, it were more meet she should have
two than one. She would in any wise write to your grace, wherein I offered
her my advice, which she would in no wise follow, but write her own
phantasy. She beginneth now a little to droop, by reason she heareth that my
lord-admiral's houses be dispersed. And my wife telleth me now, that she
cannot hear him discommended but she is ready to make answer therein;
and so she hath not been accustomed to do, unless Mrs. Ashley were
touched, whereunto she was very ready to make answer vehemently." &c.[11]

Parry had probably the same merit of fidelity as Mrs. Ashley; for though
Tyrwhitt says he was found faulty in his accounts, he was not only
continued at this time by his mistress in his office of cofferer, but raised
afterwards to that of comptroller of the royal household, which he held till
his death.
A gentleman of the name of Harrington, then in the admiral's service, who
was much examined respecting his master's intercourse with the princess,
and revealed nothing, was subsequently taken by her into her own
household and highly favored; and so certain did this gentleman, who was a
man of parts, account himself of her tenderness for the memory of a lover
snatched from her by the hand of violence alone, that he ventured, several
years after her accession to the throne, to present her with a portrait of him,
under which was inscribed the following sonnet.
"Of person rare, strong limbs and manly shape,
By nature framed to serve on sea or land;
In friendship firm in good state or ill hap,
In peace head-wise, in war, skill great, bold hand.
On horse or foot, in peril or in play,
None could excel, though many did essay.
A subject true to king, a servant great,
Friend to God's truth, and foe to Rome's deceit.
Sumptuous abroad for honor of the land,
Temp'rate at home, yet kept great state with stay,
And noble house that fed more mouths with meat
Than some advanced on higher steps to stand;
Yet against nature, reason, and just laws,
His blood was spilt, guiltless, without just cause."
The fall of Seymour, and the disgrace and danger in which she had herself
been involved, afforded to Elizabeth a severe but useful lesson; and the
almost total silence of history respecting her during the remainder of her
brother's reign affords satisfactory indication of the extreme caution with
which she now conducted herself.

This silence, however, is agreeably supplied by documents of a more
private nature, which inform us of her studies, her acquirements, the
disposition of her time, and the bent of her youthful mind.
The Latin letters of her learned preceptor Roger Ascham abound with
anecdotes of a pupil in whose proficiency he justly gloried; and the
particulars interspersed respecting other females of high rank, also
distinguished by the cultivation of classical literature, enhance the interest
of the picture, by affording objects of comparison to the principal figure,
and illustrating the taste, almost the rage, for learning which pervaded the
court of Edward VI.
Writing in 1550 to his friend John Sturmius, the worthy and erudite rector
of the protestant university of Strasburgh, Ascham has the following
passages.

"Never was the nobility of England more lettered than at present. Our
illustrious king Edward in talent, industry, perseverance, and erudition,
surpasses both his own years and the belief of men.... I doubt not that
France will also yield the just praise of learning to the duke of Suffolk[12]
and the rest of that band of noble youths educated with the king in Greek
and Latin literature, who depart for that country on this very day.
"Numberless honorable ladies of the present time surpass the daughters of
sir Thomas More in every kind of learning. But amongst them all, my
illustrious mistress the lady Elizabeth shines like a star, excelling them
more by the splendor of her virtues and her learning, than by the glory of
her royal birth. In the variety of her commendable qualities, I am less
perplexed to find matter for the highest panegyric than to circumscribe that
panegyric within just bounds. Yet I shall mention nothing respecting her but
what has come under my own observation.
"For two years she pursued the study of Greek and Latin under my tuition;
but the foundations of her knowledge in both languages were laid by the
diligent instruction of William Grindal, my late beloved friend and seven
years my pupil in classical learning at Cambridge. From this university he

was summoned by John Cheke to court, where he soon after received the
appointment of tutor to this lady. After some years, when through her native
genius, aided by the efforts of so excellent a master, she had made a great
progress in learning, and Grindal, by his merit and the favor of his mistress,
might have aspired to high dignities, he was snatched away by a sudden
illness, leaving a greater miss of himself in the court, than I remember any
other to have done these many years.
"I was appointed to succeed him in his office; and the work which he had
so happily begun, without my assistance indeed, but not without some
counsels of mine, I diligently labored to complete. Now, however, released
from the throng of a court, and restored to the felicity of my former learned
leisure, I enjoy, through the bounty of the king, an honorable appointment
in this university.
"The lady Elizabeth has accomplished her sixteenth year; and so much
solidity of understanding, such courtesy united with dignity, have never
been observed at so early an age. She has the most ardent love of true
religion and of the best kind of literature. The constitution of her mind is
exempt from female weakness, and she is endued with a masculine power
of application. No apprehension can be quicker than her's, no memory more
retentive. French and Italian she speaks like English; Latin, with fluency,
propriety, and judgement; she also spoke Greek with me, frequently,
willingly, and moderately well. Nothing can be more elegant than her
handwriting, whether in the Greek or Roman character. In music she is very
skilful, but does not greatly delight. With respect to personal decoration, she
greatly prefers a simple elegance to show and splendor, so despising 'the
outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold,' that in the
whole manner of her life she rather resembles Hippolyta than Phædra.
"She read with me almost the whole of Cicero, and a great part of Livy:
from these two authors, indeed, her knowledge of the Latin language has
been almost exclusively derived. The beginning of the day was always
devoted by her to the New Testament in Greek, after which she read select
orations of Isocrates and the tragedies of Sophocles, which I judged best
adapted to supply her tongue with the purest diction, her mind with the
most excellent precepts, and her exalted station with a defence against the

utmost power of fortune. For her religious instruction, she drew first from
the fountains of Scripture, and afterwards from St. Cyprian, the 'Common
places' of Melancthon, and similar works which convey pure doctrine in
elegant language. In every kind of writing she easily detected any ill-
adapted or far-fetched expression. She could not bear those feeble imitators
of Erasmus who bind the Latin language in the fetters of miserable
proverbs; on the other hand, she approved a style chaste in its propriety, and
beautiful by perspicuity, and she greatly admired metaphors, when not too
violent, and antitheses when just, and happily opposed. By a diligent
attention to these particulars, her ears became so practised and so nice, that
there was nothing in Greek, Latin, or English, prose or verse, which,
according to its merits or defects, she did not either reject with disgust, or
receive with the highest delight.... Had I more leisure, I would speak to you
at greater length of the king, of the lady Elizabeth, and of the daughters of
the duke of Somerset, whose minds have also been formed by the best
literary instruction. But there are two English ladies whom I cannot omit to
mention; nor would I have you, my Sturmius, omit them, if you meditate
any celebration of your English friends, than which nothing could be more
agreeable to me. One is Jane Grey[13], the other is Mildred Cecil, who
understands and speaks Greek like English, so that it may be doubted
whether she is most happy in the possession of this surpassing degree of
knowledge, or in having had for her preceptor and father sir Anthony Coke,
whose singular erudition caused him to be joined with John Cheke in the
office of tutor to the king, or finally, in having become the wife of William
Cecil, lately appointed secretary of state; a young man indeed, but mature in
wisdom, and so deeply skilled both in letters and in affairs, and endued with
such moderation in the exercise of public offices, that to him would be
awarded by the consenting voice of Englishmen the four-fold praise
attributed to Pericles by his rival Thucydides—'To know all that is fitting, to
be able to apply what he knows, to be a lover of his country, and superior to
money.'"

The learned, excellent, and unfortunate Jane Grey is repeatedly mentioned
by this writer with warm and merited eulogium. He relates to Sturmius, that

in the month of August 1550, taking his journey from Yorkshire to the
court, he had deviated from his course to visit the family of the marquis of
Dorset at his seat of Broadgate in Leicestershire. Lady Jane was alone at his
arrival, the rest of the family being on a hunting party; and gaining
admission to her apartment, he found her reading by herself the Phædo of
Plato in the original, which she understood so perfectly as to excite in him
extreme wonder; for she was at this time under fifteen years of age. She
also possessed the power of speaking and writing Greek, and she willingly
promised to address to him a letter in this language. In his English work
'The Schoolmaster,' referring again to this interview with Jane Grey,
Ascham adds the following curious and affecting particulars. Having asked
her how at her age she could have attained to such perfection both in
philosophy and Greek, "I will tell you," said she, "and tell you a truth,
which perchance you will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever
God gave me is, that he sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle a
schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether
I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go; eat, drink, be merry or sad; be
sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any thing else, I must do it, as it were, in
such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the
world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently
sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs and other ways which I will not
name, for the honor I bear them, so without measure misordered, that I
think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr. Elmer, who
teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning,
that I think all the time nothing while I am with him. And when I am called
from him I fall on weeping, because whatsoever else I do but learning, is
full of grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book
hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and
more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles and
troubles unto me."
The epistles from which the extracts in the preceding pages are with some
abridgement translated, and which are said to be the first collection of
private letters ever published by any Englishman, were all written during
the year 1550, when Ascham, on some disgust, had quitted the court and
returned to his situation of Greek reader at Cambridge; and perhaps the

eulogiums here bestowed, in epistles which his correspondent lost no time
in committing to the press, were not composed without the secret hope of
their procuring for him a restoration to that court life which it seems
difficult even for the learned to quit without a sigh. It would be unjust,
however, to regard Ascham in the light of a flatterer; for his praises are in
most points corroborated by the evidence of history, or by other concurring
testimonies. His observations, for instance, on the modest simplicity of
Elizabeth's dress and appearance at this early period of her life, which might
be received with some incredulity by the reader to whom instances are
familiar of her inordinate love of dress at a much more advanced age, and
when the cares of a sovereign ought to have left no room for a vanity so
puerile, receive strong confirmation from another and very respectable
authority.
Dr. Elmer or Aylmer, who was tutor to lady Jane Grey and her sisters, and
became afterwards, during Elizabeth's reign, bishop of London, thus draws
her character when young, in a work entitled "A Harbour for faithful
Subjects." "The king left her rich cloaths and jewels; and I know it to be
true, that in seven years after her father's death, she never in all that time
looked upon that rich attire and precious jewels but once, and that against
her will. And that there never came gold or stone upon her head, till her
sister forced her to lay off her former soberness, and bear her company in
her glittering gayness. And then she so wore it, as every man might see that
her body carried that which her heart misliked. I am sure that her maidenly
apparel which she used in king Edward's time, made the noblemen's
daughters and wives to be ashamed to be dressed and painted like peacocks;
being more moved with her most virtuous example than with all that ever
Paul or Peter wrote touching that matter. Yea, this I know, that a great man's
daughter (lady Jane Grey) receiving from lady Mary before she was queen
good apparel of tinsel, cloth of gold and velvet, laid on with parchment lace
of gold, when she saw it, said, 'What shall I do with it?' 'Mary,' said a
gentlewoman, 'wear it.' 'Nay,' quoth she, 'that were a shame, to follow my
lady Mary against God's word, and leave my lady Elizabeth which
followeth God's word.' And when all the ladies at the coming of the Scots
queen dowager, Mary of Guise, (she who visited England in Edward's
time,) went with their hair frownsed, curled, and doublecurled, she altered

nothing but kept her old maidenly shamefacedness." This extract may be
regarded as particularly curious, as an exemplification of the rigid turn of
sentiment which prevailed at the court of young Edward, and of the degree
in which Elizabeth conformed herself to it. There is a print from a portrait
of her when young, in which the hair is without a single ornament and the
whole dress remarkably simple.
But to return to Ascham.—The qualifications of this learned man as a
writer of classical Latin recommended him to queen Mary, notwithstanding
his known attachment to the protestant faith, in the capacity of Latin
secretary; and it was in the year 1555, while holding this station, that he
resumed his lessons to his illustrious pupil.
"The lady Elizabeth and I," writes he to Sturmius, "are reading together in
Greek the Orations of Æschines and Demosthenes. She reads before me,
and at first sight she so learnedly comprehends not only the idiom of the
language and the meaning of the orator, but the whole grounds of
contention, the decrees of the people, and the customs and manners of the
Athenians, as you would greatly wonder to hear."
Under the reign of Elizabeth, Ascham retained his post of Latin secretary,
and was admitted to considerable intimacy by his royal mistress.
Addressing Sturmius he says, "I received your last letters on the 15th of
January 1560. Two passages in them, one relative to the Scotch affairs, the
other on the marriage of the queen, induced me to give them to herself to
read. She remarked and graciously acknowledged in both of them your
respectful observance of her. Your judgement in the affairs of Scotland, as
they then stood, she highly approved, and she loves you for your solicitude
respecting us and our concerns. The part respecting her marriage she read
over thrice, as I well remember, and with somewhat of a gentle smile; but
still preserving a modest and bashful silence.
"Concerning that point indeed, my Sturmius, I have nothing certain to
write to you, nor does any one truly know what to judge. I told you rightly,
in one of my former letters, that in the whole ordinance of her life she
resembled not Phædra but Hippolyta; for by nature, and not by the counsels
of others, she is thus averse and abstinent from marriage. When I know any

thing for certain, I will write it to you as soon as possible; in the mean time
I have no hopes to give you respecting the king of Sweden."
In the same letter, after enlarging, somewhat too rhetorically perhaps, on
the praises of the queen and her government, Ascham recurs to his favorite
theme,—her learning; and roundly asserts, that there were not four men in
England, distinguished either in the church or the state, who understood
more Greek than her majesty: and as an instance of her proficiency in other
tongues, he mentions that he was once present at court when she gave
answers at the same time to three ambassadors, the Imperial, the French,
and the Swedish, in Italian, in French, and in Latin; and all this, fluently,
without confusion, and to the purpose.
A short epistle from queen Elizabeth to Sturmius, which is inserted in this
collection, appears to refer to that of Sturmius which Ascham answers
above. She addresses him as her beloved friend, expresses in the
handsomest terms her sense of the attachment towards herself and her
country evinced by so eminent a cultivator of genuine learning and true
religion, and promises that her acknowledgements shall not be confined to
words alone; but for a further explanation of her intentions she refers him to
the bearer; consequently we have no data for estimating the actual
pecuniary value of these warm expressions of royal favor and friendship.
But we have good proof, unfortunately, that no munificent act of Elizabeth's
ever interposed to rescue her zealous and admiring preceptor from the
embarrassments into which he was plunged, probably indeed by his own
imprudent habits, but certainly by no faults which ought to have deprived
him of his just claims on the purse of a mistress whom, he had served with
so much ability, and with such distinguished advantage to herself. The other
learned females of this age whom Ascham has complimented by addressing
them in Latin epistles, are, Anne countess of Pembroke, sister of queen
Catherine Parr; a young lady of the name of Vaughan; Jane Grey; and Mrs.
Clark, a grand-daughter of sir Thomas More, by his favorite daughter Mrs.
Roper. In his letter to this last lady, written during the reign of Mary, after
congratulating her on her cultivation, amid the luxury and dissipation of a
court, of studies worthy the descendant of a man whose high qualities had
ennobled England in the estimation of foreign nations, he proceeds to

mention, that he is the person whom, several years ago, her excellent
mother had requested to undertake the instruction of all her children in
Greek and Latin literature. At that time, he says, no offer could tempt him to
quit his learned retirement at Cambridge, and he was reluctantly compelled
to decline the proposal; but being now once more established at court, he
freely offers to a lady whose accomplishments he so much admires, any
assistance in her laudable pursuits which it may be in his power to afford.
A few more scattered notices may be collected relative to this period of
the life of Elizabeth. Her talents, her vivacity, her proficiency in those
classical studies to which he was himself addicted, and especially the
attachment which she manifested to the reformed religion, endeared her
exceedingly to the young king her brother, who was wont to call her,—
perhaps with reference to the sobriety of dress and manners by which she
was then distinguished,—his sweet sister Temperance. On her part his
affection was met by every demonstration of sisterly tenderness, joined to
those delicate attentions and respectful observances which his rank
required.
It was probably about 1550 that she addressed to him the following letter
on his having desired her picture, which affords perhaps the most favorable
specimen extant of her youthful style.

"Like as the rich man that daily gathereth riches to riches, and to one bag
of money layeth a great sort till it come to infinite: so methinks your
majesty, not being sufficed with so many benefits and gentleness shewed to
me afore this time, doth now increase them in asking and desiring where
you may bid and command; requiring a thing not worthy the desiring for
itself, but made worthy for your highness' request. My picture I mean: in
which, if the inward good mind toward your grace might as well be
declared, as the outward face and countenance shall be seen, I would not
have tarried the commandment but prevented it, nor have been the last to
grant but the first to offer it. For the face I grant I might well blush to offer,
but the mind I shall never be ashamed to present. But though from the grace
of the picture the colors may fade by time, may give by weather, may be

spited by chance; yet the other, nor time with her swift wings shall overtake,
nor the misty clouds with their lowering may darken, nor chance with her
slippery foot may overthrow.
"Of this also yet the proof could not be great, because the occasions have
been so small; notwithstanding, as a dog hath a day, so may I perchance
have time to declare it in deeds, which now I do write them but in words.
And further, I shall humbly beseech your majesty, that when you shall look
on my picture, you will witsafe to think, that as you have but the outward
shadow of the body afore you, so my inward mind wisheth that the body
itself were oftener in your presence. Howbeit because both my so being I
think could do your majesty little pleasure, though myself great good; and
again, because I see not as yet the time agreeing thereunto, I shall learn to
follow this saying of Horace, 'Feras, non culpes, quod vitari non potest.'
And thus I will (troubling your majesty I fear) end with my most humble
thanks; beseeching God long to preserve you to his honor, to your comfort,
to the realms profit, and to my joy.
(From Hatfield this 15th day of May.)
Your majesty's most humble sister and servant
Elizabeth."

An exact memorialist[14] has preserved an instance of the high
consideration now enjoyed by Elizabeth in the following passage, which is
further curious as an instance of the state which she already assumed in her
public appearances. "March 17th (1551). The lady Elizabeth, the king's
sister, rode through London unto St. James's, the king's palace, with a great
company of lords, knights, and gentlemen; and after her a great company of
ladies and gentlemen on horseback, about two hundred. On the 19th she
came from St. James's through the park to the court; the way from the park
gate unto the court spread with fine sand. She was attended with a very
honorable confluence of noble and worshipful persons of both sexes, and
received with much ceremony at the court gate."

The ensuing letter, however, seems to intimate that there were those about
the young king who envied her these tokens of favor and credit, and were
sometimes but too successful in estranging her from the royal presence, and
perhaps in exciting prejudices against her:—It is unfortunately without date
of year.

"The princess Elizabeth to king Edward VI.
"Like as a shipman in stormy weather plucks down the sails tarrying for
better wind, so did I, most noble king, in my unfortunate chance a Thursday
pluck down the high sails of my joy and comfort; and do trust one day, that
as troublesome waves have repulsed me backward, so a gentle wind will
bring me forward to my haven. Two chief occasions moved me much and
grieved me greatly: the one, for that I doubted your majesty's health; the
other, because for all my long tarrying, I went without that I came for. Of
the first I am relieved in a part, both that I understood of your health, and
also that your majesty's lodging is far from my lord marques' chamber: of
my other grief I am not eased; but the best is, that whatsoever other folks
will suspect, I intend not to fear your grace's good will, which as I know
that I never deserved to faint, so I trust will still stick by me. For if your
grace's advice that I should return, (whose will is a commandment) had not
been, I would not have made the half of my way the end of my journey.
"And thus as one desirous to hear of your majesty's health, though
unfortunate to see it, I shall pray God to preserve you. (From Hatfield this
present Saturday.)
"Your majesty's humble sister to commandment,
"Elizabeth."

CHAPTER V.
1549 TO 1553.
Decline of the protector's authority.—He is imprisoned—accused
of misdemeanors—loses his office—is liberated—reconciled
with Dudley, who succeeds to his authority.—Dudley pushes on
the reformation.—The celebration of mass prohibited.—Princess
Mary persecuted.—The emperor attempts to get her out of the
kingdom, but without success—interferes openly in her behalf.—
Effect of persecution on the mind of Mary.—Marriage proposed
for Elizabeth with the prince of Denmark.—She declines it.—
King betrothed to a princess of France.—Sweating sickness.—
Death of the duke of Suffolk.—Dudley procures that title for the
marquis of Dorset, and the dukedom of Northumberland for
himself.—Particulars of the last earl of Northumberland.—Trial,
conviction, and death of the duke of Somerset.—Christmas
festivities of the young king.—Account of George Ferrers master
of the king's pastimes, and his works.—Views of
Northumberland.—Decline of the king's health.—Scheme of
Northumberland for lady Jane Grey's succession.—Three
marriages contrived by him for this purpose.—He procures a
settlement of the crown on the lady Jane.—Subserviency of the
council.—Death of Edward concealed by Northumberland.—
The princesses narrowly escape falling into his hands.—
Courageous conduct of Elizabeth.—Northumberland deserted
by the council and the army.—Jane Grey imprisoned.—
Northumberland arrested.—Mary mounts the throne.

I was to little purpose that the protector had stained his hands with the
t

blood of his brother, for the exemption thus purchased from one kind of fear
or danger, was attended by a degree of public odium which could not fail to

render feeble and tottering an authority based, like his, on plain and open
usurpation.
Other causes conspired to undermine his credit and prepare his overthrow.
The hatred of the great nobles, which he augmented by a somewhat too
ostentatious patronage of the lower classes against the rich and powerful,
continually pursued and watched the opportunity to ruin him. Financial
difficulties pressed upon him, occasioned in great measure by the wars with
France and Scotland which he had carried on, in pursuance of Henry's
design of compelling the Scotch to marry their young queen to his son. An
object which had finally been frustrated, notwithstanding the vigilance of
the English fleet, by the safe arrival of Mary in France, and her solemn
betrothment to the dauphin. The great and glorious work of religious
reformation, though followed by Somerset, under the guidance of Cranmer,
with a moderation and prudence which reflect the highest honor on both,
could not be brought to perfection without exciting the rancorous hostility
of thousands, whom various motives and interests attached to the cause of
ancient superstition; and the abolition, by authority, of the mass, and the
destruction of images and crucifixes, had given birth to serious disturbances
in different parts of the country. The want and oppression under which the
lower orders groaned,—and which they attributed partly to the suppression
of the monasteries to which they had been accustomed to resort for the
supply of their necessities, partly to a general inclosure bill extremely cruel
and arbitrary in its provisions,—excited commotions still more violent and
alarming. In order to suppress the insurrection in Norfolk, headed by Kett, it
had at length been found necessary to send thither a large body of troops
under the earl of Warwick, who had acquired a very formidable degree of
celebrity by the courage and conduct which he exhibited in bringing this
difficult enterprise to a successful termination.
A party was now formed in the council, of which Warwick, Southampton,
Arundel, and St. John, were the chiefs; and strong resolutions were entered
into against the assumed authority of the protector. This unfortunate man,
whom an inconsiderate ambition, fostered by circumstances favorable to its
success, had pushed forward into a station equally above his talents and his
birth, was now found destitute of all the resources of courage and genius

which might yet have retrieved his authority and his credit. He suffered
himself to be surprised into acts indicative of weakness and dismay, which
soon robbed him of his remaining partisans, and gave to his enemies all the
advantage which they desired.
His committal to the Tower on several charges, of which his assumption of
the whole authority of the state was the principal, soon followed. A short
time after he was deprived of his high office, which was nominally vested
in six members of the council, but really in the earl of Warwick, whose
private ambition seems to have been the main-spring of the whole intrigue,
and who thus became, almost without a struggle, undisputed master of the
king and kingdom.
That poorness of spirit which had sunk the duke of Somerset into
insignificance, saved him at present from further mischief. In the beginning
of the ensuing year, 1550, having on his knees confessed himself guilty of
all the matters laid to his charge, without reservation or exception, and
humbly submitted himself to the king's mercy, he was condemned in a
heavy fine, on remission of which by the king he was liberated. Soon after,
by the special favor of his royal nephew, he was readmitted into the council;
and a reconciliation was mediated for him with Warwick, cemented by a
marriage between one of his daughters and the son and heir of this aspiring
leader.
The catholic party, which had flattered itself that the earl of Warwick,
from gratitude for the support which some of its leaders had afforded him,
and perhaps also from principle, no less than from opposition to the duke of
Somerset, would be led to embrace its defence, was now destined to deplore
its disappointment.
Determined to rule alone, he soon shook off his able but too aspiring
colleague, the earl of Southampton, and disgraced, by the imposition of a
fine for some alleged embezzlement of public money, the earl of Arundel,
also a known assertor of the ancient faith, finally, having observed how
closely the principles of protestantism, which Edward had derived from
instructors equally learned and zealous, had interwoven themselves with the
whole texture and fabric of his mind, he resolved to merit the lasting

attachment of the royal minor by assisting him to complete the overthrow of
popery in England.
A confession of faith was now drawn up by commissioners appointed for
the purpose, and various alterations were made in the Liturgy, which had
already been translated into the vulgar tongue for church use. Tests were
imposed, which Gardiner, Bonner, and several others of the bishops felt
themselves called upon by conscience, or a regard to their own reputation,
to decline subscribing, even at the price of deprivation; and prodigious
devastations were made by the courtiers on the property of the church. To
perform or assist at the performance of the mass was also rendered highly
penal. But no dread of legal animadversion was capable of deterring the
lady Mary from the observance of this essential rite of her religion; and
finding herself and her household exposed to serious inconveniences on
account of their infraction of the new statute, she applied for protection to
her potent kinsman the emperor Charles V., who is said to have undertaken
her rescue by means which could scarcely have failed to involve him in a
war with England. By his orders, or connivance, certain ships were
prepared in the ports of Flanders, manned and armed for an attempt to carry
off the princess either by stealth or open force, and land her at Antwerp. In
furtherance of the design, several of her gentlemen had already taken their
departure for that city, and Flemish light vessels were observed to keep
watch on the English coast. But by these appearances the apprehensions of
the council were awakened, and a sudden journey of the princess from
Hunsdon in Hertfordshire towards Norfolk, for which she was unable to
assign a satisfactory reason, served as strong confirmation of their
suspicions.
A violent alarm was immediately sounded through the nation, of foreign
invasion designed to co-operate with seditions at home; bodies of troops
were dispatched to protect different points of the coast; and several ships of
war were equipped for sea; while a communication on the subject was made
by the council to the nobility throughout the kingdom, in terms calculated to
awaken indignation against the persecuted princess, and all who were
suspected, justly or unjustly, of regarding her cause with favor. A few

extracts from this paper will exhibit the fierce and jealous spirit of that
administration of which Dudley formed the soul.
"So it is, that the lady Mary, not many days past, removed from Newhall
in Essex to her house of Hunsdon in Hertfordshire, the cause whereof,
although we knew not, yet did we rather think it likely that her grace would
have come to have seen his majesty; but now upon Tuesday last, she hath
suddenly, without knowledge given either to us here or to the country there,
and without any cause in the world by us to her given, taken her journey
from Hunsdon towards Norfolk" &c. "This her doing we be sorry for, both
for the evil opinion the king's majesty our master may conceive thereby of
her, and for that by the same doth appear manifestly the malicious rancour
of such as provoke her thus to breed and stir up, as much as in her and them
lieth, occasion of disorder and unquiet in the realm" &c. "It is not unknown
to us but some near about the said lady Mary have very lately in the night
seasons had privy conferences with the emperor's embassador here being,
which councils can no wise tend to the weal of the king's majesty our
master or his realm, nor to the nobility of this realm. And whatsoever the
lady Mary shall upon instigation of these forward practices further do, like
to these her strange beginnings, we doubt not but your lordship will provide
that her proceedings shall not move any disobedience or disorder—The
effect whereof if her counsellors should procure, as it must be to her grace,
and to all other good Englishmen therein seduced, damnable, so shall it be
most hurtful to the good subjects of the country" &c.[15]
Thus did the fears, the policy, or the party-spirit, of the members of the
council lead them to magnify the peril of the nation from the enterprises of
a young and defenceless female, whose best friend was a foreign prince,
whose person was completely within their power, and who, at this period of
her life "more sinned against than sinning," was not even suspected of any
other design than that of withdrawing herself from a country in which she
was no longer allowed to worship God according to her conscience. Some
slight tumults in Essex and Kent, in which she was not even charged with
any participation, were speedily suppressed; and after some conference with
the chancellor and secretary Petre, Mary obeyed a summons to attend them
to the court, where she was now to be detained for greater security.

On her arrival she received a reprimand from the council for her obstinacy
respecting the mass, with an injunction to instruct herself, by reading, in the
grounds of protestant belief. To this she replied, with the inflexible
resolution of her character, that as to protestant books, she thanked God that
she never had read any, and never intended so to do; that for her religion
she was ready to lay down her life, and only feared that she might not be
found worthy to become its martyr. One of her chaplains was soon after
thrown into prison; and further severities seemed to await her, when a
message from the emperor, menacing the country with war in case she
should be debarred from the free exercise of her religion, taught the council
the expediency of relaxing a little the sternness of their intolerance. But the
scruples of the zealous young king on this head could not be brought to
yield to reasons of state, till he had "advised with the archbishop of
Canterbury and the bishops of London and Rochester, who gave their
opinion that to give license to sin was sin, but to connive at sin might be
allowed in case it were neither long, nor without hope of reformation[16]."
By this prudent and humane but somewhat jesuitical decision this
perplexing affair was set at rest for the present; and during the small
remainder of her brother's reign, a negative kind of persecution, consisting
in disfavor, obloquy, and neglect, was all, apparently, that the lady Mary
was called upon to undergo. But she had already endured enough to sour
her temper, to aggravate with feelings of personal animosity her systematic
abhorrence of what she deemed impious heresy, and to bind to her heart by
fresh and stronger ties that cherished faith, in defence of which she was
proudly conscious of having struggled and suffered with a lofty and
unyielding intrepidity.
In order to counterbalance the threatened hostility of Spain, and impose an
additional check on the catholic party at home, it was now judged expedient
for the king to strengthen himself by an alliance with Christian III. king of
Denmark; an able and enlightened prince, who in the early part of his reign
had opposed with vigor the aggressions of the emperor Charles V. on the
independence of the north of Europe, and more recently had acquired the
respect of the whole protestant body by establishing the reformation in his
dominions. An agent was accordingly dispatched with a secret commission

to sound the inclinations of the court of Copenhagen towards a marriage
between the prince-royal and the lady Elizabeth.
That this negotiation proved fruitless, was apparently owing to the
reluctance to the connexion manifested by Elizabeth; of whom it is
observable, that she never could be prevailed upon to afford the smallest
encouragement to the addresses of any foreign prince whilst she herself was
still a subject; well aware that to accept of an alliance which would carry
her out of the kingdom, was to hazard the loss of her succession to the
English crown, a splendid reversion never absent from her aspiring
thoughts.
Disappointed in this design, Edward lost no time in pledging his own hand
to the infant daughter of Henry II. of France, which contract he did not live
to complete.
The splendid French embassy which arrived in England during the year
1550 to make arrangements respecting the dower of the princess, and to
confer on her intended spouse the order of St. Michael, was received with
high honors, but found the court-festivities damped by a visitation of that
strange and terrific malady the sweating sickness.
This pestilence, first brought into the island by the foreign mercenaries
who composed the army of the earl of Richmond, afterwards Henry VII.,
now made its appearance for the fourth and last time in our annals. It seized
principally, it is said, on males, on such as were in the prime of their age,
and rather on the higher than the lower classes: within the space of twenty-
four hours the fate of the sufferer was decided for life or death. Its ravages
were prodigious; and the general consternation was augmented by a
superstitious idea which went forth, that Englishmen alone, were the
destined victims of this mysterious minister of fate, which tracked their
steps, with the malice and sagacity of an evil spirit, into every distant
country of the earth whither they might have wandered, whilst it left
unassailed all foreigners in their own.
Two of the king's servants died of this disease, and he in consequence
removed to Hampton Court in haste and with very few attendants. The duke

of Suffolk and his brother, students at Cambridge, were seized with it at the
same time, sleeping in the same bed, and expired within two hours of each
other. They were the children of Charles Brandon by his last wife, who was
in her own right baroness Willoughby of Eresby. This lady had already
made herself conspicuous by that earnest profession of the protestant faith
for which, in the reign of Mary, she underwent many perils and a long exile.
She was a munificent patroness of the learned and zealous divines of her
own persuasion, whether natives or foreigners; and the untimely loss of
these illustrious youths, who seem to have inherited both her religious
principles and her love of letters, was publicly bewailed by the principal
members of the university.
But by the earl of Warwick the melancholy event was rendered doubly
conducive to the purposes of his ambition. In the first place it enabled him
to bind to his interests the marquis of Dorset married to the half-sister of the
young duke of Suffolk, by procuring a renewal of the ducal title in his
behalf, and next authorized him by a kind of precedent to claim for himself
the same exalted dignity.
The circumstances attending Dudley's elevation to the ducal rank are
worthy of particular notice, as connected with a melancholy part of the
story of that old and illustrious family of the Percies, celebrated through so
many ages of English history.
The last of this house who had borne the title of earl of Northumberland
was that ardent and favored suitor of Anne Boleyn, who was compelled by
his father to renounce his pretensions to her hand in deference to the wishes
of a royal competitor.
The disappointment and the injury impressed themselves in indelible
characters on the heart of Percy: in common with the object of his
attachment, he retained against Wolsey, whom he believed to have been
actively instrumental in fostering the king's passion, a deep resentment,
which is said to have rendered peculiarly acceptable to him the duty
afterwards imposed upon him, of arresting that celebrated minister in order
to his being brought to his trial. For the lady to whom a barbarous exertion
of parental authority had compelled him to give his hand, while his whole

heart was devoted to another, he also conceived an aversion rather to be
lamented than wondered at.
Unfortunately, she brought him no living offspring; and after a few years
he separated himself from her to indulge his melancholy alone and without
molestation. In this manner he spun out a suffering existence, oppressed
with sickness of mind and body, disengaged from public life, and neglectful
of his own embarrassed affairs, till the fatal catastrophe of his brother,
brought to the scaffold in 1537 for his share in the popish rebellion under
Aske. By this event, and the attainder of sir Thomas Percy's children which
followed, the earl saw himself deprived of the only consolation which
remained to him,—that of transmitting to the posterity of a brother whom
he loved, the titles and estates derived to him through a long and splendid
ancestry. As a last resource, he bequeathed all his land to the king, in the
hope, which was not finally frustrated, that a return of royal favor might one
day restore them to the representatives of the Percies.
This done, he yielded his weary spirit on the last day of the same month
which had seen the fatal catastrophe of his misguided brother.
From this time the title had remained dormant, till the earl of Warwick,
untouched by commiseration or respect for the misfortunes of so great a
house, cut off for the present all chance of its restoration, by causing the
young monarch whom he governed to confer upon himself the whole of the
Percy estates, with the new dignity of duke of Northumberland; an honor
undeserved and ill-acquired, which no son of his was ever permitted to
inherit.
But the soaring ambition of Dudley regarded even these splendid
acquisitions of wealth and dignity only as steps to that summit of power and
dominion which he was resolved by all means and at all hazards to attain;
and his next measure was to procure the removal of the only man capable in
any degree of obstructing his further progress. This was the late protector,
by whom some relics of authority were still retained.
At the instigation of Northumberland, a law was passed making it felony
to conspire against the life of a privy-counsellor; and by various insidious

modes of provocation, he was soon enabled to bring within the danger of
this new act an enemy who was rash, little sagacious, by no means
scrupulous, and surrounded with violent or treacherous advisers. On
October 16th 1551, Somerset and several of his relations and dependants,
and on the following day his haughty duchess with certain of her favorites,
were committed to the Tower, charged with treason and felony. The duke,
being put upon his trial, so clearly disproved most of the accusations
brought against him that the peers acquitted him of treason; but the
evidence of his having entertained designs against the lives of the duke of
Northumberland, the marquis of Northampton, and the earl of Pembroke,
appeared so conclusive to his judges,—among whom these three noblemen
themselves did not blush to take their seats,—that he was found guilty of
the felony.
After his condemnation, Somerset acknowledged with contrition that he
had once mentioned to certain persons an intention of assassinating these
lords; but he protested that he had never taken any measures for carrying
this wicked purpose into execution. However this might be, no act of
violence had been committed, and it was hoped by many and expected by
more, that the royal mercy might yet be extended to preserve his life: but
Northumberland spared no efforts to incense the king against his unhappy
uncle; he also contrived by a course of amusements and festivities to divert
him from serious thought; and on January 21st 1552, to the great regret of
the common people and the dismay of the protestant party, the duke of
Somerset underwent the fatal stroke on Tower-hill.
During the whole interval between the condemnation and death of his
uncle, the king, as we are informed, had been entertained by the nobles of
his court with "stately masques, brave challenges at tilt and at barriers, and
whatsoever exercises or disports they could conjecture to be pleasing to
him. Then also he first began to keep hall[17], and the Christmas-time was
passed over with banquetings, plays, and much variety of mirth[18]."
We learn that it was an ancient custom, not only with the kings of England
but with noblemen and "great housekeepers who used liberal feasting in
that season," to appoint for the twelve days of the Christmas festival a lord
of misrule, whose office it was to provide diversions for their numerous

guests. Of what nature these entertainments might be we are not exactly
informed; they probably comprised some rude attempts at dramatic
representation: but the taste of an age rapidly advancing in literature and
general refinement, evidently began to disdain the flat and coarse
buffooneries which had formed the solace of its barbarous predecessors;
and it was determined that devices of superior elegance and ingenuity
should distinguish the festivities of the new court of Edward. Accordingly,
George Ferrers, a gentleman regularly educated at Oxford, and a member of
the society of Lincoln's inn, was chosen to preside over the "merry
disports;" "who," says Holinshed, "being of better credit and estimation
than commonly his predecessors had been before, received all his
commissions and warrants by the name of master of the king's pastimes.
Which gentleman so well supplied his office, both in show of sundry sights
and devices of rare inventions, and in act of divers interludes and matters of
pastime played by persons, as not only satisfied the common sort, but also
were very well liked and allowed by the council, and other of skill in the
like pastimes; but best of all by the young king himself, as appeared by his
princely liberality in rewarding that service."
"On Monday the fourth day of January," pursues our chronicler, whose
circumstantial detail is sometimes picturesque and amusing, "the said lord
of merry disports came by water to London, and landing at the Tower wharf
entered the Tower, then rode through Tower-street, where he was received
by Vause, lord of misrule to John Mainard, one of the sheriffs of London,
and so conducted through the city with a great company of young lords and
gentlemen to the house of sir George Burne lord-mayor, where he with the
chief of his company dined, and after had a great banquet, and at his
departure the lord-mayor gave him a standing cup with a cover of silver and
gilt, of the value of ten pounds, for a reward, and also set a hogshead of
wine and a barrel of beer at his gate, for his train that followed him. The
residue of his gentlemen and servants dined at other aldermen's houses and
with the sheriffs, and then departed to the Tower wharf again, and so to the
court by water, to the great commendation of the mayor and aldermen, and
highly accepted, of the king and council."

From this time Ferrers became "a composer almost by profession of
occasional interludes for the diversion of the court[19]." None of these
productions of his have come down to posterity; but their author is still
known to the student of early English poetry, as one of the contributors to
an extensive work entitled "The Mirror for Magistrates," which will be
mentioned hereafter in speaking of the works of Thomas Sackville lord
Buckhurst. The legends combined in this collection, which came from the
pen of Ferrers, are not distinguished by any high flights of poetic fancy, nor
by a versification extremely correct or melodious. Their merit is that of
narrating after the chronicles, facts in English history, in a style clear,
natural, and energetic, with an intermixture of political reflections
conceived in a spirit of wisdom and moderation, highly honorable to the
author, and well adapted to counteract the turbulent spirit of an age in which
the ambition of the high and the discontent of the low were alike apt to
break forth into outrages destructive of the public tranquillity.
Happy would it have been for England in more ages than one, had the
sentiment of the following humble stanza been indelibly inscribed on the
hearts of children.
"Some haply here will move a further doubt,
And as for York's part allege an elder right:
O brainless heads that so run in and out!
When length of time a state hath firmly pight,
And good accord hath put all strife to flight,
Were it not better such titles still to sleep
Than all a realm about the trial weep?"
This estimable writer had been a member of parliament in the time of
Henry VIII., and was imprisoned by that despot in 1542, very probably
without any just cause. He about the same time translated into English the
great charter of Englishmen which had become a dead letter through the
tyranny of the Tudors; and he rendered the same public service respecting
several important statutes which existed only in Latin or Norman French;
proofs of a free and courageous spirit extremely rare in that servile age!

Ferrers lived far into the reign of Elizabeth, finishing his career at
Flamstead in his native county of Herts in 1579.
From the pleasing contemplation of a life devoted to those honorable arts
by which society is cultivated, enlightened and adorned, we must now
return to tread with Northumberland the maze of dark and crooked politics.
By many a bold and many a crafty step this adept in his art had wound his
way to the highest rank of nobility attainable by a subject, and to a station
of eminence and command scarcely compatible with that character. But no
sooner had he reached it, than a sudden cloud lowered over the splendid
prospect stretched around him, and threatened to snatch it for ever from his
sight. The youthful monarch in whom, or over whom, he reigned, was
seized with a lingering disease which soon put on appearances indicative of
a fatal termination. Under Mary, the next heir, safety with insignificance
was the utmost that could be hoped by the man who had taken a principal
and conspicuous part in every act of harshness towards herself, and every
demonstration of hostility towards the faith which she cherished, and
against whom, when he should be no longer protected by the power which
he wielded, so many lawless and rapacious acts were ready to rise up in
judgement.
One scheme alone suggested itself for the preservation of his authority: it
was dangerous, almost desperate; but loss of power was more dreaded by
Dudley than any degree of hazard to others or himself; and he resolved at
all adventures to make the attempt.
By means of the new honors which he had caused to be conferred on the
marquis of Dorset, now duke of Suffolk, he engaged this weak and
inconsiderate man to give his eldest daughter, the lady Jane Grey, in
marriage to his fourth son Guildford Dudley. At the same time he procured
an union between her sister, the lady Catherine, and the eldest son of his
able but mean-spirited and time-serving associate, the earl of Pembroke;
and a third between his own daughter Catherine and lord Hastings, son of
the earl of Huntingdon by the eldest daughter and co-heir of Henry Pole
lord Montacute; in whom the claims of the line of Clarence now vested.

These nuptials were all celebrated on one day, and with an ostentation of
magnificence and festivity which the people exclaimed against as highly
indecorous in the present dangerous state of the king's health. But it was not
on their good will that Northumberland founded his hopes, and their
clamors were braved or disregarded.
His next measure was to prevail upon the dying king to dispose of the
crown by will in favor of the lady Jane. The animosity against his sister
Mary, to which their equal bigotry in opposite modes of faith had given
birth in the mind of Edward, would naturally induce him to lend a willing
ear to such specious arguments as might be produced in justification of her
exclusion: but that he could be brought with equal facility to disinherit also
Elizabeth, a sister whom he loved, a princess judged in all respects worthy
of a crown, and one with whose religious profession he had every reason to
be perfectly satisfied, appears an indication of a character equally cold and
feeble. Much allowance, however, may be made for the extreme youth of
Edward; the weakness of his sinking frame; his affection for the pious and
amiable Jane, his near relation and the frequent companion of his
childhood; and above all, for the importunities, the artifices, of the practised
intriguers by whom his dying couch was surrounded.
The partisans of Northumberland did not fail to urge, that if one of the
princesses were set aside on account of the nullification of her mother's
marriage, the same ground of exclusion was valid against the other. If, on
the contrary, the testamentary dispositions of the late king were to be
adhered to, the lady Mary must necessarily precede her sister, and the cause
of religious reformation was lost, perhaps for ever.
With regard to the other claimants who might still be interposed between
Jane and the English throne, it was pretended that the Scottish branch of the
royal family was put out of the question by that clause of Henry's will
which placed the Suffolk line next in order to his own immediate
descendants; as if an instrument which was set aside as to several of its
most important provisions was necessarily to be held binding in all the rest.
Even admitting this, the duchess of Suffolk herself stood before her
daughter in order of succession; but a renunciation obtained from this lady
by the authority of Northumberland, not only of her own title but of that of

any future son who might be born to her, was supposed to obviate this
objection.
The right of the king, even if he had attained the age of majority, to
dispose of the crown by will without the concurrence of parliament, was
absolutely denied by the first law authorities: but the power and violence of
Northumberland overruled all objections, and in the end the new settlement
received the signature of all the privy council, and the whole bench of
judges, with the exception of justice Hales, and perhaps of Cecil, then
secretary of state, who afterwards affirmed that he put his name to this
instrument only as a witness to the signature of the king. Cranmer resisted
for some time, but was at length won to compliance by the tears and
entreaties of Edward.
Notwithstanding this general concurrence, it is probable that very few of
the council either expected or desired that this act should be sanctioned by
the acquiescence of the nation: they signed it merely as a protection from
the present effects of the anger of Northumberland, whom most of them
hated as well as feared; each privately hoping that he should find
opportunity to disavow the act of the body in time to obtain the forgiveness
of Mary, should her cause be found finally to prevail. The selfish meanness
and political profligacy of such a conduct it is needless to stigmatize; but
this was not the age of public virtue in England.
A just detestation of the character of Northumberland had rendered very
prevalent an idea, that the constitution of the king was undermined by slow
poisons of his administering; and it was significantly remarked, that his
health had begun to decline from the period of lord Robert Dudley's being
placed about him as gentleman of the bed-chamber. Nothing, however,
could be more destitute both of truth and probability than such a suspicion.
Besides the satisfactory evidence that Edward's disease was a pulmonary
consumption, such as no poison could produce, it has been well remarked,
that if Northumberland were a sound politician, there could be no man in
England more sincerely desirous, for his own sake, of the continuance of
the life and reign of this young prince. By a change he had every thing to
lose, and nothing to gain. Several circumstances tend also to show that the
fatal event, hastened by the treatment of a female empiric to whom the

royal patient had been very improperly confided, came upon
Northumberland at last somewhat by surprise, and compelled him to act
with a precipitation injurious to his designs. Several preparatory steps were
yet wanting; in particular the important one of securing the persons of the
two princesses: but this omission it seemed still possible to supply; and he
ordered the death of the king to be carefully concealed, while he wrote
letters in his name requiring the immediate attendance of his sisters on his
person. With Mary the stratagem had nearly succeeded: she had reached
Hoddesdon on her journey to London, when secret intelligence of the truth,
conveyed to her by the earl of Arundel, caused her to change her course. It
was probably a similar intimation from some friendly hand, Cecil's perhaps,
which caused Elizabeth to disobey the summons, and remain tranquil at one
of her houses in Hertfordshire.
Here she was soon after waited upon by messengers from
Northumberland, who apprized her of the accession of the lady Jane, and
proposed to her to resign her own title in consideration of a sum of money,
and certain lands which should be assigned her. But Elizabeth wisely and
courageously replied, that her elder sister was first to be agreed with, during
whose lifetime she, for her part, could claim no right at all. And determined
to make common cause with Mary against their common enemies, she
equipped with all speed a body of a thousand horse, at the head of which
she went forth to meet her sister on her approach to London.
The event quickly proved that she had taken the right part. Though the
council manifested their present subserviency to Northumberland by
proclaiming queen Jane in the metropolis, and by issuing in her name a
summons to Mary to lay aside her pretensions to the crown, this leader was
too well practised in the arts of courts, to be the dupe of their hollow
professions of attachment to a cause unsupported, as he soon perceived, by
the favor of the people.
The march of Northumberland at the head of a small body of troops to
resist the forces levied by Mary in Norfolk and Suffolk, was the signal for
the defection of a great majority of the council. They broke from the kind of
honorable custody in the Tower in which, from a well-founded distrust of
their intentions, Northumberland had hitherto held them; and ordering Mary

to be proclaimed in London, they caused the hapless Jane, after a nominal
reign of ten days, to be detained as a prisoner in that fortress which she had
entered as a sovereign.
Not a hand was raised, not a drop of blood was shed, in defence of this
pageant raised by the ambition of Dudley. Deserted by his partisans, his
soldiers and himself, the guilty wretch sought, as a last feeble resource, to
make a merit of being the first man to throw up his cap in the market-place
of Cambridge, and cry "God save queen Mary!" But on the following day
the earl of Arundel, whom he had disgraced, and who hated him, though a
little before he had professed that he could wish to spend his blood at his
feet, came and arrested him in her majesty's name, and Mary, proceeding to
London, seated herself without opposition on the throne of her ancestors.

CHAPTER VI.
1553 AND 1554.
Mary affects attachment to Elizabeth.—Short duration of her
kindness.—Earl of Devonshire liberated from the Tower.—His
character.—He rejects the love of Mary—shows partiality to
Elizabeth.—Anger of Mary.—Elizabeth retires from court.—
Queen's proposed marriage unpopular.—Character of sir T.
Wyat.—His rebellion.—Earl of Devonshire remanded to the
Tower.—Elizabeth summoned to court—is detained by illness.—
Wyat taken—is said to accuse Elizabeth.—She is brought
prisoner to the court—examined by the council—dismissed—
brought again to court—re-examined—committed to the Tower.
—Particulars of her behaviour.—Influence of Mary's
government on various eminent characters.—Reinstatement of
the duke of Norfolk in honor and office.—His retirement and
death.—Liberation from the Tower of Tonstal.—His character
and after fortunes.—Of Gardiner and Bonner.—Their views and
characters.—Of the duchess of Somerset and the marchioness of
Exeter.—Imprisonment of the Dudleys—of several protestant
bishops—of judge Hales.—His sufferings and death.—
Characters and fortunes of sir John Cheke, sir Anthony Cook,
Dr. Cox, and other protestant exiles.

T he conduct of Elizabeth during the late alarming crisis, earned for her

from Mary, during the first days of her reign, some demonstration of
sisterly affection. She caused her to bear her company in her public entry
into London; kindly detained her for a time near her own person; and
seemed to have consigned for ever to an equitable oblivion all the
mortifications and heartburnings of which the child of Anne Boleyn had

been the innocent occasion to her in times past, and under circumstances
which could never more return.
In the splendid procession which attended her majesty from the Tower to
Whitehall previously to her coronation on October 1st 1553, the royal
chariot, sumptuously covered with cloth of tissue and drawn by six horses
with trappings of the same material, was immediately followed by another,
likewise drawn by six horses and covered with cloth of silver, in which sat
the princess Elizabeth and the lady Anne of Cleves, who took place in this
ceremony as the adopted sister of Henry VIII.
But notwithstanding these fair appearances, the rancorous feelings of
Mary's heart with respect to her sister were only repressed or disguised, not
eradicated; and it was not long before a new subject of jealousy caused
them to revive in all their pristine energy.
Amongst the state prisoners committed to the Tower by Henry VIII.,
whose liberation his executors had resisted during the whole reign of
Edward, but whom it was Mary's first act of royalty to release and reinstate
in their offices or honors, was Edward Courtney, son of the unfortunate
marquis of Exeter. From the age of fourteen to that of six-and-twenty, this
victim of tyranny had been doomed to expiate in a captivity which
threatened to be perpetual, the involuntary offence of inheriting through an
attainted father the blood of the fourth Edward. To the surprise and
admiration of the court, he now issued forth a comely and accomplished
gentleman; deeply versed in the literature of the age; skilled in music, and
still more so in the art of painting, which had formed the chief solace of his
long seclusion; and graced with that polished elegance of manners, the
result, in most who possess it, of early intercourse with the world and an
assiduous imitation of the best examples, but to a few of her favorites the
free gift of nature herself. To all his prepossessing qualities was superadded
that deep romantic kind of interest with which sufferings, long, unmerited,
and extraordinary, never fail to invest a youthful sufferer.
What wonder that Courtney speedily became the favorite of the nation!—
what wonder that even the severe bosom of Mary herself was touched with
tenderness! With the eager zeal of the sentiment just awakened in her heart,

she hastened to restore to her too amiable kinsman the title of earl of
Devonshire, long hereditary in the illustrious house of Courtney, to which
she added the whole of those patrimonial estates which the forfeiture of his
father had vested in the crown. She went further; she lent a propitious ear to
the whispered suggestion of her people, still secretly partial to the house of
York, that an English prince of the blood was most worthy to share the
throne of an English queen. It is even affirmed that hints were designedly
thrown out to the young man himself of the impression which he had made
upon her heart. But Courtney generously disdained, as it appears, to barter
his affections for a crown. The youth, the talents, the graces of Elizabeth
had inspired him with a preference which he was either unwilling or unable
to conceal; Mary was left to vent her disappointment in resentment against
the ill-fated object of her preference, and in every demonstration of a
malignant jealousy towards her innocent and unprotected rival.
By the first act of a parliament summoned immediately after the
coronation, Mary's birth had been pronounced legitimate, the marriage of
her father and mother valid, and their divorce null and void. A stigma was
thus unavoidably cast on the offspring of Henry's second marriage; and no
sooner had Elizabeth incurred the displeasure of her sister, than she was
made to feel how far the consequences of this new declaration of the
legislature might be made to extend. Notwithstanding the unrevoked
succession act which rendered her next heir to the crown, she was forbidden
to take place of the countess of Lenox, or the duchess of Suffolk, in the
presence-chamber, and her friends were discountenanced or affronted
obviously on her account. Her merit, her accomplishments, her insinuating
manners, which attracted to her the admiration and attendance of the young
nobility, and the favor of the nation, were so many crimes in the eyes of a
sovereign who already began to feel her own unpopularity; and Elizabeth,
who was not of a spirit to endure public and unmerited slights with
tameness, found it at once the most dignified and the safest course, to seek,
before the end of the year, the peaceful retirement of her house of Ashridge
in Buckinghamshire. It was however made a condition of the leave of
absence from court which she was obliged to solicit, that she should take
with her sir Thomas Pope and sir John Gage, who were placed about her as

inspectors and superintendants of her conduct, under the name of officers of
her household.
The marriage of Mary to Philip of Spain was now openly talked of. It was
generally and justly unpopular: the protestant party, whom the measures of
the queen had already filled with apprehensions, saw, in her desire of
connecting herself yet more closely with the most bigoted royal family of
Europe, a confirmation of their worst forebodings; and the tyranny of the
Tudors had not yet so entirely crushed the spirit of Englishmen as to render
them tamely acquiescent in the prospect of their country's becoming a
province to Spain, subject to the sway of that detested people whose
rapacity, and violence, and unexampled cruelty, had filled both hemispheres
with groans and execrations.
The house of commons petitioned the queen against marrying a foreign
prince: she replied by dissolving them in anger; and all hope of putting a
stop to the connexion by legal means being thus precluded, measures of a
more dangerous character began to be resorted to.
Sir Thomas Wyat of Allingham Castle in Kent, son of the poet, wit, and
courtier of that name, had hitherto been distinguished by a zealous loyalty;
and he is said to have been also a catholic. Though allied in blood to the
Dudleys, not only had he refused to Northumberland his concurrence in the
nomination of Jane Grey, but, without waiting a moment to see which party
would prevail, he had proclaimed queen Mary in the market-place at
Maidstone, for which instance of attachment he had received her thanks[20].
But Wyat had been employed during several years of his life in embassies
to Spain; and the intimate acquaintance which he had thus acquired of the
principles and practices of its court, filled him with such horror of their
introduction into his native country, that, preferring patriotism to loyalty
where their claims appeared incompatible, he incited his neighbours and
friends to insurrection.
In the same cause sir Peter Carew, and sir Gawen his uncle, endeavoured
to raise the West, but with small success; and the attempts made by the duke
of Suffolk, lately pardoned and liberated, to arm his tenantry and retainers
in Warwickshire and Leicestershire, proved still more futile.

Notwithstanding however this want of co-operation, Wyat's rebellion wore
for some time a very formidable appearance. The London trained-bands
sent out to oppose him, went over to him in a body under Bret, their
captain; the guards, almost the only regular troops in the kingdom, were
chiefly protestants, and therefore little trusted by the queen; and it was
known that the inhabitants of the metropolis, for which he was in full
march, were in their hearts inclined to his cause.
It was pretty well ascertained that the earl of Devonshire had received an
invitation to join the western insurgents; and though he appeared to have
rejected the proposal, he was arbitrarily remanded to his ancient abode in
the Tower.
Elizabeth was naturally regarded under all these circumstances of alarm
with extreme jealousy and suspicion. It was well known that her present
compliance with the religion of the court was merely prudential; that she
was the only hope of the protestant party, a party equally formidable by zeal
and by numbers, and which it was resolved to crush; it was more than
suspected, that though Wyat himself still professed an inviolable fidelity to
the person of the reigning sovereign, and strenuously declared the Spanish
match to be the sole grievance against which he had taken arms, many of
his partisans had been led by their religious zeal to entertain the further
view of dethroning the queen, in favor of her sister, whom they desired to
marry to the earl of Devonshire. It was not proved that the princess herself
had given any encouragement to these designs; but sir James Croft, an
adherent of Wyat's, had lately visited Ashridge, and held conferences with
some of her attendants; and it had since been rumored that she was
projecting a removal to her manor of Donnington castle in Berkshire, on the
south side of the Thames, where nothing but a day's march through an open
country would be interposed between her residence and the station of the
Kentish rebels.
Policy seemed now to dictate the precaution of securing her person; and
the queen addressed to her accordingly the following letter.

"Right dear and entirely beloved sister,
"We greet you well: And whereas certain evil-disposed persons, minding
more the satisfaction of their own malicious and seditious minds than their
duty of allegiance towards us, have of late foully spread divers lewd and
untrue rumours; and by that means and other devilish practises do travail to
induce our good and loving subjects to an unnatural rebellion against God,
us, and the tranquillity of our realm: We, tendering the surety of your
person, which might chance to be in some peril if any sudden tumult should
arise where you now be, or about Donnington, whither, as we understand,
you are minded shortly to remove, do therefore think expedient you should
put yourself in good readiness, with all convenient speed, to make your
repair hither to us. Which we pray you fail not to do: Assuring you, that as
you may most safely remain here, so shall you be most heartily welcome to
us. And of your mind herein we pray you to return answer by this
messenger.
"Given under our signet at our manor of St. James's the 26th of January in
the 1st year of our reign.
"Your loving sister,
"Mary, the queen."

This summons found Elizabeth confined to her bed by sickness; and her
officers sent a formal statement of the fact to the privy-council, praying that
the delay of her appearance at court might not, under such circumstances,
be misconstrued either with respect to her or to themselves. Monsieur de
Noailles, the French ambassador, in some papers of his, calls this "a
favorable illness" to Elizabeth, "since," adds he, "it seems likely to save
Mary from the crime of putting her sister to death by violence." And true it
is, that by detaining her in the country till the insurrection was effectually
suppressed, it preserved her from any sudden act of cruelty which the
violence of the alarm might have prompted: but other and perhaps greater
dangers still awaited her.

A few days after the date of the foregoing letter, Wyat entered
Westminster, but with a force very inadequate to his undertaking: he was
repulsed in an attack on the palace; and afterwards, finding the gates of
London closed against him and seeing his followers slain, taken, or flying
in all directions, he voluntarily surrendered himself to one of the queen's
officers and was conveyed to the Tower. It was immediately given out, that
he had made a full discovery of his accomplices, and named amongst them
the princess and the earl of Devonshire; and on this pretext, for it was
probably no more, three gentlemen were sent, attended by a troop horse,
with peremptory orders to bring Elizabeth back with them to London.
They reached her abode at ten o'clock at night, and bursting into her sick
chamber, in spite of the remonstrances of her ladies, abruptly informed her
of their errand. Affrighted at the summons, she declared however her entire
willingness to wait upon the queen her sister, to whom she warmly
protested her loyal attachment; but she appealed to their own observation
for the reality of her sickness, and her utter inability to quit her chamber.
The gentlemen pleaded, on the other side, the urgency of their commission,
and said that they had brought the queen's litter for her conveyance. Two
physicians were then called in, who gave it as their opinion that she might
be removed without danger to her life; and on the morrow her journey
commenced.
The departure of Elizabeth from Ashridge was attended by the tears and
passionate lamentations of her afflicted household, who naturally
anticipated from such beginnings the worst that could befal her. So extreme
was her sickness, aggravated doubtless by terror and dejection, that even
these stern conductors found themselves obliged to allow her no less than
four nights' rest in a journey of only twenty-nine miles.
Between Highgate and London her spirits were cheered by the appearance
of a number of gentlemen who rode out to meet her, as a public testimony
of their sympathy and attachment; and as she proceeded, the general feeling
was further manifested by crowds of people lining the waysides, who
flocked anxiously about her litter, weeping and bewailing her aloud. A
manuscript chronicle of the time describes her passage on this occasion
through Smithfield and Fleet-street, in a litter open on both sides, with a

hundred "velvet coats" after her, and a hundred others "in coats of fine red
guarded with velvet;" and with this train she passed through the queen's
garden to the court.
This open countenancing of the princess by a formidable party in the
capital itself, seems to have disconcerted the plans of Mary and her
advisers; and they contented themselves for the present with detaining her
in a kind of honorable custody at Whitehall. Here she underwent a strict
examination by the privy-council respecting Wyat's insurrection, and the
rising in the West under Carew; but she steadfastly protested her innocence
and ignorance of all such designs; and nothing coming out against her, in
about a fortnight she was dismissed, and suffered to return to her own
house. Her troubles, however, were as yet only beginning. Sir William St.
Low, one of her officers, was apprehended as an adherent of Wyat's; and
this leader himself, who had been respited for the purpose of working on his
love of life, and leading him to betray his confederates, was still reported to
accuse the princess. An idle story was officiously circulated, of his having
conveyed to her in a bracelet the whole scheme of his plot; and on March
15th she was again taken into custody and brought to Hampton-court.
Soon after her arrival, it was finally announced to her by a deputation of
the council, not without strong expressions of concern from several of the
members, that her majesty had determined on her committal to the Tower
till the matter could be further investigated. Bishop Gardiner, now a
principal counsellor, and two others, came soon after, and, dismissing the
princess's attendants, supplied their place with some of the queen's, and set
a guard round the palace for that night. The next day, the earl of Sussex and
another lord were sent to announce to her that a barge was in readiness for
her immediate conveyance to the Tower. She entreated first to be permitted
to write to the queen; and the earl of Sussex assenting, in spite of the angry
opposition of his companion, whose name is concealed by the tenderness of
his contemporaries, and undertaking to be himself the bearer of her letter,
she took the opportunity to repeat her protestations of innocence and
loyalty, concluding, with an extraordinary vehemence of asseveration, in
these words: "As for that traitor Wyat, he might peradventure write me a
letter; but on my faith I never received any from him. And as for the copy of

my letter to the French king, I pray God confound me eternally, if ever I
sent him word, message, token, or letter, by any means." With respect to the
last clause of this disavowal, it may be fit to observe, that there is indeed no
proof that Elizabeth ever returned any answer to the letters or messages of
the French king; but that it seems a well-authenticated fact, that during
some period of her adversity Henry II. made her the offer of an asylum in
France. The circumstance of the dauphin's being betrothed to the queen of
Scots, who claimed to precede Elizabeth in the order of succession, renders
the motive of this invitation somewhat suspicious; at all events, it was one
which she was never tempted to accept.
Her letter did not obtain for the princess what she sought,—an interview
with her sister; and the next day, being Palm Sunday, strict orders were
issued for all people to attend the churches and carry their palms; and in the
mean time she was privately removed to the Tower, attended by the earl of
Sussex and the other lord, three of her own ladies, three of the queen's, and
some of her officers. Several characteristic traits of her behaviour have been
preserved. On reaching her melancholy place of destination, she long
refused to land at Traitor's gate; and when the uncourteous nobleman
declared "that she should not choose," offering her however, at the same
time, his cloak to protect her from the rain, she retained enough of her high
spirit to put it from her "with a good dash." As she set her foot on the ill-
omened stairs, she said, "Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as
ever landed at these stairs; and before thee, O God! I speak it, having no
other friends but thee alone."
On seeing a number of warders and other attendants drawn out in order,
she asked, "What meaneth this?" Some one answered that it was customary
on receiving a prisoner. "If it be," said she, "I beseech you that for my cause
they may be dismissed." Immediately the poor men kneeled down and
prayed God to preserve her; for which action they all lost their places the
next day.
Going a little further, she sat down on a stone to rest herself; and the
lieutenant urging her to rise and come in out of the cold and wet, she
answered, "Better sitting here than in a worse place, for God knoweth
whither you bring me." On hearing these words her gentleman-usher wept,

for which she reproved him; telling him he ought rather to be her comforter,
especially since she knew her own truth to be such, that no man should have
cause to weep for her. Then rising, she entered the prison, and its gloomy
doors were locked and bolted on her. Shocked and dismayed, but still
resisting the weakness of unavailing lamentation, she called for her book,
and devoutly prayed that she might build her house upon the rock.
Meanwhile her conductors retired to concert measures for keeping her
securely; and her firm friend, the earl of Sussex, did not neglect the
occasion of reminding all whom it might concern, that the king their
master's daughter was to be treated in no other manner than they might be
able to justify, whatever should happen hereafter; and that they were to take
heed to do nothing but what their commission would bear out. To this the
others cordially assented; and having performed their office, the two lords
departed.
Having now conducted the heroine of the protestant party to the dismal
abode which she was destined for a time to occupy, it will be proper to
revert to the period of Mary's accession.
Little more than eight months had yet elapsed from the death of Edward;
but this short interval had sufficed to change the whole face of the English
court; to alter the most important relations of the country with foreign
states; and to restore in great measure the ancient religion, which it had
been the grand object of the former reign finally and totally to overthrow. It
is the business of the historian to record the series of public measures by
which this calamitous revolution was accomplished: the humbler but not
uninteresting task, of tracing its effects on the fortunes of eminent
individuals, belongs to the compiler of memoirs, and forms an appropriate
accompaniment to the relation of the perils, sufferings and obloquy, through
which the heiress of the English crown passed on safely to the
accomplishment of her high destinies.
The liberation of the state-prisoners confined in the Tower,—an act of
grace usual on the accession of a prince,—was one which the causes of
detention of the greater part of them rendered it peculiarly gratifying to
Mary to perform. The enemies of Henry's or of Edward's government she

regarded with reason as her friends and partisans, and the adherents, open
or concealed, of that church establishment which was to be forced back on
the reluctant consciences of the nation.
The most illustrious of the captives was that aged duke of Norfolk whom
the tyrant Henry had condemned to die without a crime, and who had been
suffered to languish in confinement during the whole reign of Edward;
chiefly, it is probable, because the forfeiture of his vast estates afforded a
welcome supply to the exhausted treasury of the young king; though the
extensive influence of this nobleman, and the attachment for the old
religion which he was believed to cherish, had served as plausible pretexts
for his detention. His high birth, his hereditary authority, his religious
predilections, were so many titles of merit in the eyes of the new queen,
who was also desirous of profiting by his abilities and long experience in all
affairs civil and military. Without waiting for the concurrence of parliament,
she declared by her own authority his attainder irregular and null, restored
to him such of his lands as remained vested in the crown, and proceeded to
reinstate him in offices and honors. On August 10th he took his seat at the
council-board of the eighth English monarch whose reign he had survived
to witness; on the same day he was solemnly reinvested with the garter, of
which he had been deprived on his attainder; and a few days after, he sat as
lord-high-steward on the trial of that very duke of Northumberland to
whom, not long before, his friends and adherents had been unsuccessful
suitors for his own liberation.
There is extant a remarkable order of council, dated August 27th of this
year, "for a letter to be written to the countess of Surry to send up to
Mountjoy Place in London her youngest son, and the rest of her children, by
the earl of Surry, where they shall be received by the duke of Norfolk their
grandfather[21]." It may be conjectured that these young people were thus
authoritatively consigned to the guardianship of the duke, for the purpose of
correcting the protestant predilections in which they had been educated; and
the circumstance seems also to indicate, what indeed might be well
imagined, that little harmony or intercourse subsisted between this
nobleman and a daughter-in-law whom he had formerly sought to deprive

of her husband in order to form for him a new and more advantageous
connexion.
The eldest son of the earl of Surry, now in the seventeenth year of his age,
was honored with the title of his father; and he began his distinguished
though unfortunate career by performing, as deputy to the duke of Norfolk,
the office of earl-marshal at the queen's coronation. On the first alarm of
Wyat's rebellion, the veteran duke was summoned to march out against him;
but his measures, which otherwise promised success, were completely
foiled by the desertion of the London bands to the insurgents; and the last
military expedition of his life was destined to conclude with a hasty and
ignominious flight. He soon after withdrew entirely from the fatigues of
public life, and after all the vicissitudes of court and camp, palace and
prison, with which the lapse of eighty eventful years had rendered him
acquainted, calmly breathed his last at his own castle of Framlingham in
September 1554.
Three deprived bishops were released from the Tower, and restored with
honor to their sees. These were, Tonstal of Durham, Gardiner of Winchester,
and Bonner of London. Tonstal, many of whose younger years had been
spent in diplomatic missions, was distinguished in Europe by his erudition,
which had gained him the friendship and correspondence of Erasmus; he
was also mild, charitable, and of unblemished morals. Attached by principle
to the faith of his forefathers, but loth either to incur personal hazard, or to
sacrifice the almost princely emoluments of the see of Durham, he had
contented himself with regularly opposing in the house of lords all the
ecclesiastical innovations of Edward's reign, and as regularly giving them
his concurrence when once established. It was not, therefore, professedly on
a religious account that he had suffered deprivation and imprisonment, but
on an obscure charge of having participated in some traitorous or rebellious
design: a charge brought against him, in the opinion of most, falsely, and
through the corrupt procurement of Northumberland, to whose project of
erecting the bishopric of Durham into a county palatine for himself, the
deprivation of Tonstal, and the abolition of the see by act of parliament,
were indispensable preliminaries. This meek and amiable prelate returned to
the exercise of his high functions, without a wish of revenging on the

protestants, in their adversity, the painful acts of disingenuousness which
their late ascendency had forced upon him. During the whole of Mary's
reign, no person is recorded to have suffered for religion within the limits of
his diocess. The mercy which he had shown, he afterwards most deservedly
experienced. Refusing, on the accession of Elizabeth, to preserve his mitre
by a repetition of compliances of which so many recent examples of
conscientious suffering in men of both persuasions must have rendered him
ashamed, he suffered a second deprivation; but his person was only
committed to the honorable custody of archbishop Parker. By this learned
and munificent prelate the acquirements and virtues of Tonstal were duly
appretiated and esteemed. He found at Lambeth a retirement suited to his
age, his tastes, his favorite pursuits; by the arguments of his friendly host he
was brought to renounce several of the grosser corruptions of popery; and
dying in the year 1560, an honorable monument was erected by the primate
to his memory.
With views and sentiments how opposite did Gardiner and Bonner resume
the crosier! A deep-rooted conviction of the truth and vital importance of
the religious opinions which he defends, supplies to the persecutor the only
apology of which his foolish and atrocious barbarity admits; and to men
naturally mild and candid, we feel a consolation in allowing it in all its
force;—but by no particle of such indulgence should Bonner or Gardiner be
permitted to benefit. It would be credulity, not candor, to yield to either of
these bad men the character of sincere, though over zealous, religionists.
True it is that they had subjected themselves to the loss of their bishoprics,
and to a severe imprisonment, by a refusal to give in their renunciation of
certain doctrines of the Romish church; but they had previously gone much
further in compliance than conscience would allow to any real catholic; and
they appear to have stopped short in this career only because they perceived
in the council such a determination to strip them, under one pretext or
another, of all their preferments, as manifestly rendered further compliance
useless. Both of them had policy enough to restrain them, under such
circumstances, from degrading their characters gratuitously, and depriving
themselves of the merit of having suffered for a faith which might soon
become again predominant. They received their due reward in the favor of
Mary, who recognised them with joy as the fit instruments of all her bloody

and tyrannical designs, to which Gardiner supplied the crafty and contriving
head, Bonner the vigorous and unsparing arm.
The proud wife of the protector Somerset,—who had been imprisoned, but
never brought to trial, as an accomplice in her husband's plots,—was now
dismissed to a safe insignificance. The marchioness of Exeter, against
whom, in Henry's reign, an attainder had passed too iniquitous for even him
to carry into effect, was also rescued from her long captivity, and
indemnified for the loss of her property by some valuable grants from the
new confiscations of the Dudleys and their adherents.
The only state prisoner to whom the door was not opened on this occasion
was Geffrey Pole, that base betrayer of his brother and his friends by whose
evidence lord Montacute and the marquis of Exeter had been brought to an
untimely end. It is some satisfaction to know, that the commutation of death
for perpetual imprisonment was all the favor which this wretch obtained
from Henry; that neither Edward nor Mary broke his bonds; and that, as far
as appears, his punishment ended only with his miserable existence.
Not long, however, were these dismal abodes suffered to remain
unpeopled. The failure of the criminal enterprise of Northumberland first
filled the Tower with the associates, or victims, of his guilt. Nearly the
whole of the Dudley family were its tenants for a longer or shorter time;
and it was another remarkable coincidence of their destinies, which
Elizabeth in the after days of her power and glory might have pleasure in
recalling to her favorite Leicester, that during the whole of her captivity in
this fortress he also was included in the number of its melancholy inmates.
The places of Tonstal, Gardiner, and Bonner, were soon after supplied by
the more zealous of Edward's bishops, Holgate, Coverdale, Ridley, and
Hooper; and it was not long before the vehement Latimer and even the
cautious Cranmer were added to their suffering brethren.
The queen made no difficulty of pardoning and receiving into favor those
noblemen and others, members of the privy-council, whom a base dread of
the resentment of Northumberland had driven into compliance with his
measures in favor of Jane Grey; wisely considering, perhaps, that the men

who had submitted to be the instruments of his violent and illegal
proceedings, would feel little hesitation in lending their concurrence to hers
also. On this principle, the marquis of Winchester and the earls of Arundel
and Pembroke were employed and distinguished; the last of these
experienced courtiers making expiation for his past errors, by causing his
son, lord Herbert, to divorce the lady Catherine Grey, to whom it had so
lately suited his political views to unite him.
Sir James Hales on the contrary, that conscientious and upright judge, who
alone, of all the privy-counsellors and crown-lawyers, had persisted in
refusing his signature to the act by which Mary was disinherited of the
crown, found himself unrewarded and even discountenanced. The queen
well knew, what probably the judge was not inclined to deny, that it was
attachment, not to her person, but to the constitution of his country, which
had prompted his resistance to that violation of the legal order of
succession; and had it even been otherwise, she would have regarded all her
obligations to him as effectually cancelled by his zealous adherence to the
church establishment of the preceding reign. For daring to urge upon the
grand juries whom he addressed in his circuit, the execution of some of
Edward's laws in matter of religion, yet unrepealed, judge Hales was soon
after thrown into prison. He endured with constancy the sufferings of a long
and rigorous confinement, aggravated by the threats and ill-treatment of a
cruel jailor. At length some persons in authority were sent to propound to
him terms of release. It is suspected that they extorted from him some
concessions on the point of religion; for immediately after their departure,
retiring to his cell, in a fit of despair he stabbed himself with his knife in
different parts of the body, and was only withheld by the sudden entrance of
his servant from inflicting a mortal wound. Bishop Gardiner had the
barbarity to insult over the agony or distraction of a noble spirit overthrown
by persecution; he even converted his solitary act into a general reflection
against protestantism, which he called "the doctrine of desperation." Some
time after, Hales obtained his enlargement on payment of an arbitrary fine
of six thousand pounds. But he did not with his liberty recover his peace of
mind; and after struggling for a few months with an unconquerable
melancholy, he sought and found its final cure in the waters of a pond in his
garden.

No blood except of principals, was shed by Mary on account of the
proclamation of Jane Grey; but she visited with lower degrees of
punishment, secretly proportioned to the zeal which they had displayed in
the reformation of religion, several of the more eminent partisans of this
"meek usurper." The three tutors of king Edward, sir Anthony Cook, sir
John Cheke and Dr. Cox, were sufficiently implicated in this affair to
warrant their imprisonment for some time on suspicion; and all were eager,
on their release, to shelter themselves from the approaching storm by flight.
Cheke, after confiscation of his estate, obtained permission to travel for a
given time on the continent. Strasburgh was selected by Cook for his place
of exile. The wise moderation of character by which this excellent person
was distinguished, seems to have preserved him from taking any part in the
angry contentions of protestant with protestant, exile with exile, by which
the refugees of Strasburgh and Frankfort scandalized their brethren and
afforded matter of triumph to the church of Rome. On the accession of
Elizabeth he returned with alacrity to re-occupy and embellish the modest
mansion of his forefathers, and "through the loopholes of retreat" to view
with honest exultation the high career of public fortune run by his two
illustrious sons-in-law, Nicholas Bacon and William Cecil.
The enlightened views of society taken by sir Anthony led him to extend
to his daughters the noblest privileges of the other sex, those which concern
the early and systematic acquisition of solid knowledge. Through his
admirable instructions their minds were stored with learning, strengthened
with principles, and formed to habits of reasoning and observation, which
rendered them the worthy partners of great statesmen, who knew and felt
their value. The fame, too, of these distinguished females has reflected back
additional lustre on the character of a father, who was wont to say to them
in the noble confidence of unblemished integrity, "My life is your portion,
my example your inheritance."
Dr. Cox was quite another manner of man. Repairing first to Strasburgh,
where the English exiles had formed themselves into a congregation using
the liturgy of the church of England, he went thence to Frankfort, another
city of refuge to his countrymen at this period; where the intolerance of his
zeal against such as more inclined to the form of worship instituted by the

Genevan reformer, embarked him in a violent quarrel with John Knox,
against whom, on pretext of his having libelled the emperor, he found
means to kindle the resentment of the magistrates, who compelled him to
quit the city. After this disgraceful victory over a brother reformer smarting
under the same scourge of persecution with himself, he returned to
Strasburgh, where he more laudably employed himself in establishing a
kind of English university.
His zeal for the church of England, his sufferings in the cause, and his
services to learning, obtained for him from Elizabeth the bishopric of Ely;
but neither party enjoyed from this appointment all the satisfaction which
might have been anticipated. The courage, perhaps the self opinion, of Dr.
Cox, engaged him on several occasions in opposition to the measures of the
queen; and his narrow and persecuting spirit involved him in perpetual
disputes and animosities, which rendered the close of a long life turbulent
and unhappy, and took from his learning and gray hairs their due reverence.
The rapacity of the courtiers, who obtained grant after grant of the lands
belonging to his bishopric, was another fruitful source to him of vexation;
and he had actually tendered the resignation of his see on very humiliating
terms, when death came to his relief in the year 1581, the eighty-second of
his age.
If in this and a few other instances, the polemical zeal natural to men who
had sacrificed their worldly all for the sake of religion, was observed to
degenerate among the refugees into personal quarrels disgraceful to
themselves and injurious to their noble cause, it ought on the other hand to
be observed, that some of the firmest and most affectionate friendships of
the age were formed amongst these companions in adversity; and that by
many who attained under Elizabeth the highest preferments and
distinctions, the title of fellow-exile never ceased to be regarded as the most
sacred and endearing bond of brotherhood.
Other opportunities will arise of commemorating some of the more
eminent of the clergy who renounced their country during the persecutions
of Mary; but respecting the laity, it may here be remarked, that with the
exception of Catherine duchess-dowager of Suffolk, not a single person of
quality was found in this list of conscientious sufferers; though one peer,

probably the earl of Bedford, underwent imprisonment on a religious
account at home. Of the higher gentry, however, there were considerable
numbers who either went and established themselves in the protestant cities
of Germany, or passed away the time in travelling.
Sir Francis Knowles, whose lady was niece to Anne Boleyn, took the
former part, residing with his eldest son at Frankfort; Walsingham adopted
the latter. With the views of a future minister of state, he visited in
succession the principal courts of Europe, where he employed his diligence
and sagacity in laying the foundations of that intimate knowledge of their
policy and resources by which he afterwards rendered his services so
important to his queen and country.

CHAPTER VII.
1554 AND 1555.
Arrival of Wyat and his associates at the Tower.—Savage
treatment of them.—Further instances of Mary's severity.—Duke
of Suffolk beheaded.—Death of lady Jane Grey—of Wyat, who
clears Elizabeth of all share in his designs.—Trial of
Throgmorton.—Bill for the exclusion of Elizabeth thrown out.—
Parliament protects her rights—is dissolved.—Rigorous
confinement of Elizabeth in the Tower.—She is removed under
guard of Beddingfield—carried to Richmond—offered liberty
with the hand of the duke of Savoy—refuses—is carried to Ricot,
thence prisoner to Woodstock.—Anecdotes of her behaviour.—
Cruelty of Gardiner towards her attendants.—Verses by
Harrington.—Marriage of the queen.—Alarms of the
protestants.—Arrival of cardinal Pole.—Popery restored.—
Persecution begun.—King Philip procures the liberation of state
prisoners.—Earl of Devon travels into Italy—dies.—Obligation
of Elizabeth to Philip discussed.—She is invited to court—keeps
her Christmas there—returns to Woodstock—is brought again to
court by Philip's intercession.—Gardiner urges her to make
submissions, but in vain.—She is brought to the queen—
permitted to reside without guards at one of the royal seats—
finally settled at Hatfield.—Character of sir Thomas Pope.—
Notice of the Harringtons.—Philip quits England.—Death of
Gardiner.

T is now proper to return to circumstances more closely connected with
t

the situation of Elizabeth at this eventful period of her life.

Two or three weeks before her arrival in the Tower, Wyat with some of his
principal adherents had been carried thither. Towards these unhappy
persons, none of those decencies of behaviour were observed which the sex
and rank of Elizabeth had commanded from the ministers of her sister's
severity; and Holinshed's circumstantial narrative of the circumstances
attending their committal, may be cited as an instructive example of the
fierce and brutal manners of the age.
"Sir Philip Denny received them at the bulwark, and as Wyat passed by, he
said, 'Go, traitor, there was never such a traitor in England.' To whom sir
Thomas Wyat turned and said, 'I am no traitor; I would thou shouldest well
know that thou art more traitor than I; it is not the point of an honest man to
call me so.' And so went forth. When he came to the Tower gate, sir Thomas
Bridges lieutenant took in through the wicket first Mantell, and said; 'Ah
thou traitor! what hast thou and thy company wrought?' But he, holding
down his head, said nothing. Then came Thomas Knevet, whom master
Chamberlain, gentleman-porter of the Tower, took in. Then came Alexander
Bret, (captain of the white coats,) whom sir Thomas Pope took by the
bosom, saying, 'O traitor! how couldst thou find in thy heart to work such a
villainy as to take wages, and being trusted over a band of men, to fall to
her enemies, returning against her in battle?' Bret answered, 'Yea, I have
offended in that case.' Then came Thomas Cobham, whom sir Thomas
Poins took in, and said; 'Alas, master Cobham, what wind headed you to
work such treason?' And he answered, 'O sir! I was seduced.' Then came sir
Thomas Wyat, whom sir Thomas Bridges took by the collar, and said; 'O
thou villain! how couldst thou find in thy heart to work such detestable
treason to the queen's majesty, who gave thee thy life and living once
already, although thou didst before this time bear arms in the field against
her?[22]... If it were not (saith he) but that the law must pass upon thee, I
would stick thee through with my dagger.' To the which Wyat, holding his
arms under his sides and looking grievously with a grim look upon the
lieutenant, said, 'It is no mastery now;' and so passed on."
Other circumstances attending the suppression of this rebellion mark with
equal force the stern and vindictive spirit of Mary's government, and the
remaining barbarity of English customs. The inhabitants of London being

for the most part protestants and well affected, as the defection of their
trained bands had proved, to the cause of Wyat, it was thought expedient to
admonish them of the fruits of rebellion by the gibbeting of about sixty of
his followers in the most public parts of the city. Neither were the bodies
suffered to be removed till the public entry of king Philip after the royal
nuptials; on which festal occasion the streets were cleared of these noisome
objects which had disgraced them for nearly half a year.
Some hundreds of the meaner rebels, to whom the queen was pleased to
extend her mercy, were ordered to appear before her bound two-and-two
together, with halters about their necks; and kneeling before her in this
guise, they received her gracious pardon of all offences; but no general
amnesty was ever granted.
That the rash attempt of the duke of Suffolk should have been visited upon
himself by capital punishment, is neither to be wondered at nor censured;
but it was a foul act of cruelty to make this the pretext for taking away the
lives of a youthful pair entirely innocent of this last design, and forgiven, as
it was fondly hoped, for the almost involuntary part which they had taken in
a former and more criminal enterprise. But religious bigotry and political
jealousy, each perhaps sufficient for the effect, combined in this instance to
urge on the relentless temper of Mary; and the lady Jane Grey and
Guildford Dudley her husband were ordered to prepare for the execution of
the sentence which had remained suspended over them.
Every thinking mind must have been shocked at the vengeance taken on
Guildford Dudley,—a youth too insignificant, it might be thought, to call
forth the animadversion of the most apprehensive government, and guilty of
nothing but having accepted, in obedience to his father's pleasure, the hand
of Jane Grey. But the fate of this distinguished lady herself was calculated
to awaken stronger feelings. The fortitude, the piety, the genuine humility
and contrition evinced by her in the last scene of an unsullied life, furnished
the best evidence of her guiltlessness even of a wish to resume the sceptre
which paternal authority had once forced on her reluctant grasp; and few
could witness the piteous spectacle of her violent and untimely end, without
a thrill of indignant horror, and secret imprecations against the barbarity of
her unnatural kinswoman.

The earl of Devonshire was still detained in the Tower on Wyat's
information, as was pretended, and on other indications of guilt, all of
which were proved in the end equally fallacious: and at the time of
Elizabeth's removal hither this state-prison was thronged with captives of
minor importance implicated in the designs of Wyat. These were
assiduously plied on one hand with offers of liberty and reward, and
subjected on the other to the most rigorous treatment, the closest
interrogatories, and one of them even to the rack, in the hope of eliciting
from them some evidence which might reconcile to Mary's conscience, or
color to the nation, the death or perpetual imprisonment of a sister whom
she feared and hated.
To have brought her to criminate herself would have been better still; and
no pains were spared for this purpose. A few days after her committal,
Gardiner and other privy-councillors came to examine her respecting the
conversation which she had held with sir James Croft touching her removal
to Donnington Castle. She said, after some recollection, that she had indeed
such a place, but that she never occupied it in her life, and she did not
remember that any one had moved her so to do. Then, "to enforce the
matter," they brought forth sir James Croft, and Gardiner demanded what
she had to say to that man? She answered that she had little to say to him or
to the rest that were in the Tower. "But, my lords," said she, "you do
examine every mean prisoner of me, wherein methinks you do me great
injury. If they have done evil and offended the queen's majesty, let them
answer to it accordingly. I beseech you, my lords, join not me in this sort
with any of these offenders. And concerning my going to Donnington
Castle, I do remember that master Hobby and mine officers and you sir
James Croft had such talk;—but what is that to the purpose, my lords, but
that I may go to mine own houses at all times?" The earl of Arundel
kneeling down said, "Your grace sayeth true, and certainly we are very
sorry that we have troubled you about so vain matter." She then said, "My
lords, you do sift me very narrowly; but I am well assured you shall not do
more to me than God hath appointed, and so God forgive you all."
Before their departure sir James Croft kneeled down before her, declaring
that he was sorry to see the day in which he should be brought as a witness

against her grace. But he added, that he had been "marvellously tossed and
examined touching her grace;" and ended by protesting his innocence of the
crime laid to his charge[23].
Wyat was at length, on April 11th, brought to his death; when he
confounded all the hopes and expectations of Elizabeth's enemies, by
strenuously and publicly asserting her entire innocence of any participation
in his designs.
Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was brought to the bar immediately afterwards.
His trial at length, as it has come down to us in Holinshed's Chronicle, is
one of the most interesting documents of that nature extant. He was
esteemed "a deep conspirator, whose post was thought to be at London as a
factor, to give intelligence as well to them in the West, as to Wyat and the
rest in Kent. It was believed that he gave notice to Wyat to come forward
with his power, and that the Londoners would be ready to take his part. And
that he sent a post to sir Peter Carew also, to advance with as much speed as
might be, and to bring his forces with him.
"He was said moreover to be the man that excited the earl of Devon to go
down into the West, and that sir James Croft and he had many times
consulted about the whole matter[24]."
To these political offences, sir Nicholas added religious principles still
more heinous in the eyes of Mary. He, with two other gentlemen of his
family, had been of the number of those who attended to the stake that
noble martyr Anne Askew, burned for heresy in the latter end of Henry's
reign; when they were bid to take care of their lives, for they were all
marked men. Since the accession of Mary also he had "bemoaned to his
friend sir Edward Warner, late lieutenant of the Tower, his own estate and
the tyranny of the times, extending upon divers honest persons for religion,
and wished it were lawful for all of each religion to live safely according to
their conscience. For the law ex-officio he said would be intolerable, and the
clergy discipline now might rather be resembled to the Turkish tyranny than
the teaching of the Christian religion. Which words he was not afraid at his
trial openly to acknowledge that he had said to the said Warner[25]."

The prosecution was conducted with all the iniquity which the corrupt
practice of that age admitted. Not only was the prisoner debarred the
assistance of counsel on his trial, he was even refused the privilege of
calling a single witness in his favor. He defended himself however under all
these disadvantages, with surprising skill, boldness and presence of mind;
and he retorted with becoming spirit the brutal taunts of the crown lawyers
and judges, who disgraced themselves on the occasion by all the excesses of
an unprincipled servility. Fortunately for Throgmorton, the additional
clauses to the treason laws added under Henry VIII. had been abolished
under his successor and were not yet re-enacted. Only the clear and
equitable statute of Edward III. remained therefore in force; and the lawyers
were reduced to endeavour at such an explanation of it as should
comprehend a kind of constructive treason. "If," said they, "it be proved that
the prisoner was connected with Wyat, and of his counsel, the overt acts of
Wyat are to be taken as his, and visited accordingly." But besides that no
participation with Wyat after he had taken up arms, was proved upon
Throgmorton, the jury were moved by his solemn protest against so
unwarrantable a principle as that the overt acts of one man might be
charged as overt acts upon another. They acquitted him therefore with little
hesitation, to the inexpressible disappointment and indignation of the queen
and her ministers, who then possessed the power of making their
displeasure on such an occasion deeply felt. The jury were immediately
committed to custody, and eight of them, who refused to confess themselves
in fault, were further imprisoned for several months and heavily fined.
The acquitted person himself, in defiance of all law and justice, was
remanded to the Tower, and did not regain his liberty till the
commencement of the following year, when the intercession of king Philip
obtained the liberation of almost all the prisoners there detained.
Throgmorton, like all the others called in question for the late
insurrections, was closely questioned respecting Elizabeth and the earl of
Devon; "and very fain," we are told, "the privy-councillors employed in this
work would have got out of him something against them. For when at
Throgmorton's trial, his writing containing his confession was read in open
court, he prayed the queen's serjeant that was reading it to read further, 'that

hereafter,' said he, 'whatsoever become of me, my words may not be
perverted and abused to the hurt of some others, and especially against the
great personages of whom I have been sundry times, as appears by my
answers, examined. For I perceive the net was not cast only for little fishes
but for great ones[26]."
This generous concern for the safety of Elizabeth in the midst of his own
perils appears not to have been lost upon her; and under the ensuing reign
we shall have the satisfaction of seeing the abilities of sir Nicholas
displayed in other scenes and under happier auspices.
All manifestations of popular favor towards those whom the court had
proscribed and sought to ruin, were at this juncture visited with the extreme
of arbitrary severity. Two merchants of London, for words injurious to the
queen, but principally for having affirmed that Wyat at his death had cleared
the lady Elizabeth and the earl of Devonshire, were set in the pillory, to
which their ears were fastened with large nails.
It was in fact an object of great importance to the catholic party to keep up
the opinion, so industriously inculcated, of the princess being implicated in
the late disturbances; since it was only on this false pretext that she could be
detained close prisoner in the Tower while a fatal stroke was aimed against
her rights and interests.
Gardiner, now chancellor and prime minister, the most inveterate of
Elizabeth's enemies and the most devoted partisan of the Spanish interest,
thinking that all was subdued to the wishes of the court, brought before the
new parliament a bill for declaring the princess illegitimate and incapable of
succeeding:—it was indignantly rejected, however, by a great majority; but
the failure only admonished him to renew the attack in a more indirect and
covert manner. Accordingly, the articles of the marriage treaty between
Mary and the prince of Spain, artfully drawn with great seeming advantage
to England, had no sooner received the assent of the two houses, than he
proposed a law for conferring upon the queen the same power enjoyed by
her father; that of naming a successor. But neither could this be obtained
from a house of commons attached for the most part to the protestant cause
and the person of the rightful heir, and justly apprehensive of the extinction

of their few remaining privileges under the yoke of a detested foreign
tyrant. Nobody doubted that it was the purpose of the queen, in default of
immediate issue of her own, to bequeath the crown to her husband, whose
descent from a daughter of John of Gaunt had been already much insisted
on by his adherents. The bill was therefore thrown out; and the alarm
excited by its introduction had caused the house to pass several spirited
resolutions, one of which declared that her majesty should reign as a sole
queen without any participation of her authority, while the rest guarded in
various points against the anticipated encroachments of Philip, when Mary
thought good to put a stop to the further discussion of the subject by a
prorogation of parliament.
After these manifold disappointments, the court party was compelled to
give up, with whatever reluctance, its deep-laid plots against the
unoffending princess. Her own prudence had protected her life; and the
independent spirit of a house of commons conscious of speaking the sense
of the nation guarantied her succession. One only resource remained to
Gardiner and his faction:—they judged that a long-continued absence,
while it gradually loosened her hold upon the affections of the people,
would afford many facilities for injuring or supplanting her; and it was
determined soon to provide for her a kind of honorable banishment.
The confinement of the princess in the Tower had purposely been
rendered as irksome and comfortless as possible. It was not till after a
month's close imprisonment, by which her health had suffered severely, that
she obtained, after many difficulties, permission to walk in the royal
apartments; and this under the constant inspection of the constable of the
Tower and the lord-chamberlain, with the attendance of three of the queen's
women; the windows also being shut, and she not permitted to look out at
them. Afterwards she had liberty to walk in a small garden, the gates and
doors being carefully closed; and the prisoners whose rooms looked into it
being at such times closely watched by their keepers, to prevent the
interchange of any word or sign with the princess. Even a child of five years
old belonging to some inferior officer in the Tower, who was wont to cheer
her by his daily visits, and to bring her flowers, was suspected of being
employed as a messenger between her and the earl of Devonshire; and

notwithstanding the innocent simplicity of his answers to the lord-
chamberlain by whom he was strictly examined, was ordered to visit her no
more. The next day the child peeped in through a hole of the door as she
walked in the garden, crying out, "Mistress, I can bring you no more
flowers!" for which, it seems, his father was severely chidden and ordered
to keep his boy out of the way.
From the beginning of her imprisonment orders had been given that the
princess should have mass regularly said in her apartment. It is probable
that Elizabeth did not feel any great repugnance to this rite:—however this
might be, she at least expressed none; and by this compliance deprived her
sister of all pretext for persecuting her on a religious ground. But some of
her household were found less submissive on this head, and she had the
mortification of seeing Mrs. Sands, one of her ladies, carried forcibly away
from her under an accusation of heresy and her place supplied by another.
All these severities failed however of their intended effect: neither
sufferings nor menaces could bring the princess to acknowledge herself
guilty of offending even in thought against her sovereign and sister; and as
the dying asseverations of Wyat had fully acquitted her in the eyes of the
country, it became evident that her detention in the Tower could not much
longer be persisted in. Yet the habitual jealousy of Mary's government, and
the apparent danger of furnishing a head to the protestants rendered
desperate by her cruelties, forbade the entire liberation of the princess; and
it was resolved to adopt as a middle course the expedient sanctioned by
many examples in that age, of committing her to the care of certain persons
who should be answerable for her safe keeping, either in their own houses,
or at some one of the royal seats. Lord Williams of Thame, and sir Henry
Beddingfield captain of the guard, were accordingly joined in commission
for the execution of this delicate and important trust.
The unfortunate prisoner conceived neither hope nor comfort from this
approaching change in her situation, nor probably was it designed that she
should; for intimidation seems still to have formed an essential feature in
the policy of her relentless enemies. Sir Henry Beddingfield entered the
Tower at the head of a hundred of his men; and Elizabeth, struck with the
unexpected sight, could not forbear inquiring with dismay, whether the lady

Jane's scaffold were removed? On being informed that it was, she received
some comfort, but this was not of long duration; for soon a frightful rumor
reached her, that she was to be carried away by this captain and his soldiers
no one knew whither. She sent immediately for lord Chandos, constable of
the Tower, whose humanity and courtesy had led him to soften as much as
possible the hardships of her situation, though at the hazard of incurring the
indignation of the court; and closely questioning him, he at length plainly
told her that there was no help for it, orders were given, and she must be
consigned to Beddingfield's care to be carried, as he believed, to
Woodstock. Anxious and alarmed, she now asked of her attendants what
kind of man this Beddingfield was; and whether, if the murdering of her
were secretly committed to him, his conscience would allow him to see it
executed? None about her could give a satisfactory answer, for he was a
stranger to them all; but they bade her trust in God that such wickedness
should not be perpetrated against her.
At length, on May 19th, after a close imprisonment of three months, she
was brought out of the Tower under the conduct of Beddingfield and his
troop; and on the evening of the same day found herself at Richmond
Palace, where her sister then kept her court. She was still treated in all
respects like a captive: the manners of Beddingfield were harsh and
insolent; and such terror did she conceive from the appearances around her,
that sending for her gentleman-usher, she desired him and the rest of her
officers to pray for her; "For this night," said she, "I think to die." The
gentleman, much affected by her distress, encouraged her as well as he was
able: then going down to lord Williams, who was walking with
Beddingfield, he called him aside and implored him to tell him sincerely,
whether any mischief were designed against his mistress that night or no;
"that he and his men might take such part as God should please to appoint."
"For certainly," added this faithful servant, "we will rather die than she
should secretly and innocently miscarry." "Marry, God forbid," answered
Williams, "that any such wicked purpose should be wrought; and rather
than it should be so, I with my men are ready to die at her feet also."
In the midst of her gloomy apprehensions, the princess was surprised by
an offer from the highest quarter, of immediate liberty on condition of her

accepting the hand of the duke of Savoy in marriage.
Oppressed, persecuted, and a prisoner, sequestered from every friend and
counsellor, guarded day and night by soldiers, and in hourly dread of some
attempt upon her life, it must have been confidently expected that the young
princess would embrace as a most joyful and fortunate deliverance this
unhoped-for proposal; and by few women, certainly, under all the
circumstances, would such expectations have been frustrated. But the firm
mind of Elizabeth was not thus to be shaken, nor her penetration deceived.
She saw that it was banishment which was held out to her in the guise of
marriage; she knew that it was her reversion of an independent English
crown which she was required to barter for the matrimonial coronet of a
foreign dukedom; and she felt the proposal as what in truth it was;—an
injury in disguise. Fortunately for herself and her country, she had the
magnanimity to disdain the purchase of present ease and safety at a price so
disproportionate; and returning to the overture a modest but decided
negative, she prepared herself to endure with patience and resolution the
worst that her enraged and baffled enemies might dare against her.
No sooner was her refusal of the offered marriage made known, than
orders were given for her immediate removal into Oxfordshire. On crossing
the river at Richmond on this melancholy journey, she descried on the other
side "certain of her poor servants," who had been restrained from giving
their attendance during her imprisonment, and were anxiously desirous of
seeing her again. "Go to them," said she to one of her men, "and say these
words from me, Tanquam ovis" (Like a sheep to the slaughter).
As she travelled on horseback the journey occupied four days, and the
slowness of her progress gave opportunity for some striking displays of
popular feeling. In one place, numbers of people were seen standing by the
way-side who presented to her various little gifts; for which Beddingfield
did not scruple, in his anger, to call them traitors and rebels. The bells were
every where rung as she passed through the villages, in token of joy for her
liberation; but the people were soon admonished that she was still a
prisoner and in disgrace, by the orders of Beddingfield to set the ringers in
the stocks.

On the third evening she arrived at Ricot, the house of lord Williams,
where its owner, gracefully sinking the character of a watchful
superintendant in that of a host who felt himself honored by her visit,
introduced her to a large circle of nobility and gentry whom he had invited
to bid her welcome. The severe or suspicious temper of Beddingfield took
violent umbrage at the sight of such an assemblage: he caused his soldiers
to keep strict watch; insisted that none of the guests should be permitted to
pass the night in the house; and asked lord Williams if he were aware of the
consequences of thus entertaining the queen's prisoner? But he made
answer, that he well knew what he did, and that "her grace might and should
in his house be merry." Intelligence however had no sooner reached the
court of the reception afforded to the princess at Ricot, than directions
arrived for her immediate removal to Woodstock. Here, under the harsher
inspection of Beddingfield, she found herself once more a prisoner. No
visitant was permitted to approach; the doors were closed upon her as in the
Tower; and a military guard again kept watch around the walls both day and
night.
We possess many particulars relative to the captivity of Elizabeth at
Woodstock. In some of them we may recognise that spirit of exaggeration
which the anxious sympathy excited by her sufferings at the time, and the
unbounded adulation paid to her afterwards, were certain to produce; others
bear all the characters of truth and nature.
It is certain that her present residence, though less painful and especially
less opprobrious than imprisonment in the Tower, was yet a state of
rigorous constraint and jealous inspection, in which she was haunted with
cares and fears which robbed her youth of its bloom and vivacity, and her
constitution of its vigor. On June 8th such was the state of her health that
two physicians were sent from the court who remained for several days in
attendance on her. On their return, they performed for their patient the
friendly office of making a favorable report of her behaviour and of the
dutiful humility of her sentiments towards her majesty, which was received,
we are told, with more complacency by Mary than by her bishops. Soon
after, she was advised by some friend to make her peace with the queen by
submissions and acknowledgements, which, with her usual constancy, she

absolutely refused, though apparently the only terms on which she could
hope for liberty.
Under such circumstances we may give easy belief to the touching
anecdote, that "she, hearing upon a time out of her garden at Woodstock, a
milkmaid singing pleasantly, wished herself a milkmaid too; saying that her
case was better, and her life merrier than hers."
The instances related of the severity and insolence of sir Henry
Beddingfield are to be received with more distrust. We are told, that
observing a chair of state prepared for the princess in an upper chamber at
lord Williams's house, he seized upon it for himself and insolently ordered
his boots to be pulled off in that apartment. Yet we learn from the same
authority that afterwards at Woodstock, when she seems to have been in his
sole custody, Elizabeth having called him her jailor, on observing him lock
the gate of the garden while she was walking in it, he fell on his knees and
entreated her grace not to give him that name, for he was appointed to be
one of her officers. It has also been asserted, that on her accession to the
throne she dismissed him from her presence with the speech, that she
prayed God to forgive him, as she did, and that when she had a prisoner
whom she would have straitly kept and hardly used, she would send for
him. But if she ever used to him words like these, it must have been in jest;
for it is known from the best authority, that Beddingfield was frequently at
the court of Elizabeth, and that she once visited him on a progress. If there
is any truth in the stories told of persons of suspicious appearance lurking
about the walls of the palace, who sought to gain admittance for the purpose
of taking away her life, the exact vigilance of her keeper, by which all
access was barred, might more deserve her thanks than her reproaches.
During the period that the princess was thus industriously secluded from
conversation with any but the few attendants who had been allowed to
remain about her person, her correspondence was not less watchfully
restricted. We are told, that when, after urgent application to the council,
she had at length been permitted to write to the queen, Beddingfield looked
over her as she wrote, took the paper into his own keeping when she
paused, and brought it back to her when she chose to resume her task.

Yet could not his utmost precaution entirely cut off her communications
with the large and zealous party who rested upon her all their hopes of
better times for themselves or for the country. Through the medium of a
visitor to one of her ladies, she received the satisfactory assurance that none
of the prisoners for Wyat's business had been brought to utter any thing by
which she could be endangered. Perhaps it was with immediate reference to
this intelligence that she wrote with a diamond on her window the homely
but expressive distich,
"Much suspected by me
Nothing proved can be,
Quoth Elizabeth prisoner."
But these secret intelligencers were not always fortunate enough to escape
detection, of which the consequences were rendered very grievous through
the arbitrary severity of Mary's government, and the peculiar malice
exercised by Gardiner against the adherents of the princess.
Sir John Harrington, son to the gentleman of the same name formerly
mentioned as a follower of admiral Seymour, thus, in his Brief View of the
Church, sums up the character of this celebrated bishop of Winchester, with
reference to this part of his conduct.
"Lastly, the plots he laid to entrap the lady Elizabeth, and his terrible hard
usage of all her followers, I cannot yet scarce think of with charity, nor
write of with patience. My father, for only carrying a letter to the lady
Elizabeth, and professing to wish her well, he kept in the Tower twelve
months, and made him spend a thousand pounds ere he could be free of that
trouble. My mother, that then served the lady Elizabeth, he caused to be
sequestered from her as an heretic, insomuch that her own father durst not
take her into his house, but she was glad to sojourn with one Mr. Topcliff;
so as I may say in some sort, this bishop persecuted me before I was born."
In the twelfth month of his imprisonment, this unfortunate Harrington,
having previously sent to the bishop many letters and petitions for liberty
without effect, had the courage to address to him a "Sonnet," which his son
has cited as "no ill verse for those unrefined times;" a modest

commendation of lines so spirited, which the taste of the more modern
reader, however fastidious, need not hesitate to confirm.
To Bishop Gardiner.

1.
"At least withdraw your cruelty,
Or force the time to work your will;
It is too much extremity
To keep me pent in prison still,
Free from all fault, void of all cause,
Without all right, against all laws.
How can you do more cruel spite
Than proffer wrong and promise right?
Nor can accuse, nor will acquight.

2.
Eleven months past and longer space
I have abode your dev'lish drifts,
While you have sought both man and place,
And set your snares, with all your shifts,
The faultless foot to wrap in wile
With any guilt, by any guile:
And now you see that will not be,
How can you thus for shame agree
To keep him bound you should set free?

3.
Your chance was once as mine is now,
To keep this hold against your will,
And then you sware you well know how,
Though now you swerve, I know how ill.
But thus this world his course doth pass,
The priest forgets a clerk he was,
And you that have cried justice still,
And now have justice at your will,

Wrest justice wrong against all skill.

4.
But why do I thus coldly plain
As if it were my cause alone?
When cause doth each man so constrain
As England through hath cause to moan,
To see your bloody search of such
As all the earth can no way touch.
And better were that all your kind
Like hounds in hell with shame were shrined,
Than you add might unto your mind.

5.
But as the stone that strikes the wall
Sometimes bounds back on th' hurler's head,
So your foul fetch, to your foul fall
May turn, and 'noy the breast that bred.
And then, such measure as you gave
Of right and justice look to have,
If good or ill, if short or long;
If false or true, if right or wrong;
And thus, till then, I end my song."
Such were the trials and sufferings which exercised the fortitude of
Elizabeth and her faithful followers during her deplorable abode at
Woodstock. Mary, meanwhile, was rapt in fond anticipations of the felicity
of her married life with a prince for whom, on the sight of his picture, she is
said to have conceived the most violent passion. The more strongly her
people expressed their aversion and dread of the Spanish match, the more
vehemently did she show herself bent on its conclusion; and having
succeeded in suppressing by force the formidable rebellion to which the
first report of such an union had given birth, she judged it unnecessary to
employ any of those arts of popularity to which her disposition was
naturally adverse, for conciliating to herself or her destined spouse the good
will of her subjects. After many delays which severely tried her temper, the

arrival of the prince of Spain at Southampton was announced to the
expecting queen, who went as far as Winchester to meet him, in which city
Gardiner blessed their nuptials on July the 27th, 1554.
The royal pair passed in state through London a few days after, and the
city exhibited by command the outward tokens of rejoicing customary in
that age. Bonfires were kindled in the open places, tables spread in the
streets at which all passers-by might freely regale themselves with liquor:
every parish sent forth its procession singing Te Deum; the fine cross in
Cheapside was beautified and newly gilt, and pageants were set up in the
principal streets. But there was little gladness of heart among the people;
and one of these festal devices gave occasion to a manifestation of the
dispositions of the court respecting religion, which filled the citizens with
grief and horror. A large picture had been hung over the conduit in
Gracechurch street representing the nine Worthies, and among them king
Henry VIII. made his appearance, according to former draughts of him,
holding in his hand a book on which was inscribed "Verbum Dei." This
accompaniment gave so much offence, that Gardiner sent for the painter;
and after chiding him severely, ordered that a pair of gloves should be
substituted for the bible.
Religion had already been restored to the state in which it remained at the
death of Henry; but this was by no means sufficient to satisfy the
conscience of the queen, which required the entire restoration in all its
parts, of the ancient church-establishment. It had been, in fact, one of the
first acts of her reign to forward to Rome a respectful embassy which
conveyed to the sovereign pontiff her recognition of the supremacy of the
holy see, and a petition that he would be pleased to invest with the character
of his legate for England Cardinal Pole,—that earnest champion of her own
legitimacy and the church's unity, who had been for so many years the
object of her father's bitterest animosity.
Mary's precipitate zeal had received some check in this instance from the
worldly policy of the emperor Charles V., who, either entertaining some
jealousy of the influence of Pole with the queen, or at least judging it fit to
secure the great point of his son's marriage before the patience of the people
of England should be proved by the arrival of a papal legate, had impeded

the journey of the cardinal by a detention of several weeks in his court at
Brussels. But no sooner was Philip in secure possession of his bride, than
Pole was suffered to proceed on his mission. The parliament, which met
early in November 1554, reversed the attainder which had laid him under
sentence of death, and on the 24th of the same month he was received at
court with great solemnity, and with every demonstration of affection on the
part of his royal cousin.
From this period the cause of popery proceeded triumphantly: a reign of
terror commenced; and the government gained fresh strength and courage
by every exertion of the tyrannic power which it had assumed. After the
married clergy had been reduced to give up either their wives or their
benefices, and the protestant bishops deprived, and many of them
imprisoned, without exciting any popular commotion in their behalf, the
court became emboldened to propose in parliament a solemn reconciliation
of the country to the papal see. A house of commons more obsequious than
the former acceded to the motion, and on November 29th the legate
formally absolved the nation from all ecclesiastical censures, and
readmitted it within the pale of the church.
The ancient statutes against heretics were next revived; and the violent
counsels of Gardiner proving more acceptable to the queen than the milder
ones of Pole, a furious persecution was immediately set on foot. Bishops
Hooper and Rogers were the first victims; Saunders and Taylor, two
eminent divines, succeeded; upon all of whom Gardiner pronounced
sentence in person; after which he resigned to Bonner, his more brutal but
not more merciless colleague, the inglorious task of dragging forth to
punishment the heretics of inferior note and humbler station. In the midst
however of his barbarous proceedings, of which London was the principal
theatre, the bench of bishops thought proper in solemn assembly to declare
that they had no part in such severities; and Philip, who shrank from the
odium of the very deeds most grateful to his savage soul, caused a Spanish
friar his confessor to preach before him in praise of toleration, and to show
that Christians could bring no warrant from Scripture for shedding the
blood of their brethren on account of religious differences. But justly
apprehensive that so extraordinary a declaration of opinion from such a

person might not of itself suffice to establish in the minds of the English
that character of lenity and moderation which he found it his interest to
acquire, he determined to add some few deeds to words.
About the close of the year 1554, sir Nicholas Throgmorton, Robert
Dudley, and all the other prisoners on account of the usurpation of Jane
Grey or the insurrection of Wyat, were liberated, at the intercession, as was
publicly declared, of king Philip; and he soon after employed his good
offices in the cause of two personages still more interesting to the feelings
of the nation,—the princess Elizabeth and the earl of Devonshire.
It is worth while to estimate the value of these boasted acts of generosity.
With regard to Courtney it may be sufficient to observe, that a close
investigation of facts had proved him to have been grateful for the
liberation extended to him by Mary on her accession, and averse from all
schemes for disturbing her government, and that the queen's marriage had
served to banish from her mind some former grounds of displeasure against
him. Nothing but an union with Elizabeth could at this time have rendered
him formidable; and it was easy to guard effectually against the
accomplishment of any such design, without the odious measure of
detaining the earl in perpetual imprisonment at Fotheringay Castle, whither
he had been already removed from the Tower. After all, it was but the
shadow of liberty which he was permitted to enjoy; and he found himself so
beset with spies and suspicion, that a very few months after his release he
requested and obtained the royal license to travel. Proceeding into Italy, he
shortly after ended at Padua his blameless and unfortunate career. Popular
fame attributed his early death to poison administered by the Imperialists,
but probably, as in a multitude of similar cases, on no sufficient authority.
As to Elizabeth, certain writers have ascribed Philip's protection of her at
this juncture to the following deduction of consequences;—that if she were
taken off, and if the queen should die childless, England would become the
inheritance of the queen of Scots, now betrothed to the dauphin, and thus go
to augment the power of France, already the most formidable rival of the
Spanish monarchy. Admitting however that such a calculation of remote
contingencies might not be too refined to act upon the politic brain of
Philip, it is yet plainly absurd to suppose that the life or death of Elizabeth

was at this time at all the matter in question. Secret assassination does not
appear to have been so much as dreamed of, and Mary and her council,
even supposing them to have been sufficiently wicked, were certainly not
audacious enough to think of bringing to the scaffold, without form of trial,
without even a plausible accusation, the immediate heiress of the crown,
and the hope and favorite of the nation. The only question must now have
been, what degree of liberty it would be advisable to allow her; and a due
consideration of the facts, that she had already been removed from the
Tower, and that after her second release, (that, namely, from Woodstock),
she was never, to the end of the reign, permitted to reside in a house of her
own without an inspector of her conduct, will reduce within very moderate
limits the vaunted claims of Philip to her lasting gratitude.
The project of marrying the princess to the duke of Savoy had doubtless
originated with the Spanish court; and it was still persisted in by Philip,
from the double motive of providing for the head of the protestant party in
England a kind of honorable exile, and of attaching to himself by the gift of
her hand, a young prince whom he favored and destined to high
employments in his service. But as severity had already been tried in vain to
bring Elizabeth to compliance on this point, it seems now to have been
determined to make experiment of opposite measures. The duke of Savoy,
who had attended Philip to England, was still in the country; and as he was
in the prime of life and a man of merit and talents, it appeared not
unreasonable to hope that a personal interview might incline the princess to
lend a more propitious ear to his suit. To this consideration then we are
probably to ascribe the invitation which admitted Elizabeth to share in the
festivals of a Christmas celebrated by Philip and Mary at Hampton Court
with great magnificence, and which must have been that of the year 1554,
because this is well known to have been the only one passed by the Spanish
prince in England.
A contemporary chronicle still preserved amongst the MSS of the British
Museum, furnishes several particulars of her entertainment. On Christmas
eve, the great hall of the palace being illuminated with a thousand lamps
artificially disposed, the king and queen supped in it; the princess being
seated at the same table, next to the cloth of estate. After supper she was

served with a perfumed napkin and a plate of "comfects" by lord Paget, but
retired to her ladies before the revels, masking, and disguisings began. On
St. Stephen's day she heard mattins in the queen's closet adjoining to the
chapel, where she was attired in a robe of white satin, strung all over with
large pearls; and on December the 29th she sat with their majesties and the
nobility at a grand spectacle of justing, when two hundred spears were
broken by combatants of whom half were accoutered in the Almaine and
half in the Spanish fashion.
How soon the princess again exchanged the splendors of a court for the
melancholy monotony of Woodstock does not appear from this document,
nor from any other with which I am acquainted; but several circumstances
make it clear that we ought to place about this period an incident recorded
by Holinshed, and vaguely stated to have occurred soon after "the stir of
Wyat" and the troubles of Elizabeth for that cause. A servant of the
princess's had summoned a person before the magistrates for having
mentioned his lady by the contumelious appellation of a jill, and having
made use of other disparaging language respecting her. Was it to be
endured, asked the accuser, that a low fellow like this should speak of her
grace thus insolently, when the greatest personages in the land treated her
with every mark of respect? He added, "I saw yesterday in the court that my
lord cardinal Pole, meeting her in the chamber of presence, kneeled down
on his knee and kissed her hand; and I saw also, that king Philip meeting
her made her such obeisance that his knee touched the ground."
If this story be correct, which is not indeed vouched by the chronicler, but
which seems to bear internal evidence of genuineness, it will go far to prove
that the situation of Elizabeth during her abode at Woodstock was by no
means that opprobrious captivity which it has usually been represented. She
visited the court, it appears, occasionally, perhaps frequently; and was
greeted in public by the king himself with every demonstration of civility
and respect;—demonstrations which, whether accompanied or not by the
corresponding sentiments, would surely suffice to protect her from all harsh
or insolent treatment on the part of those to whom the immediate
superintendance of her actions was committed.

Her enemies however were still numerous and powerful; and it is certain
that she found no advocate in the heart of her sister. That able, but
thoroughly profligate politician lord Paget, notwithstanding his serving the
princess with "comfects," is reported to have said, that the queen would
never have peace in the country till her head were smitten off; and Gardiner
never ceased to look upon her with an evil eye. Lord Williams, it seems,
had made suit that he might be permitted to take her from Woodstock to his
own home, giving large bail for her safe keeping; and as he was a known
catholic and much in favor, it was supposed at first that his petition would
be heard; but by some secret influence the mind of Mary was indisposed to
the granting of this indulgence and the proposal was dropped. But the
Spanish counsellors who attended their prince never ceased, we are told, to
persuade him "that the like honor he should never obtain as he should in
delivering the lady Elizabeth" out of her confinement: and Philip, who was
now labouring earnestly at the design, which he had entertained ever since
his marriage, of procuring himself to be crowned king of England, was
himself aware of the necessity of previously softening the prejudices of the
nation by some act of conspicuous popularity: he renewed therefore his
solicitations on this point with a zeal which rendered them effectual. The
moment indeed was favorable;—Mary, who now believed herself far
advanced in pregnancy, was too happy in her hopes to remain inflexible to
the entreaties of her husband; and the privy-council, in their sanguine
expectations of an heir, viewed the princess as less than formerly an object
of political jealousy. And thus, by a contrariety of cause and effect by no
means rare in the complicated system of human affairs, Elizabeth became
indebted for present tranquillity and comparative freedom to the
concurrence of projects and expectations the most fatal to all her hopes of
future greatness.
About the end of April, 1555, the princess took at length her final
departure from Woodstock, and proceeded,—but still under the escort of
Beddingfield and his men,—to Hampton Court. At Colnbrook she was met
by her own gentlemen and yeomen to the number of sixty, "much," says
John Fox, "to all their comforts, which had not seen her of long season
before, notwithstanding they were immediately commanded in the queen's
name to depart the town, and she not suffered once to speak to them."

The next day she reached Hampton Court, and was ushered into the
prince's lodgings; but the doors were closed upon her and guarded as at
Woodstock, and it was a fortnight, according to the martyrologist, before
any one had recourse to her.
At the end of this time she was solaced by a visit from lord William
Howard, son of the old duke of Norfolk, and first-cousin to her mother, who
"very honorably used her," and through whom she requested to speak to
some of the privy-council. Several of its members waited upon her in
consequence, and Gardiner among the rest, who "humbled himself before
her with all humility," but nevertheless seized the opportunity to urge her
once more to make submission to the queen, as a necessary preliminary to
the obtaining of her favor. Elizabeth, with that firmness and wisdom which
had never, in her severest trials, forsaken her, declared that rather than do
so, she would lie in prison all the days of her life; adding, that she craved no
mercy at her majesty's hand, but rather the law, if ever she did offend her in
thought, word, or deed. "And besides this," said she, "in yielding I should
speak against myself, and confess myself an offender, by occasion of which
the king and queen might ever after conceive of me an ill opinion; and it
were better for me to lie in prison for the truth, than to be abroad and
suspected of my prince." The councillors now departed, promising to
deliver her message to the queen. The next day Gardiner waited upon her
again and told her that her majesty "marvelled she would so stoutly carry
herself, denying to have offended; so that it should seem the queen had
wrongfully imprisoned her grace:" and that she must tell another tale ere
she had her liberty. The lady Elizabeth declared she would stand to her
former resolution, for she would never belie herself. "Then," said the
bishop, "your grace hath the 'vantage of me and the other councillors for
your long and wrong imprisonment." She took God to witness that she
sought no 'vantage against them for their so dealing with her. Gardiner and
the rest then kneeled, desiring that all might be forgotten, and so departed;
she being locked up again.
About a week after the failure of this last effort of her crafty enemy to
extort some concession which might afterwards be employed to criminate

her or justify himself, she received a sudden summons from the queen, and
was conducted by torch-light to the royal apartments.
Mary received her in her chamber, to which she had now confined herself
in expectation of that joyful event which was destined never to arrive. The
princess on entering kneeled down, and protested herself a true and loyal
subject, adding, that she did not doubt that her majesty would one day find
her to be such, whatever different report had gone of her. The queen
expressed at first some dissatisfaction at her still persisting so strongly in
her assertions of innocence, thinking that she might take occasion to
inveigh against her imprisonment as the act of injustice and oppression
which in truth it was; but on her sister's replying in a submissive manner,
that it was her business to bear what the queen was pleased to inflict and
that she should make no complaints, she appears to have been appeased.
Fox's account however is, that they parted with few comfortable words of
the queen in English, but what she said in Spanish was not known: that it
was thought that king Philip was there behind a cloth, and not seen, and that
he showed himself "a very friend" in this business. From other accounts we
learn, that Elizabeth scrupled not the attempt to ingratiate herself with Mary
at this interview by requesting that her majesty would be pleased to send
her some catholic tractates for confirmation of her faith and to counteract
the doctrines which she had imbibed from the works of the reformers. Mary
showed herself somewhat distrustful of her professions on this point, but
dismissed her at length with tokens of kindness. She put upon her finger, as
a pledge of amity, a ring worth seven hundred crowns;—mentioned that sir
Thomas Pope was again appointed to reside with her, and observing that he
was already well known to her sister commended him as a person whose
prudence, humanity, and other estimable qualities, were calculated to render
her new situation perfectly agreeable.
To what place the princess was first conveyed from this audience does not
appear, but it must have been to one of the royal seats in the neighbourhood
of London, to several of which she was successively removed during some
time; after which she was permitted to establish herself permanently at the
palace of Hatfield in Hertfordshire.

From this auspicious interview the termination of her prisoner-state may
be dated. Henceforth she was released from the formidable parade of guards
and keepers; no doors were closed, no locks were turned upon her; and
though her place of residence was still prescribed, and could not,
apparently, be changed by her at pleasure, she was treated in all respects as
at home and mistress of her actions.
Sir Thomas Pope was a man of worth and a gentleman; and such were the
tenderness and discretion with which he exercised the delicate trust reposed
in him, that the princess must soon have learned to regard him in the light
of a real friend. It is not a little remarkable at the same time, that the person
selected by Mary to receive so distinguished a proof of her confidence,
should have made his first appearance in public life as the active assistant of
Cromwel in the great work of the destruction of monasteries; and that from
grants of abbey lands, which the queen esteemed it sacrilege to touch, he
had derived the whole of that wealth of which he was now employing a
considerable portion in the foundation of Trinity college Oxford.
But sir Thomas Pope, even in the execution of the arbitrary and rapacious
mandates of Henry, had been advantageously distinguished amongst his
colleagues by the qualities of mildness and integrity; and the circumstance
of his having obtained a seat at the council-board of Mary from the very
commencement of her reign, proves him to have acquired some peculiar
merits in her eyes. Certain it is, however, that a furious zeal, whether real or
pretended, for the Romish faith, was not amongst his courtly arts; for
though strictly enjoined to watch over the due performance and attendance
of mass in the family of the princess, he connived at her retaining about her
person many servants who were earnest protestants.
This circumstance unfortunately reached the vigilant ears of Gardiner; and
it was to a last expiring effort of his indefatigable malice that Elizabeth
owed the mortification of seeing two gentlemen from the queen arrive at
Lamer, a house in Hertfordshire which she then occupied, who carried away
her favorite Mrs. Ashley and three of her maids of honor, and lodged them
in the Tower.

Isabella Markham, afterwards the wife of that sir John Harrington whose
sufferings in the princess's service have been already adverted to, was
doubtless one of these unfortunate ladies. Elizabeth, highly to her honor,
never dismissed from remembrance the claims of such as had been faithful
to her in her adversity; she distinguished this worthy pair by many tokens of
her royal favor; stood godfather to their son, and admitted him from his
tenderest youth to a degree of affectionate intimacy little inferior to that in
which she indulged the best beloved of her own relations.
In the beginning of September 1555 king Philip, mortified by the refusal
of his coronation, in which the parliament with steady patriotism persisted;
disappointed in his hopes of an heir; and disgusted by the fondness and the
jealousy of a spouse devoid of every attraction personal and mental, quitted
England for the continent, and deigned not to revisit it during a year and a
half. Elizabeth might regret his absence, as depriving her of the personal
attentions of a powerful protector; but late events had so firmly established
her as next heir to the crown, that she was now perfectly secure against the
recurrence of any attempt to degrade her from her proper station; and her
reconciliation with the queen, whether cordial or not, obtained for her
occasional admission to the courtly circle.
A few days after the king's departure we find it mentioned that "the
queen's grace, the lady Elizabeth, and all the court, did fast from flesh to
qualify them to take the Pope's jubilee and pardon granted to all out of his
abundant clemency[27];" a trait which makes it probable that Mary was now
in the habit of exacting her sister's attendance at court, for the purpose of
witnessing with her own eyes her punctual observance of the rites of that
church to which she still believed her a reluctant conformist.
A few weeks afterwards, the death of her capital enemy, Gardiner,
removed the worst of the ill instruments who had interposed to aggravate
the suspicions of the queen, and there is reason to believe that the princess
found in various ways the beneficial effects of this event.

CHAPTER VIII.
1555 TO 1558.
Elizabeth applies herself to classical literature.—Its neglected
state.—Progress of English poetry.—Account of Sackville and
his works.—Plan of his Mirror for Magistrates.—Extracts.—
Notice of the contributors to this collection.—Its popularity and
literary merits.—Entertainment given to Elizabeth by sir
Thomas Pope.—Dudley Ashton's attempt.—Elizabeth
acknowledged innocent of his designs.—Her letter to the queen.
—She returns to London—quits it in some disgrace after again
refusing the duke of Savoy.—Violence of Philip respecting this
match.—Mary protects her sister.—Festivities at Hatfield,
Enfield, and Richmond.—King of Sweden's addresses to
Elizabeth rejected.—Letter of sir T. Pope respecting her dislike
of marriage.—Proceedings of the ecclesiastical commission.—
Cruel treatment of sir John Cheke.—General decay of national
prosperity.—Loss of Calais.—Death of Mary.

N otwithstanding the late fortunate change in her situation, Elizabeth must

have entertained an anxious sense of its remaining difficulties, if not
dangers; and the prudent circumspection of her character again, as in the
latter years of her brother, dictated the expediency of shrouding herself in
all the obscurity compatible with her rank and expectations. To literature,
the never failing resource of its votaries, she turned again for solace and
occupation; and claiming the assistance which Ascham was proud and
happy to afford her, she resumed the diligent perusal of the Greek and Latin
classics.
The concerns of the college of which sir Thomas Pope was the founder
likewise engaged a portion of her thoughts; and this gentleman, in a letter to

a friend, mentions that the lady Elizabeth, whom he served, and who was
"not only gracious but right learned," often asked him of the course which
he had devised for his scholars.
Classical literature was now daily declining from the eminence on which
the two preceding sovereigns had labored to place it. The destruction of
monastic institutions, and the dispersion of libraries, with the
impoverishment of public schools and colleges through the rapacity of
Edward's courtiers, had inflicted far deeper injury on the cause of learning
than the studious example of the young monarch and his chosen
companions was able to compensate. The persecuting spirit of Mary, by
driving into exile or suspending from the exercise of their functions the able
and enlightened professors of the protestant doctrine, had robbed the church
and the universities of their brightest luminaries; and it was not under the
auspices of her fierce and ignorant bigotry that the cultivators of the elegant
and humanizing arts would seek encouragement or protection. Gardiner
indeed, where particular prejudices did not interfere, was inclined to favor
the learned; and Ascham owed to him the place of Latin secretary. Cardinal
Pole also, himself a scholar, was desirous to support, as much as present
circumstances would permit, his ancient character of a patron of scholars,
and he earnestly pleaded with sir Thomas Pope to provide for the teaching
of Greek as well as Latin in his college; but sir Thomas persisted in his
opinion that a Latin professorship was sufficient, considering the general
decay of erudition in the country, which had caused an almost total
cessation of the study of the Greek language.
It was in the department of English poetry alone that any perceptible
advance was effected or prepared during this deplorable æra; and it was to
the vigorous genius of one man, whose vivid personifications of abstract
beings were then quite unrivalled, and have since been rarely excelled in
our language, and whose clear, copious, and forcible style of poetic
narrative interested all readers, and inspired a whole school of writers who
worked upon his model, that this advance is chiefly to be attributed. This
benefactor to our literature was Thomas Sackville, son of sir Richard
Sackville, an eminent member of queen Mary's council, and second-cousin
to the lady Elizabeth by his paternal grandmother, who was a Boleyn. The

time of his birth is doubtful, some placing it in 1536, others as early as
1527. He studied first at Oxford and afterwards at Cambridge,
distinguishing himself at both universities by the vivacity of his parts and
the excellence of his compositions both in verse and prose. According to the
custom of that age, which required that an English gentleman should
acquaint himself intimately with the laws of his country before he took a
seat amongst her legislators, he next entered himself of the Inner Temple,
and about the last year of Mary's reign he served in parliament. But at this
early period of life poetry had more charms for Sackville than law or
politics; and following the bent of his genius, he first produced "Gorboduc,"
confessedly the earliest specimen of regular tragedy in our language; but
which will be noticed with more propriety when we reach the period of its
representation before queen Elizabeth. He then, about the year 1557 as is
supposed, laid the plan of an extensive work to be called "A Mirror for
Magistrates;" of which the design is thus unfolded in a highly poetical
"Induction."
The poet wandering forth on a winter's evening, and taking occasion from
the various objects which "told the cruel season," to muse on the
melancholy changes of human affairs, and especially on the reverses
incident to greatness, suddenly encounters a "piteous wight," clad all in
black, who was weeping, sighing, and wringing her hands, in such
lamentable guise, that
"————never man did see
A wight but half so woe-begone as she."
Struck with grief and horror at the view, he earnestly requires her to
"unwrap" her woes, and inform him who and whence she is, since her
anguish, if not relieved, must soon put an end to her life. She answers,
"Sorrow am I, in endless torments pained
Among the furies in th' infernal lake:"
from these dismal regions she is come, she says, to bemoan the luckless
lot of those

"Whom Fortune in this maze of misery,
Of wretched chance most woful Mirrors chose:"
and she ends by inviting him to accompany her in her return:
"Come, come, quoth she, and see what I shall show,
Come hear the plaining and the bitter bale
Of worthy men by Fortune's overthrow:
Come thou and see them ruing all in row.
They were but shades that erst in mind thou rolled,
Come, come with me, thine eyes shall then behold."
He accepts the invitation, having first done homage to Sorrow as to a
goddess, since she had been able to read his thought. The scenery and
personages are now chiefly copied from the sixth book of the Æneid; but
with the addition of many highly picturesque and original touches.
The companions enter, hand in hand, a gloomy wood, through which
Sorrow only could have found the way.
"But lo, while thus amid the desert dark
We passed on with steps and pace unmeet,
A rumbling roar, confused with howl and bark
Of dogs, shook all the ground beneath our feet,
And struck the din within our ears so deep,
As half distraught unto the ground I fell;
Besought return, and not to visit hell."
His guide however encourages him, and they proceed by the "lothly lake"
Avernus,
"In dreadful fear amid the dreadful place."

"And first within the porch and jaws of hell
Sat deep Remorse of Conscience, all besprent
With tears; and to herself oft would she tell
Her wretchedness, and cursing never stent
To sob and sigh: but ever thus lament

With thoughtful care, as she that all in vain
Should wear and waste continually in pain.

Her eyes, unsteadfast rolling here and there,
Whirled on each place as place that vengeance brought,
So was her mind continually in fear,
Tossed and tormented with tedious thought
Of those detested crimes that she had wrought:
With dreadful cheer and looks thrown to the sky,
Longing for death, and yet she could not die.

Next saw we Dread, all trembling how he shook
With foot uncertain proffered here and there,
Benumbed of speech, and with a ghastly look
Searched every place, all pale and dead with fear,
His cap borne up with staring of his hair." &c.
All the other allegorical personages named, and only named, by Virgil, as
well as a few additional ones, are pourtrayed in succession, and with the
same strength and fullness of delineation; but with the exception of War,
who appears in the attributes of Mars, they are represented simply as
examples of Old age, Malady, &c., not as the agents by whom these evils
are inflicted upon others. Cerberus and Charon occur in their appropriate
offices, but the monstrous forms Gorgon, Chimæra, &c., are judiciously
suppressed; and the poet is speedily conducted to the banks of that "main
broad flood"
"Which parts the gladsome fields from place of woe."

"With Sorrow for my guide, as there I stood,
A troop of men the most in arms bedight,
In tumult clustered 'bout both sides the flood:
'Mongst whom, who were ordained t' eternal night,
Or who to blissful peace and sweet delight,
I wot not well, it seemed that they were all
Such as by death's untimely stroke did fall."

Sorrow acquaints him that these are all illustrious examples of the reverses
which he was lately deploring, who will themselves relate to him their
misfortunes; and that he must afterwards
"Recount the same to Kesar, king and peer."
The first whom he sees advancing towards him from the throng of ghosts
is Henry duke of Buckingham, put to death under Richard III.: and his
"Legend," or story, is unfortunately the only one which its author ever
found leisure to complete; the favor of his illustrious kinswoman on her
accession causing him to sink the poet in the courtier, the ambassador, and
finally the minister of state. But he had already done enough to earn himself
a lasting name amongst the improvers of poetry in England. In tragedy he
gave the first regular model; in personification he advanced far beyond all
his predecessors, and furnished a prototype to that master of allegory,
Spenser. A greater than Spenser has also been indebted to him; as will be
evident, I think, to all who compare the description of the figures on the
shield of war in his Induction, and especially those of them which relate to
the siege of Troy, with the exquisitely rich and vivid description of a picture
on that subject in Shakespeare's early poem on Tarquin and Lucretia.
The legend of the duke of Buckingham is composed in a style rich, free
and forcible; the examples brought from ancient history, of the suspicion
and inward wretchedness to which tyrants have ever been a prey, and
afterwards, of the instability of popular favor, might in this age be
accounted tedious and pedantic; they are however pertinent, well recited,
and doubtless possessed the charm of novelty with respect to the majority
of contemporary readers. The curses which the unhappy duke pours forth
against the dependent who had betrayed him, may almost compare, in the
energy and inventiveness of malice, with those of Shakespeare's queen
Margaret; but they lose their effect by being thrown into the form of
monologue and ascribed to a departed spirit, whose agonies of grief and
rage in reciting his own death have something in them bordering on the
burlesque.
The mind of Sackville was deeply fraught, as we have seen, with classic
stores; and at a time when England possessed as yet no complete translation

of Virgil, he might justly regard it as a considerable service to the cause of
national taste to transplant into our vernacular poetry some scattered
flowers from his rich garden of poetic sweets. Thus he has embellished his
legend with an imitation or rather paraphrase of the celebrated description
of night in the fourth book of the Æneid. The lines well merit transcription.
"Midnight was come, when ev'ry vital thing
With sweet sound sleep their weary limbs did rest;
The beasts were still, the little birds that sing
Now sweetly slept besides their mother's breast,
The old and all were shrowded in their nest;
The waters calm, the cruel seas did cease;
The woods, the fields, and all things held their peace.

The golden stars were whirled amid their race,
And on the earth did laugh with twinkling light,
When each thing nestled in his resting place
Forgat day's pain with pleasure of the night:
The hare had not the greedy hounds in sight;
The fearful deer had not the dogs in doubt,
The partridge dreamt not of the falcon's foot.

The ugly bear now minded not the stake,
Nor how the cruel mastives do him tear;
The stag lay still unroused from the brake;
The foamy boar feared not the hunter's spear:
All things were still in desert, bush and breer.
With quiet heart now from their travails ceast
Soundly they slept in midst of all their rest."
The allusion to bear-bating in the concluding stanza may offend the
delicacy of a modern reader; but let it be remembered that in the days of
Mary, and even of Elizabeth, this amusement was accounted "sport for
ladies."
The "Mirror for Magistrates" was not lost to the world by the desertion of
Sackville from the service of the muses; for a similar or rather perhaps the

same design was entertained, and soon after carried into execution, by other
and able though certainly inferior hands.
During the reign of Mary,—but whether before or after the composition of
Sackville's Induction does not appear,—a certain printer, having
communicated to several "worshipful and honorable persons" his intention
of republishing Lydgate's translation in verse of Boccacio's "Fall of
Princes," was by them advised to procure a continuation of the work,
chiefly in English examples; and he applied in consequence to Baldwyne,
an ecclesiastic and graduate of Oxford. Baldwyne declined to embark alone
in so vast a design, and one, as he thought, so little likely to prove
profitable; but seven other contemporary poets, of whom George Ferrers
has already been mentioned as one, having promised their assistance, he
consented to assume the editorship of the work. The general frame agreed
upon by these associates was that employed in the original work of
Boccacio, who feigned, that a party of friends being assembled, it was
determined that each of them should contribute to the pleasure of the
company by personating some illustrious and unfortunate character, and
relating his adventures in the first person. A contrivance so tame and
meagre compared with the descent to the regions of the dead sketched with
so much spirit by Sackville, that it must have preceded, in all probability,
their knowledge at least of his performance. The first part of the work,
almost entirely by Baldwyne, was written, and partly printed, in Mary's
time, but its publication was prevented by the interference of the lord-
chancellor,—a trait of the mean and cowardly jealousy of the
administration, which speaks volumes. In the first year of Elizabeth lord
Stafford, an enlightened patron of letters, procured a licence for its
appearance. A second part soon followed, in which Sackville's Induction
and Legend were inserted. The success of this collection was prodigious;
edition after edition was given to the public under the inspection of different
poetical revisers, by each of whom copious additions were made to the
original work. Its favor and reputation continued during all the reign of
Elizabeth, and far into that of James; for Mr. Warton tells us that in
Chapman's "May-day," printed in 1611, "a gentleman of the most elegant
taste for reading and highly accomplished in the current books of the times,

is called 'one that has read Marcus Aurelius, Gesta Romanorum, and the
Mirror of Magistrates.'[28]"
The greater part of the contributors to this work were lawyers; an order of
men who, in most ages and nations, have accounted it a part of professional
duty to stand in opposition to popular seditions on one hand, and to the
violent and illegal exertion of arbitrary power on the other. Accordingly,
many of the legends are made to exemplify the evils of both these excesses;
and though, in more places than one, the unlawfulness, on any provocation,
of lifting a hand against "the Lord's anointed" is in strong terms asserted,
the deposition of tyrants is often recorded with applause; and no mercy is
shown to the corrupt judge or minister who wrests law and justice in
compliance with the wicked will of his prince.
The newly published chronicles of the wars of York and Lancaster by
Hall, a writer who made some approach to the character of a genuine
historian, furnished facts to the first composers of the Mirror; the later ones
might draw also from Holinshed and Stow. There is some probability that
the idea of forming plays on English history was suggested to Shakespeare
by the earlier of these legends; and it is certain that his plays, in their turn,
furnished some of their brightest ornaments of sentiment and diction to the
legends added by later editors.
To a modern reader, the greater part of these once admired pieces will
appear trite, prosaic, and tedious; but an uncultivated age—like the children
and the common people of all ages—is most attracted and impressed by that
mode of narration which leaves the least to be supplied by the imagination
of the hearer or reader; and when this collection of history in verse is
compared, not with the finished labors of a Hume or a Robertson, but with
the prolix and vulgar narratives of the chroniclers, the admiration and
delight with which it was received will no longer surprise.
One circumstance more respecting a work so important by the quantity of
historical knowledge which it diffused among the mass of readers, and the
influence which it exerted over the public mind during half a century,
deserves to be here adverted to. Baldwyne and his fellow-laborers began
their series from the Norman conquest, and the same starting-point had

been judiciously chosen by Sackville; but the fabulous history of Geffrey of
Monmouth still found such powerful advocates in national vanity,
ignorance and credulity, that succeeding editors found it convenient to
embellish their work with moral examples drawn from his fictitious series
of British kings before the invasion of the Romans. Accordingly they have
brought forward a long line of worthies, beginning with king Albanact, son
of Brute the Trojan, and ending with Cadwallader the last king of the
Britons, scarcely one of whom, excepting the renowned prince Arthur, is
known even by name to the present race of students in English history;
though amongst poetical readers, the immortal verse of Spenser preserves
some recollection that such characters once were fabled. In return for this
superfluity, our Saxon line of kings is passed over with very little notice,
only three legends, and those of very obscure personages, being interposed
between Cadwallader and king Harold. The descent of the royal race of
Britain from the Trojans was at this period more than an article of poetical
faith; it was maintained, or rather taken for granted, by the gravest and most
learned writers. One Kelston, who dedicated a versified chronicle of the
Brutes to Edward VI., went further still, and traced up the pedigree of his
majesty through two-and-thirty generations, to Osiris king of Egypt.
Troynovant, the name said to have been given to London by Brute its
founder, was frequently employed in verse. A song addressed to Elizabeth
entitles her the "beauteous queen of second Troy;" and in describing the
pageants which celebrated her entrance into the provincial capitals which
she visited in her progresses, it will frequently be necessary to introduce to
the reader personages of the ancient race of this fabled conqueror of our
island, who claimed for his direct ancestor,—but whether in the third or
fourth degree authors differ,—no less a hero than the pious Æneas himself.
But to return to the personal circumstances of Elizabeth.
The public and splendid celebration of the festivals of the church was the
least reprehensible of the measures employed by Mary for restoring the
ascendancy of her religion over the minds of her subjects. She had been
profuse in her donations of sacred vestments and ornaments to the churches
and the monasteries, of which she had restored several; and these gaudy
trappings of a ceremonial worship were exhibited, rather indeed to the

scandal than the edification of a dejected people, in frequent processions
conducted with the utmost solemnity and magnificence. Court
entertainments always accompanied these devotional ceremonies, and
Elizabeth seems by assisting at the latter to have purchased admission to the
former. The Christmas festivities in which she shared have already been
described in the words of a contemporary chronicler; and from the same
source we derive the following account of the "antique pageantries" with
which another season of rejoicing was celebrated for her recreation, by the
munificence of the indulgent superintendent of her conduct and affairs. "In
Shrove-tide 1556, sir Thomas Pope made for the lady Elizabeth, all at his
own costs, a great and rich masking in the great hall at Hatfield, where the
pageants were marvellously furnished. There were there twelve minstrels
anticly disguised; with forty six or more gentlemen and ladies, many of
them knights or nobles, and ladies of honor, apparelled in crimson sattin,
embroidered upon with wreaths of gold, and garnished with borders of
hanging pearl. And the devise of a castle of cloth of gold, set with
pomegranates about the battlements, with shields of knights hanging
therefrom; and six knights in rich harness tourneyed. At night the cupboard
in the hall was of twelve stages mainly furnished with garnish of gold and
silver vessul, and a banquet of seventy dishes, and after a voidee of spices
and suttleties with thirty six spice-plates; all at the charges of sir Thomas
Pope. And the next day the play of Holophernes. But the queen percase
misliked these folleries as by her letters to sir Thomas it did appear; and so
their disguisings ceased[29]."
A circumstance soon afterwards occurred calculated to recall past dangers
to the mind of the princess, and perhaps to disturb her with apprehensions
of their recurrence.
Dudley Ashton, formerly a partisan of Wyat, had escaped into France,
after the defeat and capture of his leader, whence he was still plotting the
overthrow of Mary's government. By the connivance or assistance of that
court, now on the brink of war with England, he was at length enabled to
send over one Cleberry, a condemned person, whom he instructed to
counterfeit the earl of Devonshire, and endeavour to raise the country in his
cause. Letters and proclamations were at the same time dispersed by

Ashton, in which the name of Elizabeth was employed without scruple. The
party had even the slanderous audacity to pretend, that between Courtney
and the heiress of the crown the closest of all intimacies, if not an actual
marriage, subsisted; and the matter went so far that at Ipswich, one of the
strong holds of protestantism, Cleberry proclaimed the earl of Devonshire
and the princess, king and queen. But the times were past when any
advantage could be taken of this circumstance against Elizabeth, whose
perfect innocence was well known to the government; and the council
immediately wrote in handsome terms to sir Thomas Pope, directing him to
acquaint her, in whatever manner he should judge best, with the abominable
falsehoods circulated respecting her. A few days after, the queen herself
wrote also to her sister in terms fitted to assure her of perfect safety. The
princess replied, says Strype, "in a well penned letter," "utterly detesting
and disclaiming all concern in the enterprise, and declaiming against the
actors in it." Of the epistle thus commended, a single paragraph will
probably be esteemed a sufficient specimen.... "And among earthly things I
chiefly wish this one; that there were as good surgeons for making
anatomies of hearts, that might show my thoughts to your majesty, as there
are expert physicians of the bodies, able to express the inward griefs of their
maladies to the patient. For then I doubt not, but know well, that
whatsoever others should suggest by malice, yet your majesty should be
sure by knowledge; so that the more such misty clouds offuscate the clear
light of my truth, the more my tried thoughts should glister to the dimming
of their hidden malice." &c. It must be confessed that this erudite princess
had not perfectly succeeded in transplanting into her own language the
epistolary graces of her favorite Cicero;—but to how many much superior
classical scholars might a similar remark be applied!
The frustration of Mary's hope of becoming a mother, her subsequent ill
state of health, and the resolute refusal of the parliament to permit the
coronation of her husband, who had quitted England in disgust to attend his
affairs on the continent, conferred, in spite of all the efforts of the catholic
party, a daily augmenting importance on Elizabeth. When therefore in
November 1556 she had come in state to Somerset Place, her town-
residence, to take up her abode for the winter, a kind of court was
immediately formed around her; and she might hope to be richly

indemnified for any late anxieties or privations, by the brilliant festivities,
the respectful observances, and the still more welcome flatteries, of which
she found herself the distinguished object:—But disappointment awaited
her.
She had been invited to court for the purpose of receiving a second and
more solemn offer of the hand of the duke of Savoy, whose suit was
enforced by the king her brother-in-law with the whole weight of his
influence or authority. This alliance had been the subject of earnest
correspondence between Philip and the English council; the Imperial
ambassadors were waiting in England for her answer; and the
disappointment of the high-raised hopes of the royal party, by her
reiteration of a decided negative, was followed by her quitting London in a
kind of disgrace early in the month of December.
But Philip would not suffer the business to end here. Indignant at the
resistance opposed by the princess to his measures, he seems to have urged
the queen to interfere in a manner authoritative enough to compel
obedience; but, by a remarkable exchange of characters, Mary now
appeared as the protectress of her sister from the violence of Philip.
In a letter still preserved, she tells him, that unless the consent of
parliament were first obtained, she fears that the accomplishment of the
marriage would fail to procure for him the advantages which he expected;
but that, however this might be, her conscience would not allow her to press
the matter further. That the friar Alphonso, Philip's confessor, whom he had
sent to argue the point with her, had entirely failed of convincing her; that in
fact she could not comprehend the drift of his arguments. Philip, it is
manifest, must already have made use of very harsh language towards the
queen respecting her conduct in this affair, for she deprecates his further
displeasure in very abject terms; but yet persists in her resolution with
laudable firmness. Her husband was so far, however, from yielding with a
good grace a point on which he had certainly no right to dictate either to
Mary or to her sister, that soon afterwards he sent into England the
duchesses of Parma and Lorrain for the purpose of conducting the princess
into Flanders:—but this step was ill-judged. His coldness and neglect had
by this time nearly extinguished the fond passion of the queen, who is said

to have torn his picture in a fit of rage, on report of some disrespectful
language which he had used concerning her since his departure for the
continent. Resentment and jealousy now divided her gloomy soul; and
Philip's behaviour, on which she had doubtless her spies, caused her to
regard the duchess of Lorrain as the usurper of his heart. The extraordinary
circumstances of pomp and parade with which this lady, notwithstanding
the smallness of her revenues, now appeared in England, confirmed and
aggravated her most painful suspicions; and so far from favoring the suit
urged by such an ambassadress, Mary became more than ever determined
on thwarting it. She would not permit the duchesses to pay the princess a
single visit at Hatfield; and her reception gave them so little encouragement
to persevere, that they speedily returned to report their failure to him who
sent them.
These circumstances seem to have produced a cordiality of feeling and
frequency of intercourse between the sisters which had never before
existed. In February 1557 the princess arrived with a great retinue at
Somerset Place, and went thence to wait upon the queen at Whitehall; and
when the spring was somewhat further advanced, her majesty honored her
by returning the visit at Hatfield. The royal guest was, of course, to be
entertained with every species of courtly and elegant delight; and
accordingly, on the morning after her arrival, she and the princess, after
attending mass, went to witness a grand exhibition of bear-bating, "with
which their highnesses were right well content." In the evening the chamber
was adorned with a sumptuous suit of tapestry, called, but from what
circumstance does not appear, "the hangings of Antioch." After supper a
play was represented by the choristers of St. Paul's, then the most applauded
actors in London; and after it was over, one of the children accompanied
with his voice the performance of the princess on the virginals.
Sir Thomas Pope could now without offence gratify his lady with another
show, devised by him in that spirit of romantic magnificence equally
agreeable to the taste of the age and the temper of Elizabeth herself. She
was invited to repair to Enfield Chase to take the amusement of hunting the
hart. Twelve ladies in white satin attended her on their "ambling palfreys,"
and twenty yeomen clad in green. At the entrance of the forest she was met

by fifty archers in scarlet boots and yellow caps, armed with gilded bows,
one of whom presented to her a silver-headed arrow winged with peacock's
feathers. The splendid show concluded, according to the established laws of
the chase, by the offering of the knife to the princess, as first lady on the
field; and her taking 'say of the buck with her own fair and royal hand.
During the summer of the same year the queen was pleased to invite her
sister to an entertainment at Richmond, of which we have received some
rather interesting particulars. The princess was brought from Somerset
Place in the queen's barge, which was richly hung with garlands of artificial
flowers and covered with a canopy of green sarcenet, wrought with
branches of eglantine in embroidery and powdered with blossoms of gold.
In the barge she was accompanied by sir Thomas Pope and four ladies of
her chamber. Six boats attended filled with her retinue, habited in russet
damask and blue embroidered satin, tasseled and spangled with silver; their
bonnets cloth of silver with green feathers. The queen received her in a
sumptuous pavilion in the labyrinth of the gardens. This pavilion, which
was of cloth of gold and purple velvet, was made in the form of a castle,
probably in allusion to the kingdom of Castile; its sides were divided in
compartments, which bore alternately the fleur de lis in silver, and the
pomegranate, the bearing of Granada, in gold. A sumptuous banquet was
here served up to the royal ladies, in which there was introduced a
pomegranate-tree in confectionary work, bearing the arms of Spain:—so
offensively glaring was the preference given by Mary to the country of her
husband and of her maternal ancestry over that of which she was a native
and in her own right queen! There was no masking or dancing, but a great
number of minstrels performed. The princess returned to Somerset Place the
same evening, and the next day to Hatfield.
The addresses of a new suitor soon after furnished Elizabeth with an
occasion of gratifying the queen by fresh demonstrations of respect and
duty. The king of Sweden was earnestly desirous of obtaining for Eric his
eldest son the hand of a lady whose reversionary prospects, added to her
merit and accomplishments, rendered her without dispute the first match in
Europe. He had denied his son's request to be permitted to visit her in
person, fearing that those violences of temper and eccentricities of conduct

of which this ill-fated prince had already given strong indications, might
injure his cause in the judgement of so discerning a princess. The business
was therefore to be transacted through the Swedish ambassador; but he was
directed by his sovereign to make his application by a message to Elizabeth
herself, in which the queen and council were not for the present to
participate. The princess took hold of this circumstance as a convenient
pretext for rejecting a proposal which she felt no disposition to encourage;
and she declared that she could never listen to any overtures of this nature
which had not first received the sanction of her majesty. The ambassador
pleaded in answer, that as a gentleman his master had judged it becoming
that his first application should be made to herself; but that should he be so
happy as to obtain her concurrence, he would then, as a king, make his
demand in form to the queen her sister. The princess replied, that if it were
to depend on herself, a single life would ever be her choice; and she finally
dismissed the suit with a negative.
On receiving some hint of this transaction, Mary sent for sir Thomas Pope,
and having learned from him all the particulars, she directed him to express
to her sister her high approbation of her proper and dutiful conduct on this
occasion; and also to make himself acquainted with her sentiments on the
subject of matrimony in general. He soon after transmitted to her majesty
all the information she could desire, in the following letter:
"First after I had declared to her grace how well the queen's majesty liked
of her prudent and honorable answer made to the same messenger; I then
opened unto her grace the effects of the said messenger's credence; which
after her grace had heard, I said, the queen's highness had sent me to her
grace, not only to declare the same, but also to understand how her grace
liked the said motion. Whereunto, after a little pause taken, her grace
answered in form following: 'Master Pope, I require you, after my most
humble commendations to the queen's majesty, to render unto the same like
thanks that it pleased her highness, of her goodness, to conceive so well of
my answer made to the same messenger; and herewithal, of her princely
consideration, with such speed to command you by your letters to signify
the same unto me: who before remained wonderfully perplexed, fearing that
her majesty might mistake the same: for which her goodness, I

acknowledge myself bound to honor, serve, love, and obey her highness
during my life. Requiring you also to say unto her majesty, that in the king
my brother's time there was offered me a very honorable marriage, or two;
and ambassadors sent to treat with me touching the same; whereupon I
made my humble suit unto his highness, as some of honor yet living can be
testimonies, that it would like the same to give me leave, with his grace's
favor, to remain in that estate I was, which of all others best liked me, or
pleased me. And, in good faith, I pray you say unto her highness, I am even
at this present of the same mind, and so intend to continue, with her
majesty's favor: and assuring her highness I so well like this estate, as I
persuade myself there is not any kind of life comparable unto it. And as
concerning my liking the said motion made by the said messenger, I
beseech you say unto her majesty, that to my remembrance I never heard of
his master before this time; and that I so well like both the message and the
messenger, as I shall most humbly pray God upon my knees, that from
henceforth I never hear of the one nor the other: assure you that if he should
eftsoons repair unto me, I would forbear to speak to him. And were there
nothing else to move me to mislike the motion, other than that his master
would attempt the same without making the queen's majesty privy
thereunto, it were cause sufficient.'
"And when her grace had thus ended, I was so bold as of myself to say
unto her grace, her pardon first required, that I thought few or none would
believe but that her grace could be right well contented to marry; so that
there were some honorable marriage offered her by the queen's highness, or
by her majesty's assent. Whereunto her grace answered, 'What I shall do
hereafter I know not; but I assure you, upon my truth and fidelity, and as
God be merciful unto me, I am not at this time otherwise minded than I
have declared unto you; no, though I were offered the greatest prince in all
Europe.' And yet percase, the queen's majesty may conceive this rather to
proceed of a maidenly shamefacedness, than upon any such certain
determination[30]."
This letter appears to have been the last transaction which occurred
between Mary and Elizabeth: from it, and from the whole of the notices
relative to the situation of the latter thrown together in the preceding pages,

it may be collected, that during the three last years of her sister's reign,—the
period, namely, of her residence at Hatfield,—she had few privations, and
no personal hardships to endure: but for individuals whom she esteemed,
for principles to which her conscience secretly inclined, for her country
which she truly loved, her apprehensions must have been continually
excited, and too often justified by events the most cruel and disastrous.
The reestablishment, by solemn acts of the legislature, of the Romish
ritual and the papal authority, though attended with the entire prohibition of
all protestant worship, was not sufficient for the bigotry of Mary. Aware that
the new doctrines still found harbour in the bosoms of her subjects, she
sought to drag them by her violence from this last asylum; for to her, as to
all tyrants, it appeared both desirable and possible to subject the liberty of
thinking to the regulation and control of human laws.
By virtue of her authority as head of the English church,—a title which
the murmurs of her parliament had compelled her against her conscience to
resume after laying it aside for some time,—she issued an ecclesiastical
commission, which wanted nothing of the Spanish inquisition but the name.
The commissioners were empowered to call before them the leading men in
every parish of the kingdom, and to compel them to bind themselves by
oath to give information against such of their neighbours as, by abstaining
from attendance at church or other symptoms of disaffection to the present
order of things, afforded room to doubt the soundness of their belief.
Articles of faith were then offered to the suspected persons for their
signature, and on their simple refusal they were handed over to the civil
power, and fire and faggot awaited them. By this barbarous species of
punishment, about two hundred and eighty persons are stated to have
perished during the reign of Mary; but, to the disgrace of the learned, the
rich, and the noble, these martyrs, with the exception of a few distinguished
ecclesiastics, were almost all from the middling or lower, some from the
very lowest classes of society.
Amongst these glorious sufferers, therefore, the princess could have few
personal friends to regret; but in the much larger number of the disgraced,
the suspected, the imprisoned, the fugitive, she saw the greater part of the

public characters, whether statesmen or divines, on whose support and
attachment she had learned to place reliance.
The extraordinary cruelties exercised upon sir John Cheke, who whilst he
held the post of preceptor to her brother had also assisted in her own
education, must have been viewed by Elizabeth with strong emotion of
indignation and grief.
It has been already mentioned, that after his release from imprisonment
incurred in the cause of lady Jane Grey,—a release, by the way, which was
purchased by the sacrifice of his landed property and all his appointments,
—this learned and estimable person obtained permission to travel for a
limited period. This was regarded as a special favor; for it was one of
Mary's earliest acts of tyranny to prohibit the escape of her destined victims,
and it was only by joining themselves to the foreign congregations of the
reformed, who had license to depart the kingdom, or by eluding with much
hazard the vigilance of the officers by whom the seaports were watched,
that any of her protestant subjects had been enabled to secure liberty of
conscience in a voluntary exile. It is a little remarkable that Rome should
have been Cheke's first city of pilgrimage; but classical associations in this
instance overcame the force of protestant antipathies. He took the
opportunity however of visiting Basil in his way, where an English
congregation was established, and where he had the pleasure of introducing
himself to several learned characters, once perhaps the chosen associates of
Erasmus.
In the beginning of 1556 he had reached Strasburgh, for it was thence that
he addressed a letter to his dear friend and brother-in-law sir William Cecil,
who appears to have made some compliances with the times which alarmed
and grieved him. It is in a strain of the most affectionate earnestness that he
entreats him to hold fast his faith, and "to take heed how he did in the least
warp or strain his conscience by any compliance for his worldly security."
But such exhortations, however salutary in themselves, did not come with
the best grace from those who had found in flight a refuge from the terrors
of that persecution which was raging in all its fierceness before the eyes of
such of their unfortunate brethren as had found themselves necessitated to
abide the fiery trial. A remark by no means foreign to the case before us! Sir

John Cheke's leave of absence seems now to have expired; and it was
probably with the design of making interest for its renewal that he privately
repaired, soon after the date of his letter, to Brussels, on a visit to his two
learned friends, lord Paget and sir John Mason, then residing in that city as
Mary's ambassadors. These men were recent converts, or more likely
conformists, to the court religion; and Paget's furious councils against
Elizabeth have been already mentioned. It is to be hoped that they did not
add to the guilt of self-interested compliances in matters of faith the blacker
crime of a barbarous act of perfidy against a former associate and brother-
protestant who had scarcely ceased to be their guest;—but certain it is, that
on some secret intimation of his having entered his territories, king Philip
issued special orders for the seizure of Cheke. On his return, between
Brussels and Antwerp, the unhappy man, with sir Peter Carew his
companion, was apprehended by a provost-marshal, bound hand and foot,
thrown into a cart, and so conveyed on board a vessel sailing for England.
He is said to have been brought to the Tower muffled, according to an
odious practice of Spanish despotism introduced into the country during the
reign of Mary. Under the terror of such a surprise the awful alternative
"Comply or burn" was laid before him. Human frailty under these trying
circumstances prevailed; and in an evil hour this champion of light and
learning was tempted to subscribe his false assent to the doctrine of the real
presence and the whole list of Romish articles. This was but the beginning
of humiliations: he was now required to pronounce two ample recantations,
one before the queen in person, the other before cardinal Pole, who also
imposed upon him various acts of penance. Even this did not immediately
procure his liberation from prison; and while he was obliged in public to
applaud the mercy of his enemies in terms of the most abject submission, he
bewailed in private, with abundance of bitter tears, their cruelty, and still
more his own criminal compliance. The savage zealots knew not how to set
bounds to their triumph over a man whom learning and acknowledged
talents and honorable employments had rendered so considerable.
Even when at length he was set free, and flattered himself that he had
drained to the dregs his cup of bitterness, he discovered that the masterpiece
of barbarity, the refinement of insult, was yet in store. He was required, as
evidence of the sincerity of his conversion and a token of his complete

restoration to royal favor, to take his seat on the bench by the side of the
savage Bonner, and assist at the condemnation of his brother-protestants.
The unhappy man did not refuse,—so thoroughly was his spirit subdued
within him,—but it broke his heart; and retiring at last to the house of an
old and learned friend, whose door was opened to him in Christian charity,
he there ended within a few months, his miserable life, a prey to shame,
remorse and melancholy. A sadder tale the annals of persecution do not
furnish, or one more humbling to the pride and confidence of human virtue.
Many have failed under lighter trials; few have expiated a failure by
sufferings so severe. How often must this victim of a wounded spirit have
dwelt with envy, amid his slower torments, on the brief agonies and lasting
crown of a courageous martyrdom!
It is happily not possible for a kingdom to flourish under the crushing
weight of such a tyranny as that of Mary. The retreat of the foreign
protestants had robbed the country of hundreds of industrious and skilful
artificers; the arbitrary exactions of the queen impoverished and
discouraged the trading classes, against whom they principally operated;
tumults and insurrections were frequent, and afforded a pretext for the
introduction of Spanish troops; the treasury was exhausted in efforts for
maintaining the power of the sovereign, restoring the church to opulence
and splendor, and re-edifying the fallen monasteries. To add to these evils, a
foreign marriage rendered both the queen and country subservient to the
interested or ambitious projects of the Spanish sovereign. For his sake a
needless war was declared against France, which, after draining entirely an
already failing treasury, ended in the loss of Calais, the last remaining
trophy of the victories by which the Edwards and the Henrys had humbled
in the dust the pride and power of France.
This last stroke completed the dejection of the nation; and Mary herself,
who was by no means destitute of sensibility where the honor of her crown
was concerned, sunk into an incurable melancholy. "When I die," said she
to her attendants who sought to discover the cause of her despondency,
"Calais will be found at my heart."
The unfeeling desertion of her husband, the consciousness of having
incurred the hatred of her subjects, the unprosperous state of her affairs, and

the well founded apprehension that her successor would once more
overthrow the whole edifice of papal power which she had labored with
such indefatigable ardor to restore, may each be supposed to have infused
its own drop of bitterness into the soul of this unhappy princess. The long
and severe mortifications of her youth, while they soured her temper, had
also undermined her constitution, and contributed to bring upon her a
premature old age; dropsical symptoms began to appear, and after a
lingering illness of nearly half a year she sunk into the grave on the 17th
day of November 1558, in the forty-fourth year of her age.

CHAPTER IX.
1558 AND 1559.
General joy on the accession of Elizabeth.—Views of the nobility
—of the middling and lower classes.—Flattery with which she is
addressed.—Descriptions of her person.—Her first privy-
council.—Parry and Cecil brought into office.—Notices of each.
—Death of cardinal Pole.—The queen enters London—passes to
the Tower.—Lord Robert Dudley her master of the horse.—
Notices respecting him.—The queen's treatment of her relations.
—The Howard family.—Sir Richard Sackville.—Henry Cary.—
The last, created lord Hunsdon.—Preparations in London
against the queen's coronation.—Splendid costume of the age.—
She passes by water from Westminster to the Tower.—The
procession described.—Her passage through the city.—Pageants
exhibited.—The bishops refuse to crown her.—Bishop of Carlisle
prevailed on.—Religious sentiments of the queen.—Prohibition
of preaching—of theatrical exhibitions.

N ever perhaps was the accession of any prince the subject of such keen

and lively interest to a whole people as that of Elizabeth.
Both in the religious establishments and political relations of the country,
the most important changes were anticipated; changes in which the
humblest individual found himself concerned, and to which a vast majority
of the nation looked forward with hope and joy.
With the courtiers and great nobles, whose mutability of faith had so
happily corresponded with every ecclesiastical vicissitude of the last three
reigns, political and personal considerations may well be supposed to have
held the first place; and though the old religion might still be endeared to
them by many cherished associations and by early prejudice, there were few

among them who did not regard the liberation of the country from Spanish
influence as ample compensation for the probable restoration of the
religious establishment of Henry or of Edward. Besides, there was scarcely
an individual belonging to these classes who had not in some manner
partaken of the plunder of the church, and whom the avowed principles of
Mary had not disquieted with apprehensions that some plan of compulsory
restitution would sooner or later be attempted by an union of royal and
papal authority.
With the middling and lower classes religious views and feelings were
predominant The doctrines of the new and better system of faith and
worship had now become more precious and important than ever in the eyes
of its adherents from the hardships which many of them had encountered
for its sake, and from the interest which each disciple vindicated to himself
in the glory and merit of the holy martyrs whose triumphant exit they had
witnessed. With all the fervor of pious gratitude they offered up their
thanksgivings for the signal deliverance by which their prayers had been
answered. The bloody tyranny of Mary was at an end; and though the
known conformity of Elizabeth to Romish rites might apparently give room
for doubts and suspicions, it should seem that neither catholics nor
protestants were willing to believe that the daughter of Anne Boleyn could
in her heart be a papist. Under this impression the citizens of London, who
spoke the sense of their own class throughout the kingdom, welcomed the
new queen as a protectress sent by Heaven itself: but even in the first
transports of their joy, and amid the pompous pageantries by which their
loyal congratulations were expressed, they took care to intimate, in a
manner not to be misunderstood, their hopes and expectations on the great
concern now nearest to their hearts.
Prudence confined within their own bosoms the regrets and murmurs of
the popish clergy; submission and a simulated loyalty were at present
obviously their only policy: thus not a whisper breathed abroad but of joy
and gratulation and happy presage of the days to come.
The sex, the youth, the accomplishments, the graces, the past misfortunes
of the princess, all served to heighten the interest with which she was
beheld: the age of chivalry had not yet expired; and in spite of the late

unfortunate experience of a female reign, the romantic image of a maiden
queen dazzled all eyes, subdued all hearts, inflamed the imaginations of the
brave and courtly youth with visions of love and glory, exalted into a
passionate homage the principle of loyalty, and urged adulation to the very
brink of idolatry.
The fulsome compliments on her beauty which Elizabeth, almost to the
latest period of her life, not only permitted but required and delighted in,
have been adverted to by all the writers who have made her reign and
character their theme: and those of the number whom admiration and pity
of the fair queen of Scots have rendered hostile to her memory, have taken a
malicious pleasure in exaggerating the extravagance of this weakness, by
denying her, even in her freshest years, all pretensions to those personal
charms by which her rival was so eminently, distinguished. Others however
have been more favorable, and probably more just, to her on this point; and
it would be an injury to her memory to withhold from the reader the
following portraitures which authorize us to form a pleasing as well as
majestic image of this illustrious female at the period of her accession and
at the age of five-and-twenty.
"She was a lady of great beauty, of decent stature, and of an excellent
shape. In her youth she was adorned with a more than usual maiden
modesty; her skin was of pure white, and her hair of a yellow colour; her
eyes were beautiful and lively. In short, her whole body was well made, and
her face was adorned with a wonderful and sweet beauty and majesty. This
beauty lasted till her middle age, though it declined[31]." &c.
"She was of personage tall, of hair and complexion fair, and therewith
well favored, but high-nosed; of limbs and feature neat, and, which added to
the lustre of those exterior graces, of stately and majestic comportment;
participating in this more of her father than her mother, who was of an
inferior allay, plausible, or, as the French hath it, more debonaire and
affable, virtues which might suit well with majesty, and which descending
as hereditary to the daughter, did render her of a more sweeter temper and
endeared her more to the love and liking of her people, who gave her the
name and fame of a most gracious and popular prince[32]."

The death of Mary was announced to the two houses, which were then
sitting, by Heath bishop of Ely, the lord-chancellor. In both assemblies, after
the decorum of a short pause, the notification was followed by joyful shouts
of "God save queen Elizabeth! long and happily may she reign!" and with
great alacrity the members issued out to proclaim the new sovereign before
the palace in Westminster and again at the great cross in Cheapside.
The Londoners knew not how to contain their joy on this happy occasion:
—the bells of all the churches were set ringing, bonfires were kindled, and
tables were spread in the streets according to the bountiful and hospitable
custom of that day, "where was plentiful eating, drinking, and making
merry." On the following Sunday Te Deum was sung in the churches;
probably an unexampled, however merited, expression of disrespect to the
memory of the former sovereign.
Elizabeth received the news of her own accession at Hatfield. We are not
told that she affected any great concern for the loss of her sister, much less
did any unbecoming sign of exultation escape her; but, "falling on her
knees, after a good time of respiration she uttered this verse of the Psalms;
A Domino factum est istud, et est mirabile oculis nostris[33]: which to this
day we find on the stamp of her gold; with this on her silver, Posui Deum
adjutorem meum[34]."[35]
Several noblemen of the late queen's council now repairing to her, she
held at Hatfield on November the 20th her first privy-council; at which she
declared sir Thomas Parry comptroller of her household, sir Edward Rogers
captain of the guard, and sir William Cecil principal secretary of state, all
three being at the same time admitted to the council-board. From these
appointments, the first of her reign, some presages might be drawn of her
future government favorable to her own character and correspondent to the
wishes of her people.
Parry was the person who had filled for many years the office of her
cofferer, who was perfectly in the secret of whatever confidential
intercourse she might formerly have held with the lord-admiral, and whose
fidelity to her in that business had stood firm against all the threats of the
protector and council, and the artifices of those by whom his examination

had been conducted. That mindfulness of former services, of which the
advancement of this man formed by no means a solitary instance in the
conduct of Elizabeth, appeared the more commendable in her, because she
accompanied it with a generous oblivion of the many slights and injuries to
which her defenceless and persecuted condition had so long exposed her
from others.
The merit of Cecil was already in part known to the public; and his
promotion to an office of such importance was a happy omen for the
protestant cause, his attachment to which had been judged the sole
impediment to his advancement under the late reign to situations of power
and trust corresponding with the opinion entertained of his integrity and
political wisdom. A brief retrospect of the scenes of public life in which he
had already been an actor will best explain the character and sentiments of
this eminent person, destined to wield for more than forty years with
unparalleled skill and felicity, under a mistress who knew his value, the
energies of the English state.
Born, in 1520, the son of the master of the royal wardrobe, Cecil early
engaged the notice of Henry VIII. by the fame of a religious dispute which
he had held in Latin with two popish priests attached to the Irish chieftain
O'Neal. A place in reversion freely bestowed on him by the king at once
rewarded the zeal of the young polemic, and encouraged him to desert the
profession of the law, in which he had embarked, for the political career.
His marriage with the sister of sir John Cheke strengthened his interest at
court by procuring him an introduction to the earl of Hertford, and early in
the reign of Edward this powerful patronage obtained for him the office of
secretary of state. In the first disgrace of the protector he lost his place, and
was for a short time a prisoner in the Tower; but his compliant conduct soon
restored him to favor: he scrupled not to draw the articles of impeachment
against the protector; and Northumberland, finding him both able in
business and highly acceptable to the young monarch, procured, or
permitted, his reinstatement in office in September 1550.
Cecil, however, was both too wary and too honest to regard himself as
pledged to the support of Northumberland's inordinate schemes of ambition;

and scarcely any public man of the day, attached to the protestant cause,
escaped better in the affair of lady Jane Grey. It is true that one writer
accuses him of having drawn all the papers in her favor: but this appears to
be, in part at least, either a mistake or a calumny; and it seems, on the
contrary, that he refused to Northumberland some services of this nature. It
has been already mentioned that his name appeared with those of the other
privy-councillors to Edward's settlement of the crown; and his plea of
having signed it merely as a witness to the king's signature, deserves to be
regarded as a kind of subterfuge. But he was early in paying his respects to
Mary, and he took advantage of the graciousness with which she received
his explanations to obtain a general pardon, which protected him from all
personal danger. He lost however his place of secretary, which some have
affirmed that he might have retained by further compliances in religion.
This however is the more doubtful, because it cannot be questioned that he
must have yielded a good deal on this point, without which he neither could
nor would have made one of a deputation sent to conduct to England
cardinal Pole the papal legate, nor probably would he have been joined in
commission with the cardinal and other persons sent to treat of a peace with
France.
But admitting, as we must, that this eminent statesman was far from
aspiring to the praise of a confessor, he will still be found to deserve high
commendation for the zeal and courage with which, as a member of
parliament, he defended the interests of his oppressed and suffering fellow-
protestants. At considerable hazard to himself, he opposed with great
freedom of speech a bill for confiscating the property of exiles for religion;
and he appears to have escaped committal to the Tower on this account,
solely by the presence of mind which he exhibited before the council and
the friendship of some of its members.
He is known to have maintained a secret and intimate correspondence
with Elizabeth during the time of her adversity, and to have assisted her on
various trying occasions with his salutary counsels; and nothing could be
more interesting than to trace the origin and progress of that confidential
relation between these eminent and in many respects congenial characters,

which after a long course of years was only terminated by the hand of
death;—but materials for this purpose are unfortunately wanting.
The letters on both sides were probably sacrificed by the parties
themselves to the caution which their situation required; and among the
published extracts from the Burleigh papers, only a single document is
found relative to the connexion subsisting between them during the reign of
Mary. This is a short and uninteresting letter addressed to Cecil by sir
Thomas Benger, one of the princess's officers, in which, after some mention
of accounts, not now intelligible, he promises that he and sir Thomas Parry
will move the princess to grant his correspondent's request, which is not
particularized, and assures him that as his coming thither would be
thankfully received, so he wishes that all the friends of the princess
entertained the same sense of that matter as he does. The letter seems to
point at some official concern of Cecil in the affairs of Elizabeth. It is dated
October 24th 1556.
The private character of Cecil was in every respect exemplary, and his
disposition truly amiable. His second marriage with one of the learned
daughters of sir Anthony Cook conferred upon him that exalted species of
domestic happiness which a sympathy in mental endowments can alone
bestow; whilst it had the further advantage of connecting him with the
excellent man her father, with sir Nicholas Bacon and sir Thomas Hobby,
the husbands of two of her sisters, and generally with the wisest and most
conscientious supporters of the protestant interest. This great minister was
honorably distinguished through life by an ardor and constancy of
friendship rare in all classes of men, but esteemed peculiarly so in those
whose lives are occupied amid the heartless ceremonial of courts and the
political intrigues of princes. His attachments, as they never degenerated
into the weakness of favoritism, were as much a source of benefit to his
country as of enjoyment to himself; for his friends were those of virtue and
the state. And there were few among the more estimable public men of this
reign who were not indebted either for their first introduction to the notice
of Elizabeth, their continuance in her favor, or their restoration to it when
undeservedly lost, to the generous patronage or powerful intercession of
Cecil.

On appointing him a member of her council, the queen addressed her
secretary in the following gracious words:
"I give you this charge, that you shall be of my privy-council, and content
yourself to take pains for me and my realm. This judgement I have of you,
that you will not be corrupted with any gift, and that you will be faithful to
the state, and that, without respect of my private will, you will give me that
counsel that you think best: And that if you shall know any thing necessary
to be declared to me of secrecy, you shall show it to myself only, and assure
yourself I will not fail to keep taciturnity therein. And therefore herewith I
charge you[36]."
Cardinal Pole was not doomed to be an eye-witness of the relapse of the
nation into what he must have regarded as heresy of the most aggravated
nature; he expired a few hours after his royal kinswoman: and Elizabeth,
with due consideration for the illustrious ancestry, the learning, the
moderation, and the blameless manners of the man, authorized his
honorable interment at Canterbury among the archbishops his predecessors,
with the attendance of two bishops, his ancient friends and the faithful
companions of his long exile.
On November 23d the queen set forward for her capital, attended by a
train of about a thousand nobles, knights, gentlemen, and ladies, and took
up her abode for the present at the dissolved monastery of the Chartreux, or
Charterhouse, then the residence of lord North; a splendid pile which
offered ample accommodation for a royal retinue. Her next remove, in
compliance with ancient custom, was to the Tower. On this occasion all the
streets from the Charterhouse were spread with fine gravel; singers and
musicians were stationed by the way, and a vast concourse of people freely
lent their joyful and admiring acclamations, as preceded by her heralds and
great officers, and richly attired in purple velvet, she passed along mounted
on her palfrey, and returning the salutations of the humblest of her subjects
with graceful and winning affability.
With what vivid and what affecting impressions of the vicissitudes
attending on the great must she have passed again within the antique walls
of that fortress once her dungeon, now her palace! She had entered it by the

Traitor's gate, a terrified and defenceless prisoner, smarting under many
wrongs, hopeless of deliverance, and apprehending nothing less than an
ignominious death. She had quitted it, still a captive, under the guard of
armed men, to be conducted she knew not whither. She returned to it in all
the pomp of royalty, surrounded by the ministers of her power, ushered by
the applauses of her people; the cherished object of every eye, the idol of
every heart.
Devotion alone could supply becoming language to the emotions which
swelled her bosom; and no sooner had she reached the royal apartments,
than falling on her knees she returned humble and fervent thanks to that
Providence which had brought her in safety, like Daniel from the den of
lions, to behold this day of exaltation.
Elizabeth was attended on her passage to the Tower by one who like
herself returned with honor to that place of his former captivity; but not,
like herself, with a mind disciplined by adversity to receive with
moderation and wisdom "the good vicissitude of joy." This person was lord
Robert Dudley, whom the queen had thus early encouraged to aspire to her
future favors by appointing him to the office of master of the horse.
We are totally uninformed of the circumstances which had recommended
to her peculiar patronage this bad son of a bad father; whose enterprises, if
successful, would have disinherited of a kingdom Elizabeth herself no less
than Mary. But it is remarkable, that even under the reign of the latter, the
surviving members of the Dudley family had been able to recover in great
measure from the effects of their late signal reverses. Lord Robert, soon
after his release from the Tower, contrived to make himself so acceptable to
king Philip by his courtier-like attentions, and to Mary by his diligence in
posting backwards and forwards to bring her intelligence of her husband
during his long visits to the continent, that he earned from the latter several
marks of favor. Two of his brothers fought, and one fell, in the battle of St.
Quintin's; and immediately afterwards the duchess their mother found
means, through some Spanish interests and connexions, to procure the
restoration in blood of all her surviving children. The appointment of
Robert to the place of master of the ordnance soon followed; so that even
before the accession of Elizabeth he might be regarded as a rising man in

the state. His personal graces and elegant accomplishments are on all hands
acknowledged to have been sufficiently striking to dazzle the eyes and
charm the heart of a young princess of a lively imagination and absolute
mistress of her own actions. The circumstance of his being already married,
blinded her perhaps to the nature of her sentiments towards him, or at least
it was regarded by her as a sufficient sanction in the eyes of the public for
those manifestations of favor and esteem with which she was pleased to
honor him. But whether the affection which she entertained for him best
deserved the name of friendship or a still tenderer one, seems after all a
question of too subtile and obscure a nature for sober discussion; though in
a French "cour d'amour" it might have furnished pleas and counterpleas of
exquisite ingenuity, prodigious sentimental interest, and length
interminable. What is unfortunately too certain is, that he was a favorite,
and in the common judgement of the court, of the nation, and of posterity,
an unworthy one; but calumny and prejudice alone have dared to attack the
reputation of the queen.
Elizabeth had no propensity to exalt immoderately her relations by the
mother's side;—for she neither loved nor honored that mother's memory;
but several of the number may be mentioned, whose merits towards herself,
or whose qualifications for the public service, justly entitled them to share
in her distribution of offices and honors, and whom she always treated with
distinction. The whole illustrious family of the Howards were her relations;
and in the first year of her reign she conferred on the duke of Norfolk, her
second-cousin, the order of the garter. Her great-uncle lord William
Howard, created baron of Effingham by Mary, was continued by her in the
high office of lord-chamberlain, and soon after appointed one of the
commissioners for concluding a peace with France. Lord Thomas Howard,
her mother's first-cousin, who had treated her with distinguished respect and
kindness on her arrival at Hampton Court from Woodstock, and had the
further merit of being indulgent to protestants during the persecutions of
Mary, received from her the title of viscount Bindon, and continued much
in her favor to the end of his days.
Sir Richard Sackville, also her mother's first-cousin, had filled different
fiscal offices under the three last reigns; he was a man of abilities, and

derived from a long line of ancestors great estates and extensive influence
in the county of Sussex. The people, who marked his growing wealth, and
to whom he was perhaps officially obnoxious, nicknamed him Fill-sack: in
Mary's time he was a catholic, a privy-councillor, and chancellor of the
court of Augmentations; under her successor he changed the first
designation and retained the two last, which he probably valued more. He is
chiefly memorable as the father of Sackville the poet, afterwards lord
Buckhurst and progenitor of the dukes of Dorset.
Sir Francis Knolles, whose lady was one of the queen's nearest
kinswomen, was deservedly called to the privy-council on his return from
his voluntary banishment for conscience' sake; his sons gained considerable
influence in the court of Elizabeth; his daughter, the mother of Essex, and
afterwards the wife of Leicester, was for various reasons long an object of
the queen's particular aversion.
But of all her relations, the one who had deserved most at her hands was
Henry Carey, brother to lady Knolles, and son to Mary Boleyn, her
majesty's aunt. This gentleman had expended several thousand pounds of
his own patrimony in her service and relief during the time of her
imprisonment, and she liberally requited his friendship at her first creation
of peers, by conferring upon him, with the title of baron Hunsdon, the royal
residence of that name, with its surrounding park and several beneficial
leases of crown lands. He was afterwards joined in various commissions
and offices of trust: but his remuneration was, on the whole, by no means
exorbitant; for he was not rapacious, and consequently not importunate; and
the queen, in the employments which she assigned him, seemed rather to
consult her own advantage and that of her country, by availing herself of the
abilities of a diligent and faithful servant, than to please herself by granting
rewards to an affectionate and generous kinsman. In fact, lord Hunsdon was
skilled as little in the ceremonious and sentimental gallantry which she
required from her courtiers, as in the circumspect and winding policy which
she approved in her statesmen. "As he lived in a ruffling time," says
Naunton, "so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers wont
to call men of their hands, of which sort he had many brave gentlemen that
followed him; yet not taken for a popular or dangerous person." Though

extremely choleric, he was honest, and not at all malicious. It was said of
him that "his Latin and his dissimulation were both alike," equally bad, and
that "his custom in swearing and obscenity in speech made him seem a
worse Christian than he was."
Fuller relates of him the following characteristic anecdote. "Once, one Mr.
Colt chanced to meet him coming from Hunsdon to London, in the
equipage of a lord of those days. The lord, on some former grudge, gave
him a box on the ear: Colt presently returned the principal with interest; and
thereupon his servants drawing their swords, swarmed about him. 'You
rogues,' said my lord, 'may not I and my neighbour change a blow but you
must interpose?' Thus the quarrel was begun and ended in the same
minute[37]."
The queen's attachment to such of her family as she was pleased to honor
with her notice, was probably the more constant because there was nothing
in it of excess or of blindness:—even Leicester in the height of his favor felt
that he must hold sacred their claims to her regard: according to Naunton's
phrase, he used to say of Sackville and Hunsdon, "that they were of the
tribe of Dan, and were Noli me tangere's."
After a few days spent in the Tower, Elizabeth passed by water to
Somerset Place; and thence, about a fortnight after, when the funeral of her
predecessor was over, to the palace of Westminster, where she kept her
Christmas.
Busy preparation was now making in her good city of London against the
solemn day of her passage in state from the Tower to her coronation at
Westminster. The usages and sentiments of that age conferred upon these
public ceremonials a character of earnest and dignified importance now
lost; and on this memorable occasion, when the mingled sense of
deliverance received and of future favor to be conciliated had opened the
hearts of all men, it was resolved to lavish in honor of the new sovereign
every possible demonstration of loyal affection, and every known device of
festal magnificence.

The costume of the age was splendid. Gowns of velvet or satin, richly
trimmed with silk, furs, or gold lace, costly gold chains, and caps or hoods
of rich materials adorned with feathers or ouches, decorated on all
occasions of display the persons not of nobles or courtiers alone, but of
their crowds of retainers and higher menials, and even of the plain
substantial citizens. Female attire was proportionally sumptuous. Hangings,
of cloth, of silk, of velvet, cloth of gold or silver, or "needlework sublime,"
clothed on days of family-festivity the upper chamber[38] of every house of
respectable appearance; these on public festivals were suspended from the
balconies, and uniting with the banners and pennons floating overhead,
gave to the streets almost the appearance of a suit of long and gayly-dressed
saloons. Every circumstance thus conspired to render the public entry of
queen Elizabeth the most gorgeous and at the same time the most
interesting spectacle of the kind ever exhibited in the English metropolis.
Her majesty was first to be conducted from her palace in Westminster to
the royal apartments in the Tower; and a splendid water procession was
appointed for the purpose. At this period, when the streets were narrow and
ill-paved, the roads bad, and the luxury of close carriages unknown, the
Thames was the great thoroughfare of the metropolis. The old palace of
Westminster, as well as those of Richmond and Greenwich, the favorite
summer residences of the Tudor princes, stood on its banks, and the court
passed from one to the other in barges. The nobility were beginning to
occupy with their mansions and gardens the space between the Strand and
the water, and it had become a reigning folly amongst them to vie with each
other in the splendor of their barges and of the liveries of the rowers, who
were all distinguished by the crests or badges of their lords.
The corporation and trading companies of London possessed, as now,
their state-barges enriched with carved and gilded figures and "decked and
trimmed with targets and banners of their misteries."
On the 12th of January 1559 these were all drawn forth in grand array;
and to enliven the pomp, "the bachelor's barge of the lord-mayor's company,
to wit the mercers, had their barge with a foist trimmed with three tops and
artillery aboard, gallantly appointed to wait upon them, shooting off lustily
as they went, with great and pleasant melody of instruments, which played

in most sweet and heavenly manner." In this state they rowed up to
Westminster and attended her majesty with the royal barges back to the
Tower.
Her passage through the city took place two days after.
She issued forth drawn in a sumptuous chariot, preceded by trumpeters
and heralds in their coat-armour and "most honorably accompanied as well
with gentlemen, barons, and other the nobility of this realm, as also with a
notable train of goodly and beautiful ladies, richly appointed." The ladies
were on horseback, and both they and the lords were habited in crimson
velvet, with which their horses were also trapped. Let it be remarked by the
way, that the retinue of fair equestrians constantly attendant on the person
of the maiden queen in all her public appearances, was a circumstance of
prodigious effect; the gorgeousness of royal pomp was thus heightened, and
at the same time rendered more amiable and attractive by the alliance of
grace and beauty; and a romantic kind of charm, comparable to that which
seizes the imagination in the splendid fictions of chivalry, was cast over the
heartless parade of courtly ceremonial.
It was a very different spirit, however, from that of romance or of knight-
errantry which inspired the bosoms of the citizens whose acclamations now
rent the air on her approach. They beheld in the princess whom they
welcomed the daughter of that Henry who had redeemed the land from
papal tyranny and extortion; the sister of that young and godly Edward,—
the Josiah of English story,—whose pious hand had reared again the altars
of pure and primitive religion; and they had bodied forth for her instruction
and admonition, in a series of solemn pageants, the maxims by which they
hoped to see her equal or surpass these deep-felt merits of her predecessors.
These pageants were erections placed across the principal streets in the
manner of triumphal arches: illustrative sentences in English and Latin were
inscribed upon them; and a child was stationed in each, who explained to
the queen in English verse the meaning of the whole. The first was of three
stories, and represented by living figures: first, Henry VII. and his royal
spouse Elizabeth of York, from whom her majesty derived her name;
secondly, Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn; and lastly, her majesty in person;

all in royal robes. The verses described the felicity of that union of the
houses to which she owed her existence, and of concord in general. The
second pageant was styled "The seat of worthy governance," on the summit
of which sat another representative of the queen; beneath were the cardinal
virtues trampling under their feet the opposite vices, among whom
Ignorance and Superstition were not forgotten. The third exhibited the eight
Beatitudes, all ascribed with some ingenuity of application to her majesty.
The fourth ventured upon a more trying topic: its opposite sides represented
in lively contrast the images of a decayed and of a flourishing
commonwealth; and from a cave below issued Time leading forth his
daughter Truth, who held in her hand an English bible, which she offered to
the queen's acceptance. Elizabeth received the volume, and reverently
pressing it with both hands to her heart and to her lips, declared aloud, amid
the tears and grateful benedictions of her people, that she thanked the city
more for that gift than for all the cost they had bestowed upon her, and that
she would often read over that book. The last pageant exhibited "a seemly
and mete personage, richly apparelled in parliament robes, with a sceptre in
her hand, over whose head was written 'Deborah, the judge and restorer of
the house of Israel.'"
To render more palatable these grave moralities, the recorder of London,
approaching her majesty's chariot near the further end of Cheapside, where
ended the long array of the city companies, which had lined the streets all
the way from Fenchurch, presented her with a splendid and ample purse,
containing one thousand marks in gold. The queen graciously received it
with both hands, and answered his harangue "marvellous pithily."
To crown the whole, those two griesly personages vulgarly called Gog and
Magog, but described by the learned as Gogmagog the Albion and Corineus
the Briton, deserted on this memorable day that accustomed station in
Guildhall where they appear as the tutelary genii of the city, and were seen
rearing up their stately height on each side of Temple-bar. With joined
hands they supported above the gate a copy of Latin verses, in which they
obligingly expounded to her majesty the sense of all the pageants which had
been offered to her view, concluding with compliments and felicitations
suitable to the happy occasion. The queen, in few but cordial words,

thanked the citizens for all their cost and pains, assured them that she would
"stand their good queen," and passed the gate amid a thunder of applause.
Elizabeth possessed in a higher degree than any other English prince who
ever reigned, the innocent and honest arts of popularity; and the following
traits of her behaviour on this day are recorded by our chroniclers with
affectionate delight. "'Yonder is an ancient citizen,' said one of the knights
attending on her person, 'which weepeth and turneth his face backward:
How may it be interpreted? that he doth so for sorrow or for gladness?' With
a just and pleasing confidence, the queen replied, 'I warrant you it is for
gladness,'" "How many nosegays did her grace receive at poor women's
hands! How many times staid she her chariot when she saw any simple
body offer to speak to her grace! A branch of rosemary given her grace with
a supplication by a poor woman about Fleet-bridge was seen in her chariot
till her grace came to Westminster[39]."
The reader may here be reminded, that five-and-twenty years before,
when the mother of this queen passed through London to her coronation,
the pageants exhibited derived their personages and allusions chiefly from
pagan mythology or classical fiction. But all was now changed; the
earnestness of religious controversy in Edward's time, and the fury of
persecution since, had put to flight Apollo, the Muses, and the Graces:
Learning indeed had kept her station and her honors, but she had lent her
lamp to other studies, and whether in the tongue of ancient Rome or modern
England, Elizabeth was hailed in Christian strains, and as the sovereign of a
Christian country. A people filled with earnest zeal in the best of causes
implored her to free them once again from popery; to overthrow the tyranny
of error and of superstition; to establish gospel truth; and to accept at their
hands, as the standard of her faith and the rule of her conduct, that holy
book of which they regarded the free and undisturbed possession as their
brightest privilege.
How tame, how puerile, in the midst of sentiments serious and profound
as these, would have appeared the intrusion of classical imagery, however
graceful in itself or ingenious in its application! Frigid must have been the
spectator who could even have remarked its absence, while shouts of

patriotic ardor and of religious joy were bursting from the lips of the whole
assembled population.
The august ceremonies of the coronation, which took place on the
following day, merit no particular description; regulated in every thing by
ancient custom, they afforded little scope for that display of popular
sentiment which had given so intense an interest to the procession of the
day before. Great perplexity was occasioned by the refusal of the whole
bench of bishops to perform the coronation service; but at length, to the
displeasure of his brethren, Ogelthorp bishop of Carlisle suffered himself to
be gained over, and the rite was duly celebrated. This refractoriness of the
episcopal order was wisely overlooked for the present by the new
government; but it proceeded no doubt from the principle, that, the marriage
of Henry VIII. with Catherine of Arragon having been declared lawful and
valid, the child of Anne Boleyn must be regarded as illegitimate and
incapable of the succession. The compliance of Ogelthorp could indeed be
censured by the other bishops on no other ground than their disallowance of
the title of the sovereign; in the office itself, as he performed it, there was
nothing to which the most rigid catholic could object, for the ancient ritual
is said to have been followed without the slightest modification. This
circumstance has been adduced among others, to show that it was rather by
the political necessities of her situation, than by her private judgement and
conscience in religious matters, that Elizabeth was impelled finally to
abjure the Roman catholic system, and to declare herself the general
protectress of the protestant cause.
Probably, had she found herself free to follow entirely the dictates of her
own inclinations, she would have established in the church of which she
found herself the head, a kind of middle scheme like that devised by her
father, for whose authority she was impressed with the highest veneration.
To the end of her days she could never be reconciled to married bishops;
indeed with respect to the clergy generally, a sagacious writer of her own
time observes, that "cæteris paribus, and sometimes imparibus too, she
preferred the single man before the married[40]."
She would allow no one "to speak irreverently of the sacrament of the
altar;" that is, to enter into discussions respecting the real presence; she

enjoined the like respectful silence concerning the intercession of saints;
and we learn that one Patch, who had been Wolsey's fool, and had
contrived, like some others, to keep in favor through all the changes of four
successive reigns, was employed by sir Francis Knolles to break down a
crucifix which she still retained in her private chapel to the scandal of all
good protestants.
A remarkable incident soon served to intimate the coolness and caution
with which it was her intention to proceed in re-establishing the maxims of
the reformers. Lord Bacon thus relates the anecdote: "Queen Elizabeth on
the morrow of her coronation (it being the custom to release prisoners at the
inauguration of a prince) went to the chapel; and in the great chamber one
of her courtiers, who was well known to her, either out of his own motion,
or by the instigation of a wiser man, presented her with a petition, and
before a great number of courtiers besought her with a loud voice that now
this good time there might be four or five more principal prisoners released:
these were the four evangelists, and the apostle St. Paul, who had been long
shut up in an unknown tongue, as it were in prison; so as they could not
converse with the common people. The queen answered very gravely, that it
was best first to inquire of themselves whether they would be released or
not[41]."
It was not long, however, ere this happy deliverance was fully effected.
Before her coronation, Elizabeth had taken the important step of authorizing
the reading of the liturgy in English; but she forbade preaching on
controverted topics generally, and all preaching at Paul's Cross in particular,
till the completion of that revision of the service used in the time of Edward
VI. which she had intrusted to Parker archbishop-elect of Canterbury, with
several of her wisest counsellors. It was the zeal of the ministers lately
returned from exile, many of whom had imbibed at Geneva or Zurich ideas
of a primitive simplicity in Christian worship widely remote from the views
and sentiments of the queen, which gave occasion to this prohibition. The
learning, the piety, the past sufferings of the men gave them great power
over the minds and opinions of the people, who ran in crowds to listen to
their sermons; and Elizabeth began already to apprehend that the hierarchy
which she desired to establish would stand as much in need of protection

from the disciples of Calvin and Zwingle on one hand, as from the
adherents of popery on the other.
There is good reason to believe, that a royal proclamation issued some
time after, by which all manner of plays and interludes were forbidden to be
represented till after the ensuing hallowmass, was dictated by similar
reasons of state with the prohibition of popular and unlicensed preaching.
From the earliest beginnings of the reformation under Henry VIII. the
stage had come in aid of the pulpit; not, according to the practice of its
purer ages, as the "teacher best of moral wisdom, with delight received,"
but as the vehicle of religious controversy, and not seldom of polemical
scurrility. Several times already had this dangerous novelty attracted the
jealous eyes of authority, and measures had in vain been taken for its
suppression.
In 1542 Henry added to an edict for the destruction of Tyndale's English
bible, with all the controversial works on both sides of which it had been
the fertile parent, an injunction that "the kingdom should be purged and
cleansed of all religious plays, interludes, rhymes, ballads, and songs, which
are equally pestiferous and noisome to the peace of the church." During the
reign of Edward, when the papists had availed themselves of the license of
the theatre to attack Cranmer and the protector, a similar prohibition was
issued against all dramatic performances, as tending to the growth of
"disquiet, division, tumults and uproars." Mary's privy-council, on the other
hand, found it necessary to address a remonstrance to the president of the
North, respecting certain players, servants to sir Francis Lake, who had
gone about the country representing pieces in ridicule of the king and queen
and the formalities of the mass; and the design of the proclamation of
Elizabeth was rendered evident by a solemn enactment of heavy penalties
against such as should abuse the Common-prayer in any interludes, songs,
or rhymes[42].

CHAPTER X.
1559.
Meeting of parliament.—Prudent counsel of sir N. Bacon.—Act
declaratory of the queen's title.—Her answer to an address
praying her to marry.—Philip II. offers her his hand.—Motives
of her refusal.—Proposes to her the archduke Charles.—The
king of Sweden renews his addresses by the duke of Finland.—
Honorable reception of the duke.—Addresses of the duke of
Holstein.—The duke of Norfolk, lord R. Dudley, the marquis of
Northampton, the earl of Rutland, made knights of the garter.—
Notices of the two last.—Queen visits the earl of Pembroke.—
His life and character.—Arrival and entertainment of a French
embassy.—Review of the London trained-bands.—Tilt in
Greenwich park.—Band of gentlemen-pensioners.—Royal
progress to Dartford, Cobham Hall, Eltham, and Nonsuch.—The
earl of Arundel entertains her at the latter place.—Obsequies
for the king of France.—Death of Frances duchess of Suffolk.—
Sumptuary law respecting apparel.—Fashions of dress.—Law
against witchcraft.

I the parliament which met in January 1559, two matters personally
n

interesting to the queen were agitated; her title to the crown, and her
marriage; and both were disposed of in a manner calculated to afford a just
presage of the maxims by which the whole tenor of her future life and reign
was to be guided. By the eminently prudent and judicious counsels of sir
Nicholas Bacon keeper of the seals, she omitted to require of parliament the
repeal of those acts of her father's reign which had declared his marriage
with her mother null, and herself illegitimate; and reposing on the
acknowledged maxim of law, that the crown once worn takes away all
defects in blood, she contented herself with an act declaratory in general

terms of her right of succession. Thus the whole perplexing subject of her
mother's character and conduct was consigned to an oblivion equally safe
and decent; and the memory of her father, which, in spite of all his acts of
violence and injustice, was popular in the nation and respected by herself,
was saved from the stigma which the vindication of Anne Boleyn must have
impressed indelibly upon it.
On the other topic she explained herself with an earnest sincerity which
might have freed her from all further importunity in any concern less
interesting to the wishes of her people. To a deputation from the house of
commons with an address, "the special matter whereof was to move her
grace to marriage," after a gracious reception, she delivered an answer in
which the following passages are remarkable.
"...From my years of understanding, sith I first had consideration of my
life, to be born a servitor of almighty God, I happily chose this kind of life,
in the which I yet live; which I assure you for mine own part hath hitherto
best contented myself, and I trust hath been most acceptable unto God.
From the which, if either ambition of high estate, offered to me in marriage
by the pleasure and appointment of my prince, whereof I have some records
in this presence (as you our treasurer well know); or if eschewing the
danger of mine enemies, or the avoiding of the peril of death, whose
messenger, or rather a continual watchman, the prince's indignation, was no
little time daily before mine eyes, (by whose means although I know, or
justly may suspect, yet I will not now utter, or if the whole cause were in
my sister herself, I will not now burden her therewith, because I will not
charge the dead): if any of these, I say, could have drawn or dissuaded me
from this kind of life, I had not now remained in this estate wherein you see
me; but so constant have I always continued in this determination, although
my youth and words may seem to some hardly to agree together; yet it is
most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I
have had in times past, or have at this present."
After a somewhat haughty assurance that she takes the recommendation of
the parliament in good part, because it contains no limitation of place or
person, which she should have regarded as great presumption in them,
"whose duties are to obey," and "not to require them that may command;"

having declared that should she change her resolution, she will choose one
for her husband who shall, if possible, be as careful for the realm as herself,
she thus concludes: "And in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a
marble stone shall declare, that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived
and died a virgin."
One matrimonial proposal her majesty had already received, and that at
once the most splendid and the least suitable which Europe could afford.
Philip of Spain, loth to relinquish his hold upon England, but long since
aware of the impracticability of establishing any claims of his own in
opposition to the title of Elizabeth, now sought to reign by her; and to the
formal announcement which she conveyed to him of the death of his late
wife, accompanied with expressions of her anxiety to preserve his
friendship, he had replied by an offer of his hand.
The objections to this union were so peculiarly forcible, and so obvious to
every eye, that it appears at first view almost incredible that the proposal
should have been made, as it yet undoubtedly was, seriously and with
strong expectations of success. But Philip, himself a politician, believed
Elizabeth to be one also; and he flattered himself that he should be able to
point out such advantages in the connexion as might over-balance in her
mind any scruples of patriotism, of feeling, or of conscience. She stood
alone, the last of her father's house, unsupported at home by the authority of
a powerful royal family, or abroad by great alliances. The queen of Scots,
whom few of the subjects of Elizabeth denied to be next heir to the crown,
and whose claim was by most of the catholics held preferable to her own,
was married to the dauphin of France, consequently her title would be
upheld by the whole force of that country, with which, as well as with
Scotland, Elizabeth at her accession had found the nation involved in an
unsuccessful war. The loss of Calais, the decay of trade, the failure of the
exchequer, and the recent visitations of famine and pestilence, had infected
the minds of the English with despondency, and paralysed all their efforts.
In religion they were confessedly a divided people; but it is probable that
Philip, misled by his own zeal and that of the catholic clergy, confidently
anticipated the extirpation of heresy and the final triumph of the papal
system, if the measures of salutary rigor which had distinguished the reign

of Mary should be persisted in by her successor; and that he actually
supposed the majority of the nation to be at this time sincerely and cordially
catholic. In offering therefore his hand to Elizabeth, he seemed to lend her
that powerful aid against her foreign foe and rival without which her
possession of the throne could not be secure, and that support against
domestic faction without which it could not be tranquil. He readily
undertook to procure from the pope the necessary dispensation for the
marriage, which he was certain would be granted with alacrity; and before
the answer of Elizabeth could reach him, he had actually dispatched envoys
to Rome for this purpose.
A princess, in fact, of a character less firm and less sagacious than
Elizabeth, might have found in these seeming benefits temptations not to be
resisted; the splendor of Philip's rank and power would have dazzled and
overawed, the difficulties of her own situation would have affrighted her,
and between ambition and alarm she would probably have thrown herself
into the arms, and abandoned her country to the mercy, of a gloomy,
calculating, relentless tyrant.
But Elizabeth was neither to be deceived nor intimidated. She well knew
how odious this very marriage had rendered her unhappy sister; she
understood and sympathized in the religious sentiments of the great mass of
her subjects; she felt too all the pride, as well as the felicity, of
independence; and looking around with a cheerful confidence on a people
who adored her, she formed at once the patriotic resolution to wear her
English diadem by the suffrage of the English nation alone, unindebted to
the protection and free from the participation of any brother-monarch
living, even of him who held the highest place among the potentates of
Europe.
Her best and wisest counsellors applauded her decision, but they
unanimously advised that no means consistent with the rejection of his suit
should be omitted, by which the friendship of the king of Spain might be
preserved and cultivated. Expedients were accordingly found, without
actually encouraging his hopes, for protracting the negotiation till a peace
was concluded with France and with Scotland, and finally of declining the
marriage without a breach of amity. Yet the duke de Feria, the Spanish

ambassador, had not failed to represent to the queen, that as the addresses of
his master were founded on personal acquaintance and high admiration of
her charms and merit, a negative could not be returned without wounding
equally his pride and his feelings. Philip, however, soon consoled himself
for this disappointment by taking to wife the daughter of the king of France;
and before the end of the year we find him recommending to Elizabeth as a
husband his cousin the archduke Charles, son of the emperor Ferdinand.
The overture was at this time declined by the queen without hesitation; but
some time afterwards, circumstances arose which caused the negotiation to
be resumed with prospect of success, and the pretensions and qualifications
of the Austrian prince became, as we shall see, an object of serious
discussion.
Eric, who had now ascended the throne of Sweden, sent his brother the
duke of Finland to plead once more with the English princess in his behalf;
and the king of Denmark, unwilling that his neighbour should bear off
without a contest so glorious a prize, lost no time in sending forth on the
same high adventure his nephew the duke of Holstein. It is more than
probable that Shakespear, in his description of the wooers of all countries
who contend for the possession of the fair and wealthy Portia[43], satirically
alludes to several of these royal suitors, whose departure would often be
accounted by his sovereign "a gentle ridance," since she might well exclaim
with the Italian heiress, "while we shut the gate on one wooer, another
knocks at the door."
The duke of Finland was received with high honors. The earl of Oxford
and lord Robert Dudley repaired to him at Colchester and conducted him
into London. At the corner of Gracechurch-street he was received by the
marquis of Northampton and lord Ambrose Dudley, attended by many
gentlemen, and, what seems remarkable, by ladies also; and thence,
followed by a great troop of gentlemen in gold chains and yeomen of the
guard, he proceeded to the bishop of Winchester's palace in Southwark,
"which was hung with rich cloth of arras, and wrought with gold and silver
and silks. And there he remained."
On the last circumstance it may be remarked, that it appears at this time to
have been the invariable custom for ambassadors and other royal visitants

to be lodged at some private house, where they were entertained, nominally
perhaps at the expense of the sovereign, but really to the great cost as well
as inconvenience of the selected host. The practice discovers a kind of
feudal right of ownership still claimed by the prince in the mansions of his
barons, some of which indeed were royal castles or manor-houses and held
perhaps under peculiar obligations: at the same time it gives us a
magnificent idea of the size and accommodation of these mansions and of
the style of house-keeping used in them. It further intimates that an habitual
distrust of these foreign guests caused it to be regarded as a point of
prudence to place them under the secret inspection of some native of
approved loyalty and discretion. Prisoners of state, as well as ambassadors
and royal strangers, were thus committed to the private custody of peers or
bishops.
The duke of Holstein on his arrival was lodged at Somerset Place, of
which the queen had granted the use to lord Hunsdon. He came, it seems,
with sanguine expectations of success in his suit; but the royal fair one
deemed it sufficient to acknowledge his pains by an honorable reception,
the order of the garter, and the grant of a yearly pension.
Meantime the queen herself, with equal assiduity and better success than
awaited these princely wooers, was applying her cares to gain the affections
of her subjects of every class, and if possible of both religious
denominations.
On her young kinsman the duke of Norfolk, the first peer of the realm by
rank, property, and great alliances, and the most popular by his known
attachment to the protestant faith, she now conferred the distinction of the
garter, decorating with it at the same time the marquis of Northampton, the
earl of Rutland, and lord Robert Dudley.
The marquis, a brother of queen Catherine Parr, whom he resembled in the
turn of his religious opinions, had been for these opinions a great sufferer
under the last reign. On pretext of his adherence to the cause of Jane Grey,
in which he had certainly not partaken more deeply than many others who
found nothing but favor in the sight of Mary, he was attainted of high
treason, and though his life was spared, his estates were forfeited and he

had remained ever since in disgrace and suspicion. A divorce which he had
obtained from an unfaithful wife under the ecclesiastical law of Henry VIII.
was also called in question, and an after marriage which he had contracted
declared null, but it appears to have been confirmed under Elizabeth. He
was accounted a modest and upright character, endowed with no great
talents for military command, in which he had been unsuccessful, nor yet
for civil business; but distinguished by a fine taste in music and poetry,
which formed his chief delight. From the new sovereign substantial benefits
as well as flattering distinctions awaited him, being reinstated by her in the
possession of his confiscated estates and appointed a privy-councillor.
Henry second earl of Rutland of the surname of Manners, was the
representative of a knightly family seated during many generations at Ettal
in Northumberland, and known in border history amongst the stoutest
champions on the English side. But Ettal, a place of strength, was more than
once laid in ruins, and the lands devastated and rendered "nothing worth,"
by incursions of the Scots; and though successive kings rewarded the
services and compensated the losses of these valiant knights, by grants of
land and appointments to honorable offices in the north, it was many an age
before they attained to such a degree of wealth as would enable them to
appear with distinction amongst the great families of the kingdom. At
length sir Robert Manners, high sheriff of Northumberland, having
recommended himself to the favor of the king-making Warwick and of
Richard duke of Gloucester, was fortunate enough by a judicious marriage
with the daughter of lord Roos, heiress of the Tiptofts earls of Worcester, to
add the noble castle and fertile vale of Belvoir to the battered towers and
wasted fields of his paternal inheritance.
A second splendid alliance completed the aggrandizement of the house of
Manners. The son of sir Robert, bearing in right of his mother the title of
lord Roos, and knighted by the earl of Surry for his distinguished bravery in
the Scottish wars, was honored with the hand of Anne sole heiress of sir
Thomas St. Leger by the duchess-dowager of Exeter, a sister of king
Edward IV. The heir of this marriage, in consideration of his maternal
ancestry, was advanced by Henry VIII. to the title of earl of Rutland, never
borne but by princes of the blood. His successor, whom the queen was

pleased to honor on this occasion, had suffered a short imprisonment in the
cause of Jane Grey, but was afterwards intrusted by Mary with a military
command. Under Elizabeth he was lord lieutenant of the counties of
Nottingham and Rutland, and one of the commissioners for enforcing the
oath of supremacy on all persons in offices of trust or profit suspected of
adherence to the old religion. He died in 1563.
Of lord Robert Dudley it is only necessary here to observe, that his favor
with the queen became daily more apparent, and began to give fears and
jealousies to her best friends and wisest counsellors.
The hearts of the common people, as this wise princess well knew, were
easily and cheaply to be won by gratifying their eyes with the frequent view
of her royal person, and she neglected no opportunity of offering herself, all
smiles and affability, to their ready acclamations.
On one occasion she passed publicly through the city to visit the mint and
inspect the new coinage, which she had the great merit of restoring to its
just standard from the extremely depreciated state to which it had been
brought by the successive encroachments of her immediate predecessors.
Another time she visited the dissolved priory of St. Mary Spittle in
Bishopsgate-street, which was noted for its pulpit-cross, where, on set days,
the lord-mayor and aldermen attended to hear sermons. It is conjectured
that the queen went thither for the same purpose; but if this were the case,
her equipage was somewhat whimsical. She was attended, as Stow informs
us, by a thousand men in harness with shirts of mail and corselets and
morice-pikes, and ten great pieces carried through the city unto the court,
with drums and trumpets sounding, and two morice dancings, and in a cart
two white bears.
Having supped one afternoon with the earl of Pembroke at Baynard's
castle in Thames-street, she afterwards took boat and was rowed up and
down the river, "hundreds of boats and barges rowing about her, and
thousands of people thronging at the water side to look upon her majesty;
rejoicing to see her, and partaking of the music and sights upon the
Thames."

This peer was the offspring of a base-born son of William Herbert earl of
Pembroke, and coming early to court to push his fortune, became an esquire
of the body to Henry VIII. Soon ingratiating himself with this monarch, he
obtained from his customary profusion towards his favorites, several offices
in Wales and enormous grants of abbey-lands in some of the southern
counties. In the year 1554, the 37th of his age, we find him considerable
enough to procure the king's license "to retain thirty persons at his will and
pleasure, over and above such persons as attended on him, and to give them
his livery, badges, and cognizance." The king's marriage with Catherine
Parr, his wife's sister, increased his consequence, and Henry on his death-
bed appointed him one of his executors and a member of the young king's
council. He was actively useful in the beginning of Edward's reign in
keeping down commotions in Wales and suppressing some which had
arisen in Wiltshire and Somersetshire. This service obtained for him the
office of master of the horse; and that more important service which he
afterwards performed at the head of one thousand Welshmen, with whom he
took the field against the Cornish rebels, was rewarded by the garter, the
presidency of the council for Wales, and a valuable wardship. He figured
next as commander of part of the forces in Picardy and governor of Calais,
and found himself strong enough to claim of the feeble protector as his
reward the titles of baron Herbert and earl of Pembroke, become extinct by
the failure of legitimate heirs. As soon as his sagacity prognosticated the fall
of Somerset, he judiciously attached himself to the rising fortunes of
Northumberland. With this aspiring leader it was an object of prime
importance to purchase the support of a nobleman who now appeared at the
head of three hundred retainers, and whose authority in Wales and the
southern counties was equal, or superior, to the hereditary influence of the
most powerful and ancient houses. To engage him therefore the more firmly
in his interest, Northumberland proposed a marriage between Pembroke's
son lord Herbert and lady Catherine Grey, which was solemnized at the
same time with that between lord Guildford Dudley and the lady Jane her
eldest sister.
But no ties of friendship or alliance could permanently engage Pembroke
on the losing side; and though he concurred in the first measures of the
privy-council in behalf of lady Jane's title, it was he who devised a pretext

for extricating its members from the Tower, where Northumberland had
detained them in order to secure their fidelity, and, assembling them in
Baynard's castle, procured their concurrence in the proclamation of Mary.
By this act he secured the favor of the new queen, whom he further
propitiated by compelling his son to repudiate the innocent and ill-fated
lady Catherine, whose birth caused her to be regarded at court with jealous
eyes. Mary soon confided to him the charge of effectually suppressing
Wyat's rebellion, and afterwards constituted him her captain-general beyond
the seas, in which capacity he commanded the English forces at the battle of
St. Quintin's. Such was the respect entertained for his experience and
capacity, that Elizabeth admitted him to her privy-council immediately after
her accession, and as a still higher mark of her confidence named him,—
with the marquis of Northampton, the earl of Bedford, and lord John Grey,
leading men of the protestant party,—to assist at the meetings of divines
and men of learning by whom the religious establishment of the country
was to be settled. He was likewise appointed a commissioner for
administering the oath of supremacy. In short, he retained to his death,
which occurred in 1570, in the 63d year of his age, the same high station
among the confidential servants of the crown which he had held unmoved
through all the mutations of the eventful period of his public life.
Naunton, in his "Fragmenta Regalia," speaking of Paulet marquis of
Winchester and lord-treasurer, who, he says, had then served four princes
"in as various and changeable season that well I may say, neither time nor
age hath yielded the like precedent," thus proceeds: "This man being noted
to grow high in her" (queen Elizabeth's) "favor, as his place and experience
required, was questioned by an intimate friend of his, how he stood up for
thirty years together amidst the changes and reigns of so many chancellors
and great personages. 'Why,' quoth the marquis, 'ortus sum ex salice, non ex
quercu.' (By being a willow and not an oak). And truly the old man hath
taught them all, especially William earl of Pembroke, for they two were
ever of the king's religion, and over-zealous professors. Of these it is said,
that both younger brothers, yet of noble houses, they spent what was left
them and came on trust to the court; where, upon the bare stock of their
wits, they began to traffic for themselves, and prospered so well, that they
got, spent, and left, more than any subjects from the Norman conquest to

their own times: whereunto it hath been prettily replied, that they lived in a
time of dissolution.—Of any of the former reign, it is said that these two
lived and died chiefly in the queen's favor."
Among the means employed by Pembroke for preserving the good graces
of the new queen, the obvious one of paying court to her prime favorite
Robert Dudley was not neglected; and lord Herbert, whose first marriage
had been contracted in compliance with the views of the father, now formed
a third in obedience to the wishes of the son. The lady to whom he was thus
united by motives in which inclination had probably no share on either side,
was the niece of Dudley and sister of sir Philip Sidney, one of the most
accomplished women of her age, celebrated during her life by the wits and
poets whom she patronized, and preserved in the memory of posterity by an
epitaph from the pen of Ben Jonson which will not be forgotten whilst
English poetry remains.
The arrival of ambassadors of high rank from France, on occasion of the
peace recently concluded with that country, afforded the queen an
opportunity of displaying all the magnificence of her court; and their
entertainment has furnished for the curious inquirer in later times some
amusing traits of the half-barbarous manners of the age. The duke de
Montmorenci, the head of the embassy, was lodged at the bishop of
London's, and the houses of the dean and canons of St. Paul's were entirely
filled with his numerous retinue. The gorgeousness of the ambassador's
dress was thought remarkable even in those gorgeous times. The day after
their arrival they were conducted in state to court, where they supped with
the queen, and afterwards partook of a "goodly banquet," with all manner of
entertainment till midnight. The next day her majesty gave them a
sumptuous dinner, followed by a baiting of bulls and bears. "The queen's
grace herself" stood with them in a gallery, looking on the pastime, till six
o'clock, when they returned by water to sup with the bishop their host. On
the following day they were conducted to the Paris Garden, then a favorite
place of amusement on the Surry side of the Thames, and there regaled with
another exhibition of bull and bear baiting. Two days afterwards they
departed, "taking their barge towards Gravesend," highly delighted, it is to
be hoped, with the elegant taste of the English in public diversions, and

carrying with them a number of mastiffs, given them to hunt wolves in their
own country.
But notwithstanding all outward shows of amity with France, Elizabeth
had great cause to apprehend that the pretensions of the queen of Scots and
her husband the dauphin, who had openly assumed the royal arms of
England, might soon reinvolve her in hostilities with that country and with
Scotland; and it consequently became a point of policy with her to animate
by means of military spectacles, graced with her royal presence and
encouragement, the warlike preparations of her subjects. She was now
established for a time in her favorite summer-palace of Greenwich, and the
London companies were ordered to make a muster of their men at arms in
the adjoining park.
The employment of fire-arms had not as yet consigned to disuse either the
defensive armour or the weapons of offence of the middle ages; and the
military arrays of that time amused the eye of the spectator with a rich
variety of accoutrement far more picturesque in its details, and probably
more striking even in its general effect, than that magnificent uniformity
which, at a modern review, dazzles but soon satiates the sight.
Of the fourteen hundred men whom the metropolis sent forth on this
occasion, eight hundred, armed in fine corselets, bore the long Moorish
pike; two hundred were halberdiers wearing a different kind of armour,
called Almain rivets; and the gunners, or musketeers, were equipped in
shirts of mail, with morions or steel caps. Her majesty, surrounded by a
splendid court, beheld all their evolutions from a gallery over the park gate,
and finally dismissed them, confirmed in loyalty and valor by praises,
thanks, and smiles of graciousness.
A few days afterwards the queen's pensioners were appointed "to run with
the spear," and this chivalrous exhibition was accompanied with such
circumstances of romantic decoration as peculiarly delighted the fancy of
Elizabeth. She caused to be erected for her in Greenwich park a banqueting-
house "made with fir poles and decked with birch branches and all manner
of flowers both of the field and the garden, as roses, julyflowers, lavender,
marygolds, and all manner of strewing-herbs and rushes." Tents were also

set up for her household, and a place was prepared for the tilters. After the
exercises were over, the queen gave a supper in the banqueting-house,
succeeded by a masque, and that by a splendid banquet. "And then followed
great casting of fire and shooting of guns till midnight."
This band of gentlemen pensioners, the boast and ornament of the court of
Elizabeth, was probably the most splendid establishment of the kind in
Europe. It was entirely composed of the flower of the nobility and gentry,
and to be admitted to serve in its ranks was during the whole of the reign
regarded as a distinction worthy the ambition of young men of the highest
families and most brilliant prospects. Sir John Holles, afterwards earl of
Clare, was accustomed to say, that while he was a pensioner to queen
Elizabeth, he did not know a worse man in the whole band than himself; yet
he was then in possession of an inheritance of four thousand a year. "It was
the constant custom of that queen," pursues the earl's biographer, "to call
out of all counties of the kingdom, the gentlemen of the greatest hopes and
the best fortunes and families, and with them to fill the more honorable
rooms of her household servants, by which she honored them, obliged their
kindred and alliance, and fortified herself[44]."
On this point of policy it deserves to be remarked, that however it might
strengthen the personal influence of the sovereign to enroll amongst the
menial servants of the crown gentlemen of influence and property, it is
chiefly perhaps to this practice that we ought to impute that baseness of
servility which infected, with scarcely one honorable exception, the public
characters of the reign of Elizabeth.
On July 17th the queen set out on the first of those royal progresses which
form so striking a feature in the domestic history of her reign. In them, as in
most of the recreations in which she at any time indulged herself, Elizabeth
sought to unite political utilities with the gratification of her taste for
magnificence, and especially for admiration. It has also been surmised, that
she was not inattentive to the savings occasioned to her privy purse by
maintaining her household for several weeks in every year at the expense of
her nobles, or of the towns through which she passed; and it must be
admitted that more than one disgraceful instance might be pointed out, of a
great man obliged to purchase the continuance or restoration of her favor by

soliciting the almost ruinous honor of a royal visit. On the whole, however,
her deportment on these occasions warrants the conclusion, that an earnest
and constant desire of popularity was her principal motive for persevering
to the latest period of her life to encounter the fatigue of these frequent
journeys, and of the acts of public representation which they imposed upon
her.
"In her progress," says an acute and lively delineator of her character, "she
was most easy to be approached; private persons and magistrates, men and
women, country-people and children, came joyfully and without any fear to
wait upon her and see her. Her ears were then open to the complaints of the
afflicted and of those that had been any way injured. She would not suffer
the meanest of her people to be shut out from the places where she resided,
but the greatest and the least were then in a manner levelled. She took with
her own hand, and read with the greatest goodness, the petitions of the
meanest rustics. And she would frequently assure them that she would take
a particular care of their affairs, and she would ever be as good as her word.
She was never seen angry with the most unseasonable or uncourtly
approach; she was never offended with the most impudent or importunate
petitioner. Nor was there any thing in the whole course of her reign that
more won the hearts of the people than this her wonderful facility,
condescension, and the sweetness and pleasantness with which she
entertained all that came to her[45]."
The first stage of the queen's progress was to Dartford in Kent, where
Henry VIII., whose profusion in the article of royal residences was extreme,
had fitted up a dissolved priory as a palace for himself and his successors.
Elizabeth kept this mansion in her own hands during the whole of her reign,
and once more, after an interval of several years, is recorded to have passed
two days under its roof. James I. granted it to the earl of Salisbury: the lords
Darcy were afterwards its owners. The embattled gatehouse with an
adjoining wing, all that remains in habitable condition, are at the present
time occupied as a farm house; while foundations of walls running along
the neighbouring fields to a considerable distance, alone attest the
magnitude, and leave to be imagined the splendor, of the ancient edifice.
Such is at this day the common fate of the castles of our ancient barons, the

mansions of our nobles of a following age, and the palaces of the
Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts!
From Dartford she proceeded to Cobham Hall,—an exception to the
general rule,—for this venerable mansion is at present the noble seat of the
earl of Darnley; and though the centre has been rebuilt in a more modern
style, the wings remain untouched, and in one of them the apartment
occupied by the queen on this visit is still pointed out to the stranger. She
was here sumptuously entertained by William lord Cobham, a nobleman
who enjoyed a considerable share of her favor, and who, after acquitting
himself to her satisfaction in an embassy to the Low-Countries, was
rewarded with the garter and the place of a privy-councillor. He was
however a person of no conspicuous ability, and his wealth and his loyalty
appear to have been his principal titles of merit.
Eltham was her next stage; an ancient palace frequently commemorated in
the history of our early kings as the scene of rude magnificence and
boundless hospitality. In 1270 Henry III. kept a grand Christmas at Ealdham
palace,—so it was then called. A son of Edward II. was named John of
Eltham, from its being the place of his birth.
Edward III. twice held his parliament in its capacious hall. It was repaired
at great cost by Edward IV., who made it a frequent place of residence; but
Henry VIII. began to neglect it for Greenwich, and Elizabeth was the last
sovereign by whom it was visited.
Its hall, 100 feet in length, with a beautifully carved roof resembling that
of Westminster-hall and windows adorned with all the elegance of gothic
tracery, is still in being, and admirably serves the purposes of a barn and
granary.
Elizabeth soon quitted this seat of antique grandeur to contemplate the gay
magnificence of Nonsuch, regarded as the triumph of her father's taste and
the masterpiece of all the decorative arts. This stately edifice, of which not a
vestige now remains, was situated near Ewel in Surry, and commanded
from its lofty turrets extensive views of the surrounding country.

It was built round two courts, an outer and an inner one, both very
spacious; and the entrance to each was by a square gatehouse highly
ornamented, embattled, and having turrets at the four corners. These
gatehouses were of stone, as was the lower story of the palace itself; but the
upper one was of wood, "richly adorned and set forth and garnished with
variety of statues, pictures, and other antic forms of excellent art and
workmanship, and of no small cost:" all which ornaments, it seems, were
made of rye dough. In modern language the "pictures" would probably be
called basso-relievos. From the eastern and western angles of the inner
court rose two slender turrets five stories high, with lanthorns on the top,
which were leaded and surrounded with wooden balustrades. These towers
of observation, from which the two parks attached to the palace and a wide
expanse of champaign country beyond might be surveyed as in a map, were
celebrated as the peculiar boast of Nonsuch.
Henry was prevented by death from beholding the completion of this
gaudy structure, and queen Mary had it in contemplation to pull it down to
save further charges; but the earl of Arundel, "for the love and honor he
bare to his old master," purchased the place, and finished it according to the
original design. It was to this splendid nobleman that the visit of the queen
was paid. He received her with the utmost magnificence. On Sunday night a
banquet, a mask, and a concert were the entertainments: the next day she
witnessed a course from a standing made for her in the park, and "the
children of Paul's" performed a play; after which a costly banquet was
served up in gilt dishes. On her majesty's departure her noble host further
presented her with a cupboard of plate. The earl of Arundel was wealthy,
munificent, and one of the finest courtiers of his day: but it must not be
imagined that even by him such extraordinary cost and pains would have
been lavished upon his illustrious guest as a pure and simple homage of that
sentimental loyalty which feels its utmost efforts overpaid by their
acceptance. He looked in fact to a high and splendid recompense,—one
which as yet perhaps he dared not name, but which the sagacity of his royal
mistress would, as he flattered himself, be neither tardy nor reluctant to
divine.

The death of Henry II. of France, which occurred during the summer of
this year, gave occasion to a splendid ceremony in St. Paul's cathedral,
which was rendered remarkable by some circumstances connected with the
late change of religion. This was the performance of his obsequies, then a
customary tribute among the princes of Europe to the memory of each
other; which Elizabeth therefore would by no means omit, though the
custom was so intimately connected with doctrines and practices
characteristic of the Romish church, that it was difficult to divest it, in the
judgement of a protestant people, of the character of a superstitious
observance. A hearse magnificently adorned with the banners and
scutcheons of the deceased was placed in the church; a great train of lords
and gentlemen attended as mourners; and all the ceremonies of a real
funeral were duly performed, not excepting the offering at the altar of
money, originally designed, without doubt, for the purchase of masses for
the dead. The herald, however, was ordered to substitute other words in
place of the ancient request to all present to pray for the soul of the
departed; and several reformations were made in the service, and in the
communion with which this stately piece of pageantry concluded.
In the month of December was interred with much ceremony in
Westminster Abbey Frances duchess-dowager of Suffolk, grandaughter to
Henry VII. After the tragical catastrophe of her misguided husband and of
lady Jane Grey her eldest daughter, the duchess was suffered to remain in
unmolested privacy, and she had since rendered herself utterly insignificant,
not to say contemptible, by an obscure marriage with one Stoke, a young
man who was her master of the horse. There is a tradition, that on
Elizabeth's exclaiming with surprise and indignation when the news of this
connexion reached her ears, "What, hath she married her horse keeper?"
Cecil replied, "Yes, madam, and she says your majesty would like to do so
too;" lord Robert Dudley then filling the office of master of the horse to the
queen.
The impolicy or inutility of sumptuary laws was not in this age
acknowledged. A proclamation therefore was issued in October 1559 to
check that prevalent excess in apparel which was felt as a serious evil at this
period, when the manufactures of England were in so rude a state that

almost every article for the use of the higher classes was imported from
Flanders, France, or Italy, in exchange for the raw commodities of the
country, or perhaps for money.
The invectives of divines, in various ages of the Christian church, have
placed upon lasting record some transient follies which would otherwise
have sunk into oblivion, and the sermons of bishop Pilkington, a warm
polemic of this time, may be quoted as a kind of commentary on the
proclamation. He reproves "fine-fingered rufflers, with their sables about
their necks, corked slippers, trimmed buskins, and warm mittons."—"These
tender Parnels," he says, "must have one gown for the day, another for the
night; one long, another short; one for winter, another for summer. One
furred through, another but faced: one for the work-day, another for the
holiday. One of this color, another of that. One of cloth, another of silk, or
damask. Change of apparel; one afore dinner, another at after: one of
Spanish fashion, another of Turkey. And to be brief, never content with
enough, but always devising new fashions and strange. Yea a ruffian will
have more in his ruff and his hose than he should spend in a year. He which
ought to go in a russet coat, spends as much on apparel for him and his
wife, as his father would have kept a good house with."
The costly furs here mentioned had probably become fashionable since a
direct intercourse had been opened in the last reign with Russia, from which
country ambassadors had arrived, whose barbaric splendor astonished the
eyes of the good people of London. The affectation of wearing by turns the
costume of all the nations of Europe, with which the queen herself was not
a little infected, may be traced partly to the practice of importing articles of
dress from those nations, and that of employing foreign tailors in preference
to native ones, and partly to the taste for travelling, which since the revival
of letters had become laudably prevalent among the young nobility and
gentry of England. That more in proportion was expended on the elegant
luxuries of dress, and less on the coarser indulgences of the table, ought
rather to have been considered as a desirable approach to refinement of
manners than a legitimate subject of censure.
An act of parliament was passed in this year subjecting the use of
enchantment and witchcraft to the pains of felony. The malcontent

catholics, it seems, were accused of employing practices of this nature; their
predictions of her majesty's death had given uneasiness to government by
encouraging plots against her government; and it was feared, "by many
good and sober men," that these dealers in the black art might even bewitch
the queen herself. That it was the learned bishop Jewel who had led the way
in inspiring these superstitious terrors, to which religious animosities lent
additional violence, may fairly be inferred from the following passage of a
discourse which was delivered by him in the queen's presence the year
before.... "Witches and sorcerers within these last few years are
marvellously increased within your grace's realm. These eyes have seen
most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness. Your grace's subjects
pine away even unto the death; their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their
speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. Wherefore your poor subjects'
most humble petition to your highness is, that the laws touching such
malefactors may be put in due execution. For the shoal of them is great,
their doing horrible, their malice intolerable, the examples most miserable.
And I pray God they never practise further than upon the subject."

CHAPTER XI.
1560.
Successful campaign in Scotland.—Embassy of viscount
Montacute to Spain—of sir T. Chaloner to the Emperor.—
Account of Chaloner.—Letter of his respecting Dudley and the
queen.—Dudley loses his wife.—Mysterious manner of her
death.—Suspicion cast upon her husband.—Dudley and several
other courtiers aspire to the hand of their sovereign.—
Tournaments in her honor.—Impresses.—Sir W. Pickering.—
Rivalry of Arundel and Dudley.

T accession of Francis II., husband to the queen of Scots, to the French
he

throne had renewed the dangers of Elizabeth from the hostility of France
and of Scotland; and in the politic resolution of removing from her own
territory to that of her enemies the seat of a war which she saw to be
inevitable, she levied a strong army and sent it under the command of the
duke of Norfolk and lord Grey de Wilton to the frontiers of Scotland. She
also entered into a close connexion with the protestant party in that country,
who were already in arms against the queen-regent and her French
auxiliaries. Success attended this well-planned expedition, and at the end of
a single campaign Elizabeth was able to terminate the war by the treaty of
Edinburgh; a convention the terms of which were such as effectually to
secure her from all fear of future molestation in this quarter.
During the period of these hostilities, however, her situation was an
anxious one. It was greatly to be feared that the emperor and the king of
Spain, forgetting in their zeal for the catholic church the habitual enmity of
the house of Austria against that of Bourbon, would make common cause
with France against a sovereign who now stood forth the avowed
protectress of protestantism; and such a combination of the great powers of

Europe, seconded by a large catholic party at home, England was by no
means in a condition to withstand. By skilful negotiation it seemed possible
to avert these evils; and Elizabeth, by her selection of diplomatic agents on
this important occasion, gave striking evidence of her superior judgement.
To plead her cause with the king of Spain, she dispatched Anthony
Browne viscount Montacute; a nobleman who, to the general
recommendation of wisdom and experience in public affairs, added the
peculiar one, for this service, of a zealous attachment to the Romish faith,
proved by his determined opposition in the house of lords to the bill of
uniformity lately carried by a great majority. The explanations and
arguments of the viscount prevailed so far with Philip, that he ordered his
ambassador at Rome to oppose the endeavours of the French court to
prevail on the pope to fulminate his ecclesiastical censures against
Elizabeth. It was found impracticable, however, to bring him to terms of
cordial amity with a heretic sovereign whose principles he both detested
and dreaded; and by returning, some time after, the decorations of the order
of the garter, he distinctly intimated to the queen, that motives of policy
alone restrained him from becoming her open enemy.
For ambassador to the emperor she made choice, at the recommendation
probably of Cecil, of his relation and beloved friend sir Thomas Chaloner
the elder, a statesman, a soldier, and a man of letters; and in these three
characters, so rarely united, one of the distinguished ornaments of his age.
He was born in 1515 of a good family in Wales, and, being early sent to
Cambridge, became known as a very elegant Latin poet, and generally as a
young man of the most promising talents. After a short residence at court,
his merit caused him to be selected to attend into Germany sir Henry
Knevet the English ambassador, with a view to his qualifying himself for
future diplomatic employment. At the court of Charles V. he was received
with extraordinary favor; and after waiting upon that monarch, in several of
his journeys, he was at length induced, by admiration of his character, to
accompany him as a volunteer in his rash expedition against Algiers. He
was shipwrecked in the storm which almost destroyed the fleet, and only
escaped drowning by catching in his mouth, as he was struggling with the

waves, a cable, by which he was drawn up into a ship with the loss of
several of his teeth.
Returning home, he was made clerk of the council, which office he held
during the remainder of Henry's reign. Early in the next he was
distinguished by the protector, and, having signalized his valor in the battle
of Pinkey, was knighted by him on the field. The fall of his patron put a stop
to his advancement; but he solaced himself under this reverse by the
cultivation of literature, and of friendship with such men as Cook, Smith,
Cheke, and Cecil. The strictness of his protestant principles rendered his
situation under the reign of Mary both disagreeable and hazardous, and he
generously added to its perils by his strenuous exertions in behalf of the
unfortunate Cheke; but the services which he had rendered in Edward's time
to many of the oppressed catholics now interested their gratitude in his
protection, and were thus the means of preserving him unhurt for better
times.
Soon after his return from his embassy to the emperor Ferdinand, we find
him engaged in a very perplexing and disagreeable mission to the
unfriendly court of Philip II., where the mortifications which he
encountered, joined to the insalubrity of the climate, so impaired his health
that he found himself obliged to solicit his recall, which he did in an
Ovidian elegy addressed to the queen. The petition of the poet was granted,
but too late; he sunk under a lingering malady in October 1565, a few
months after his return.
The poignant grief of Cecil for his loss found its best alleviation in the
exemplary performance of all the duties of surviving friendship. He
officiated as chief mourner at his funeral, and superintended with solicitude
truly paternal the education of his son, Thomas Chaloner the younger,
afterwards a distinguished character. By his encouragement, the Latin
poems of his friend, chiefly consisting of epitaphs and panegyrics on his
most celebrated contemporaries, were collected and published; and it was
under his patronage, and prefaced by a Latin poem from his pen in praise of
the author, that a new and complete edition appeared of the principal work
of this accomplished person;—a tractate "on the right ordering of the
English republic," also in Latin.

Sir Thomas Chaloner was the first ambassador named by Elizabeth; a
distinction of which he proved himself highly deserving. Wisdom and
integrity he was already known to possess; and in his negotiations with the
imperial court, where it was his business to draw the bonds of amity as
close as should be found practicable without pledging his mistress to the
acceptance of the hand of the archduke Charles, he also manifested a degree
of skill and dexterity which drew forth the warmest commendations from
Elizabeth herself. His conduct, she said, had far exceeded all her
expectations of his prudence and abilities.
This testimony may be allowed to give additional weight to his opinion on
a point of great delicacy in the personal conduct of her majesty, as well as
on some more general questions of policy, expressed in a postscript to one
of his official letters to secretary Cecil. The letter, it should be observed,
was written near the close of the year 1559, when the favor of the queen to
Dudley had first become a subject of general remark, and before all hopes
were lost of her finally closing with the proposals of the archduke.
"I assure you, sir, these folks are broad-mouthed where I spake of one too
much in favor, as they esteem. I think ye guess whom they named; if ye do
not, I will upon my next letters write further. To tell you what I conceive; as
I count the slander most false, so a young princess cannot be too wary what
countenance or familiar demonstration she maketh, more to one than
another. I judge no man's service in the realm worth the entertainment with
such a tale of obloquy, or occasion of speech to such men as of evil will are
ready to find faults. This delay of ripe time for marriage, besides the loss of
the realm (for without posterity of her highness what hope is left unto us?)
ministereth matter to these leud tongues to descant upon, and breedeth
contempt. I would I had but one hour's talk with you. Think if I trusted not
your good nature, I would not write thus much; which nevertheless I
humbly pray you to reserve as written to yourself.
"Consider how ye deal now in the emperor's matter: much dependeth on
it. Here they hang in expectation as men desirous it should go forward, but
yet they have small hope: In mine opinion (be it said to you only) the
affinity is great and honorable: The amity necessary to stop and cool many
enterprises. Ye need not fear his greatness should overrule you; he is not a

Philip, but better for us than a Philip. Let the time work for Scotland as God
will, for sure the French, I believe, shall never long enjoy them: and when
we be stronger and more ready, we may proceed with that, that is yet
unripe. The time itself will work, when our great neighbours fall out next.
In the mean time settle we things begun; and let us arm and fortify our
frontiers." &c.[46]
Sufficient evidence remains that the sentiments of Cecil respecting the
queen's behaviour to Dudley coincided with those of his friend, and that
fears for her reputation gave additional urgency about this period to those
pleadings in favor of matrimony which her council were doomed to press
upon her attention so often and so much in vain. But a circumstance
occurred soon after which totally changed the nature of their apprehensions
respecting her future conduct, and rendered her anticipated choice of a
husband no longer an object of hope and joy, but of general dissatisfaction
and alarm.
Just when the whispered scandal of the court had apprized him how
obvious to all beholders the partiality of his sovereign had become,—just
when her rejection of the proposals of so many foreign princes had
confirmed the suspicion that her heart had given itself at home,—just, in
short, when every thing conspired to sanction hopes which under any other
circumstances would have appeared no less visionary than presumptuous,—
at the very juncture most favorable to his ambition, but most perilous to his
reputation, lord Robert Dudley lost his wife, and by a fate equally sudden
and mysterious.
This unfortunate lady had been sent by her husband, under the conduct of
sir Richard Verney, one of his retainers,—but for what reason or under what
pretext does not appear,—to Cumnor House in Berkshire, a solitary
mansion inhabited by Anthony Foster, also a dependent of Dudley's and
bound to him by particular obligations. Here she soon after met with her
death; and Verney and Foster, who appear to have been alone in the house
with her, gave out that it happened by an accidental fall down stairs. But
this account, from various causes, gained so little credit in the
neighbourhood, that reports of the most sinister import were quickly
propagated. These discourses soon reached the ears of Thomas Lever, a

prebendary of Coventry and a very conscientious person, who immediately
addressed to the secretaries of state an earnest letter, still extant, beseeching
them to cause strict inquiry to be made into the case, as it was commonly
believed that the lady had been murdered: but he mentioned no particular
grounds of this belief, and it cannot now be ascertained whether any steps
were taken in consequence of his application. If there were, they certainly
produced no satisfactory explanation of the circumstance; for not only the
popular voice, which was ever hostile to Dudley, continued to accuse him
as the contriver of her fate, but Cecil himself, in a memorandum drawn up
some years after of reasons against the queen's making him her husband,
mentions among other objections, "that he is infamed by the death of his
wife."
Whether the thorough investigation of this matter was evaded by the
artifices of Dudley, or whether his enemies, finding it impracticable to bring
the crime home to him, found it more advisable voluntarily to drop the
inquiry, certain it is, that the queen was never brought in any manner to take
cognisance of the affair, and that the credit of Dudley continued as high
with her as ever. But in the opinion of the country the favorite passed ever
after for a dark designer, capable of perpetrating any secret villainy in
furtherance of his designs, and skilful enough to conceal his atrocity under a
cloak of artifice and hypocrisy impervious to the partial eyes of his royal
mistress, though penetrated by all the world besides. This idea of his
character caused him afterwards to be accused of practising against the lives
of several other persons who were observed to perish opportunely for his
purposes. Each of these charges will be particularly examined in its proper
place; but it ought here to be observed, that not one of them appears to be
supported by so many circumstances of probability as the first; and even in
support of this, no direct evidence has ever been adduced.
Under all the circumstances of his situation, Dudley could not venture as
yet openly to declare himself the suitor of his sovereign; but she doubtless
knew how to interpret both the vehemence of his opposition to the
pretensions of the archduke, and the equal vehemence with which those
pretensions were supported by an opposite party in her council, of which
the earl of Sussex was the head.

Few could yet be persuaded that the avowed determination of the queen in
favor of the single state would prove unalterable: most therefore who
observed her averseness to a foreign connexion believed that she was
secretly meditating to honor with her hand some subject of her own, who
could never have a separate interest from that of his country, and whose
gratitude for the splendid distinction would secure to her the possession of
his lasting attachment.
This idea long served to animate the assiduities of her nobles and
courtiers, and two or three besides Dudley were bold enough to publish
their pretensions. Secret hopes or wishes were cherished in the bosoms of
others; and it thus became a fashion to accost her in language where the
passionate homage of the lover mingled with the base adulation of the
menial. Her personal vanity, triumphant over her good sense and her
perceptions of regal dignity, forbade her to discourage a style of address
equally disgraceful to those who employed and to her who permitted it; and
it was this unfortunate habit of receiving, and at length requiring, a species
of flattery which became every year more grossly preposterous, which
depraved by degrees her taste, infected her whole disposition, and
frequently lent to the wisest sovereign of Europe the disgusting affectation
of a heroine of French romance.
Tilts and tournaments were still the favorite amusements of all the courts
of Europe; and it was in these splendid exhibitions that the rival courtiers of
Elizabeth found the happiest occasions of displaying their magnificence,
giving proof of their courage and agility, and at the same time insinuating,
by a variety of ingenious devices, their hopes and fears, their amorous
pains, and their profound devotedness to her service.
In the purer ages of chivalry, no other cognisances on shields were
adopted, either in war or in these games which were its image, than the
armorial bearings which each warrior had derived from his ancestors, or
solemnly received at the hands of the heralds before he entered on his first
campaign. But as the spirit of the original institution declined, and the
French fashion of gallantry began to be engrafted upon it, an innovation had
taken place in this matter, which is thus commemorated and deplored by the
worthy Camden, Clarencieux king-at-arms, who treats the subject with a

minuteness and solemnity truly professional. "Whoever," says he, "would
note the manners of our progenitors,—in wearing their coat-armour over
their harness, and bearing their arms in their shields, their banners and
pennons, and in what formal manner they were made bannerets, and had
license to rear their banner of arms, which they presented rolled up, unto the
prince, who unfolded and re-delivered it with happy wishes; I doubt not but
he will judge that our ancestors were as valiant and gallant as they have
been since they left off their arms and used the colors and curtains of their
mistress' bed instead of them." The same author afterwards observes, that
these fopperies, as well as the adoption of impresses, first prevailed in the
expedition of Charles VIII. against Naples in 1494, and that it was about the
beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. that the English wits first thought of
imitating the French and Italians in the invention of these devices.
An impress, it seems, was an emblematical device assumed at the will of
the bearer, and illustrated by a suitable motto; whereas the coat of arms had
either no motto, or none appropriate. Of this nature therefore was the
representation of an English archer, with the words "Cui adhæreo præest"
(He prevails to whom I adhere), used by Henry VIII. at his meeting with
Charles and Francis.
Elizabeth delighted in these whimsical inventions. Camden says that she
"used upon different occasions so many heroical devices as would require a
volume," but most commonly a sieve without a word. Her favorite mottos
were "Video taceo" (I see and am silent), and "Semper eadem" (Always the
same). Thus patronized, the use of impresses became general. Scarcely a
public character of that age, whether statesman, courtier, scholar, or soldier,
was unprovided with some distinction of this nature; and at tournaments in
particular, the combatants all vied with each other in the invention of
occasional devices, sometimes quaintly, sometimes elegantly, expressive of
their situation or sentiments, and for the most part conveying some allusion
at once gallant and loyal.
It may be worth while to cite a few of the most remarkable of these out of
a considerable number preserved by Camden. The prevalence amongst them
of astronomical emblems is worthy of observation, as indicative of that

general belief of the age in the delusions of judicial astrology, which
rendered its terms familiar alike to the learned, the great, and the fair.
A dial with the sun setting, "Occasu desines esse" (Thy being ceases with
its setting). The sun shining on a bush, "Si deseris pereo" (Forsake me, and
I perish). The sun reflecting his rays from the bearer, "Quousque avertes"
(How long wilt thou avert thy face)? Venus in a cloud, "Salva me, Domina"
(Mistress, save me). The letter I, "Omnia ex uno" (All things from one). A
fallow field, "At quando messis" (When will be the harvest)? The full moon
in heaven, "Quid sine te cœlum" (What is heaven without thee)? Cynthia, it
should be observed, was a favorite fancy-name of the queen's; she was also
designated occasionally by that of Astræa, whence the following devices. A
man hovering in the air, "Feror ad Astræam" (I am borne to Astræa). The
zodiac with Virgo rising, "Jam redit et Virgo" (The Maid returns); and a
zodiac with no characters but those of Leo and Virgo, "His ego præsidiis"
(With these to friend). A star, "Mihi vita Spica Virginis" (My life is in Spica
Virginis)—a star in the left hand of Virgo so called: here the allusion was
probably double; to the queen, and to the horoscope of the bearer. The
twelve houses of heaven with neither sign nor planet therein, "Dispone"
(Dispose). A white shield, "Fatum inscribat Eliza" (Eliza writes my fate).
An eye in a heart, "Vulnus alo" (I feed the wound). A ship sinking and the
rainbow appearing, "Quid tu si pereo" (To what avail if I perish)? As the
rainbow is an emblem seen in several portraits of the queen, this device
probably reproaches some tardy and ineffectual token of her favor. The sun
shining on a withered tree which blooms again, "His radiis rediviva viresco"
(These rays revive me). A pair of scales, fire in one, smoke in the other,
"Ponderare errare" (To weigh is to err).
At one tilt were borne all the following devices, which Camden
particularly recommends to the notice and interpretation of the reader.
Many flies about a candle, "Sic splendidiora petuntur" ("Thus brighter
things are sought). Drops falling into a fire, "Tamen non extinguenda" (Yet
not to be extinguished). The sun, partly clouded over, casting its rays upon a
star, "Tantum quantum" (As much as is vouchsafed). A folded letter, "Lege
et relege"[47] (Read and reread).

It would have increased our interest in these very significant impresses, if
our author could have informed us who were the respective bearers.
Perhaps conjecture would not err in ascribing one of the most expressive to
sir William Pickering, a gentleman whose name has been handed down to
posterity as an avowed pretender to the royal marriage. That a person
illustrious neither by rank nor ancestry, and so little known to fame that no
other mention of him occurs in the history of the age, should ever have been
named amongst the suitors of his sovereign, is a circumstance which must
excite more curiosity than the scanty biographical records of the time will
be found capable of satisfying. A single paragraph of Camden's Annals
seems to contain nearly all that can now be learned of a man once so
remarkable.
"Nor were lovers wanting at home, who deluded themselves with vain
hopes of obtaining her in marriage. Namely sir William Pickering, a man of
good family though little wealth, and who had obtained reputation by the
cultivation of letters, by the elegance of his manners, and by his embassies
to France and Germany." &c.
Rapin speaks of him as one who was encouraged to hope by some
distinguished mark of the queen's favor, which he does not however
particularize. Lloyd in his "Worthies" adds nothing to Camden's information
but the epithet "comely" applied to his person, the vague statement that "his
embassies in France and Germany were so well managed, that in king
Edward's days he was by the council pitched upon as the oracle whereby
our agents were to be guided abroad," and a hint that he soon retired from
the court of Elizabeth to devote himself to his studies.
The earl of Arundel might be the bearer of another of these devices. We
have already seen with what magnificence of homage this nobleman had
endeavoured to bespeak the favorable sentiments of his youthful sovereign;
and if illustrious ancestry, vast possessions, established consequence in the
state, and long experience in public affairs, might have sufficed to
recommend a subject to her choice, none could have advanced fairer
pretensions than the representative of the ancient house of Fitzalan. The
advanced age of the earl was indeed an objection of considerable and daily
increasing weight; he persevered however in his suit, notwithstanding the

queen's visible preference of Dudley and every other circumstance of
discouragement, till the year 1566. Losing then all hopes of success, and
becoming sensible at length of pecuniary difficulties from the vast expense
which he had lavished on this splendid courtship, he solicited the
permission of his royal mistress to retire for a time into Italy.
While it lasted, however, the rivalry of Arundel and Dudley, or rather, in
the heraldic phraseology of the day, that of the White Horse and the Bear,
divided the court, inflamed the passions of the numerous retainers of the
respective candidates, and but for the impartial vigilance of Cecil might
have ended in deeds of blood.
In the Burleigh Papers is a confession of one Guntor, a servant or retainer
of the earl of Arundel, who was punished for certain rash speeches relative
to this competition, from which we learn some curious particulars. He says,
that he once fell in talk with a gentleman named Cotton, who told him, that
the queen, having supped one evening at lord Robert Dudley's, it was dark
before she could get away; and some servants of the house were sent with
torches to light her home. That by the way her highness was pleased to
enter into conversation with the torch-bearers, and was reported to have
said, that she would make their lord the best that ever was of his name. As
the father of lord Robert was a duke, this promise was understood to imply
nothing less than her design of marrying him. On this Guntor answered, that
he prayed all men might take it well, and that no trouble might arise thereof;
afterwards he said, that he thought if a parliament were held, some men
would recommend lord Robert, and some his own master to the queen for a
husband; and so it might fortune there would rise trouble among the
noblemen, adding, "I trust the White Horse will be in quiet, and so shall we
be out of trouble; it is well known his blood as yet was never attaint, nor
was he ever man of war, wherefore it is likely that we shall sit still; but if he
should stomach it, he were able to make a great power." In his zeal for the
cause of his lord, he also wished that his rival had been put to death with his
father, "or that some ruffian would have dispatched him by the way as he
hath gone, with some dag (pistol) or gun."
So high did words run on occasion of this great contest.

CHAPTER XII.
1560.
On the conduct of Elizabeth as head of the church.—Sketch of the
history of the reformation in England.—Notices of Parker,
Grindal, and Jewel.

T here was no part of the regal office the exercise of which appeared so

likely to expose Elizabeth to invidious reflections, as that which
comprehended the management of ecclesiastical affairs. Few divines,
though protestant, could behold without a certain feeling of mingled
jealousy and disdain, a female placed at the head of the religion of the
country, and by the whole papal party such a supremacy was regarded
perhaps as the most horrible, certainly as the most preposterous, of all the
prodigies which heresy had yet brought forth. "I have seen the head of the
English church dancing!" exclaimed, it is said, with a sarcastic air, an
ambassador from one of the catholic courts of Europe.
A more striking incongruity indeed could scarcely be imagined, than
between the winning manners and sprightly disposition of this youthful
princess, as they displayed themselves amid the festivities of her court and
the homage of her suitors, and the grave and awful character of Governess
of the church, with which she had been solemnly invested.
In virtue of this office, it was the right and duty of the queen to choose a
religion for the country; to ordain its rites and ceremonies, discipline, and
form of church government; and to fix the rank, offices and emoluments of
its ministers. She was also to exercise this power entirely at her own
discretion, free from the control of parliament or the interference of the
clerical body, and assisted only by such commissioners, lay or
ecclesiastical, as it should please herself to appoint.

This exorbitant authority was first assumed by her arbitrary father when it
became his will that his people should acknowledge no other pope than
himself; and the servile spirit of the age, joined to the ignorance and
indifference on religious subjects then general, had caused it to be
submitted to without difficulty. In consequence, the title of Head of the
Church had quietly devolved upon Edward VI. as part of his regal style; and
while the duties of the office were exercised by Cranmer and the Protector,
the nation, now generally favorable to the cause of reform, was more
inclined to rejoice in its existence than to dispute the authority by which it
had been instituted. Mary abhorred the title, as a badge of heresy and a
guilty usurpation on the rights of the sovereign pontiff, and in the beginning
of her reign she laid it aside, but was afterwards prevailed upon to resume
it, because there was a convenience in the legal sanction which it afforded
to her acts of tyranny over the consciences of men.
The first parliament of Elizabeth, in the fervor of its loyalty, decreed to
her, as if by acclamation, all the honors or prerogatives ever enjoyed by her
predecessors, and it was solely at her own request that the appellation of
Head, was now exchanged for the less assuming one of Governess, of the
English church. The power remained the same; it was, as we have seen, of
the most absolute nature possible; since, unlimited by law, it was also,
owing to its recent establishment, equally uncontrolled by custom. It
remains to the delineator of the character of Elizabeth to inquire in what
manner she acquitted herself, to her country and to posterity, of the awful
responsibility imposed upon her by its possession.
A slight sketch of the circumstances attending the introduction of the
reformation into England, will serve to illustrate this important branch of
her policy.
On comparing the march of this mighty revolution in our own country
with its mode of progress amongst the other nations of Europe, one of the
first remarks which suggests itself is, that in no other country was its course
so immediately or effectually subjected to the guidance and control of the
civil power.

In Switzerland, the system of Zwingle, the earliest of the reformers, had
fully established itself in the hearts of his fellow-citizens before the
magistracies of Zurich and its neighbouring republics thought proper to
interfere. They then gave the sanction of law to the religion which had
become that of the majority, but abstained from all dictation on points of
which they felt themselves incompetent judges.
In Germany, the impulse originating in the daring mind of Luther, was
first communicated to the universities, to the lower orders of the clergy, and
through them to the people. The princes of the empire afterwards took their
part as patrons or persecutors of the new opinions; but in either case they
acted under the influence of ecclesiastics, and no where arrogated to
themselves the character of lawgivers in matters of faith.
At Geneva, the vigor and dexterity of Calvin's measures brought the
magistracy under a complete subjection to the church, of which he had
made himself the head, and restricted its agency in religious concerns to the
execution of such decrees as the spiritual ruler saw good to promulgate.
The system of the same reformer had recently been introduced into
Scotland by the exertions of John Knox, a disciple who equalled his master
in the fierceness of his bigotry, in self-opinion, and in the love of power,
whilst he exceeded him in turbulence of temper and ferocity of manners:
and here the independence of the church on the state, or rather its
paramount legislative authority in all matters of faith, discipline and
worship, was held in the loftiest terms. The opposition which this doctrine,
so formed for popularity, experienced from the government in the outset,
was overborne or disregarded, and it was in despite of the utmost efforts of
regal authority that the new religion was established by an act of the
Scottish parliament.
In England, on the contrary, the passions of Henry VIII. had prompted him
to disclaim submission to the papal decrees before the spirit of the people
demanded such a step,—before any apostle of reformation had arisen in the
land capable of inspiring the multitude with that zeal which makes its will
omnipotent, and leaves to rulers no other alternative than to comply or fall,
—yet not before the attachment of men to the ancient religion was so far

weakened, that the majority could witness its overthrow with patience if not
with complacency.
To have timed this momentous step so fortunately for the cause of
prerogative might in some princes have been esteemed the result of
profound combinations,—the triumph of political sagacity; in Henry it was
the pure effect of accident: but the advantages which he derived from the
quiescent state of the public mind were not on this account the less real or
the less important, nor did he suffer them to go unimproved. On one hand,
no considerable opposition was made to his assumption of the supremacy;
on the other, the spoil of the monasteries was not intercepted in its passage
to the royal coffers by the more rapid movements of a populace intoxicated
with fanatical rage or fired with hopes of plunder. What appeared still more
extraordinary, he found it practicable, to the end of his reign, to keep the
nation suspended, as to doctrine and the forms of worship, in that nice
equilibrium between protestant and papist which happened best to accord
with his individual views or prejudices.
Cranmer, who has a better title than any other to be revered as the father
of the Anglican church, showed himself during the life of Henry the most
cautious and complaisant of reformers. Aware that any rashness or
precipitation on the part of the favorers of new opinions might expose them
to all the fury of persecution from a prince so dogmatical and violent, he
constantly refrained from every alarming appeal to the sense of the people
on theological questions, and was content to proceed in his great work step
by step, with a slow, uncertain, and interrupted progress, at the will of that
capricious master whose vacillations of humor or opinion he watched with
the patience, and improved with the skill, of a finished courtier.
Administered in so qualified and mitigated a form, the spirit of
reformation exhibited in this country little of its stronger and more turbulent
workings. No sect at that time arose purely and peculiarly English: our
native divines did not embrace exclusively, or with vehemence, the tenets of
any one of the great leaders of reform on the continent, and a kind of
eclectic system became that of the Anglican church from its earliest
institution.

The respective contributions to this system of the most celebrated
theologians of the age may be thus stated. It was chiefly from Zwingle,—
the first, in point of time, of all the reformers of the sixteenth century, and
the one whose doctrine on the eucharist and on several other points
diverged most widely from the tenets of the church of Rome,—that our
principal opponents of popery in the reign of Henry VIII. derived their
notions. Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer himself, were essentially his disciples.
By others, the system of Luther was in the whole or in part adopted. But
this reformer was personally so obnoxious to Henry, on account of the
disrespectful and acrimonious style of his answer to the book in which that
royal polemic had formerly attacked his doctrine, that no English subject
thought proper openly to profess himself his follower, or to open any direct
communication with him. Thus the Confession of Augsburg, though more
consonant to the notions of the English monarch than any other scheme of
protestant doctrine, failed to obtain the sanction of that authority which
might have rendered it predominant in this country.
A long and vehement controversy on the subject of the eucharist had been
maintained between the German and Swiss divines during the later years of
Henry; but at the period of Edward's accession, when Cranmer first
undertook the formation of a national church according to his own ideas of
gospel truth and political expediency, this dispute was in great measure
appeased, and sanguine hopes were entertained that a disagreement
regarded as dangerous in a high degree to the common cause of religious
reform might soon be entirely reconciled.
Luther, the last survivor of the original disputants, was lately dead; and to
the post which he had held in the university of Wittemberg, as well as to the
station of head of the protestant church, Melancthon had succeeded. This
truly excellent person, who carried into all theological debates a spirit of
conciliation equally rare and admirable, was earnestly laboring at a scheme
of comprehension. His laudable endeavours were met by the zealous co-
operation of Calvin, who had by this time extended his influence from
Geneva over most of the Helvetic congregations, and was diligent in
persuading them to recede from the unambiguous plainness of Zwingle's
doctrine,—which reduced the Lord's supper to a simple commemoration,—

and to admit so much of a mystical though spiritual presence of Christ in
that rite, as might bring them to some seeming agreement with the less rigid
of the followers of the Lutheran opinion. At the same time Bucer, who
presided over the flourishing church of Strasburg, was engaged in framing
yet another explication of this important rite, by which he vainly hoped to
accommodate the consciences of all these zealous and acute polemics.
Bucer was remarkable among the theologians of his time by a subtility in
distinction resembling that of the schoolmen, and by a peculiar art of
expressing himself on doctrinal points in terms so nicely balanced, and in a
style of such labored intricacy, that it was scarcely possible to discover his
true meaning, or pronounce to which extreme of opinion he most inclined.
These dubious qualifications, by which he disgusted alternately both Calvin
and the more zealous Lutherans, were however accompanied and redeemed
by great learning and diligence; by a remarkable talent for public business,
which rendered him eminently useful in all the various negotiations with
temporal authorities, or with each other, in which the leaders of the
reformation found it necessary to engage; by a mild and candid spirit, and
by as much of sincerity and probity as could co-exist with the open defence
of pious frauds.
The whole character of the man appeared to Cranmer admirably fitted for
co-operation in the work which he had in hand. On the difficult question of
the eucharist Bucer would preserve the wariness and moderation which
appeared essential in the divided state of protestant opinion: on justification
and good works he held a middle doctrine, which might conciliate the
catholics, and was capable of being so interpreted as not greatly to offend
the moderate Lutherans: on the subject of church government he had not yet
committed himself, and there was little doubt that he would cheerfully
submit to the natural predilection of the archbishop for prelacy. His
erudition and his morals could not fail to prove serviceable and creditable to
the great cause of national instruction and reformed religion. Accordingly
an invitation was sent to him, in the name of the young king, to come and
occupy the theological chair in the university of Cambridge; and in the year
1549 he reached England, and began to discharge with much assiduity the
duties of his office.

The name and influence of Bucer became very considerable in this
country, though his career was terminated by death within two years after
his arrival. A public funeral, attended by all the members of the university
and many other persons of eminence, attested the consideration in which he
was held by Edward's ministers; the subsequent disinterment of his remains
by order of cardinal Pole, for the purpose of committing his bones to the
flames, gave further evidence of his merits in the protestant cause; and in
the composition of our national Articles, it has been said that no hand has
left more distinguishable traces of itself than that of Bucer.
From Strasburg also the university of Oxford was destined to receive a
professor of divinity in the person of the celebrated Peter Martyr. This good
and learned man, a Florentine by birth and during some years principal of a
college of Augustines at Naples, having gradually become a convert to the
doctrines of the reformers, and afterwards proceeding openly to preach
them, was compelled to quit his country in order to avoid persecution.
Passing into Switzerland, he was received with affectionate hospitality by
the disciples of Zwingle at Zurich; and after making some abode there he
repaired to Basil, whence Bucer caused him to be invited to fill the station
of theological professor at Strasburg. He was also appointed the colleague
of this divine in the ministry, and their connexion had subsisted about five
years in perfect harmony when the offers of Cranmer induced the two
friends to remove into England.
It is to be presumed that no considerable differences of opinion on points
deemed by themselves essential could exist between associates so united;
but a greater simplicity of character and of views, and superior boldness in
the enunciation of new doctrines, strikingly distinguished the proceedings
of Peter Martyr from those of his friend. With respect to church
government, he, like Bucer, was willing to conform to the regulations of
Cranmer and the English council; but he preached at Oxford on the
eucharist with so Zwinglian a cast of sentiment, that the popish party raised
a popular commotion against him, by which his life was endangered, and he
was compelled for a time to withdraw from the city. Tranquillity was soon
however restored by the interference of the public authority, and the council
proceeded vigorously in obliterating the last vestiges of Romish

superstition. Ridley throughout his own diocese now caused the altars to be
removed from the churches, and communion-tables to be placed in their
room; and, as if by way of comment on this alteration, Martyr and others
procured a public recognition of the Genevan as a sister church, and the
admission into the English service-book of the articles of faith drawn up by
Calvin.
During the remainder of Edward's reign the tide of public opinion
continued running with still augmenting velocity towards Geneva. Calvin
took upon him openly to expostulate with Bucer on the preference of state
expediency to Scripture truth, betrayed, as he asserted, by the obstinate
adherence of this divine to certain doctrines and observances which
savoured too much of popery; and it is probable that a still nearer approach
might have been made to his simpler ritual, but for the untimely death of the
zealous young king, and the total ruin of the new establishment which
ensued.
Just before the persecutions of Mary drove into exile so many of the most
zealous and conscientious of her protestant subjects, the discord between
the Lutherans and those whom they styled Sacramentarians had burst out
afresh in Germany with more fury than ever. The incendiary on this
occasion was Westphal, superintendant of the Lutheran church of
Hamburgh, who published a violent book on the subject of the eucharist;
and through the influence of this man, and of the outrageous spirit of
intolerance which his work had raised, Latimer and Ridley were stigmatized
by fellow protestants as "the devil's martyrs," and the Lutheran cities drove
from their gates as dangerous and detestable heretics the English refugees
who fled to them for shelter. By those cities or congregations, on the
contrary,—whether in Germany, France, or Switzerland,—in which the
tenets either of Zwingle or Calvin were professed, these pious exiles were
received with open arms, venerated as confessors, cherished as brethren in
distress, and admitted with perfect confidence into the communion of the
respective churches.
Treatment so opposite from the two contending parties, between which
they had supposed themselves to occupy neutral ground, failed not to
produce corresponding effects on the minds of the exiles. At Frankfort,

where the largest body of them was assembled, and where they had formed
an English congregation using king Edward's liturgy, this form of worship
became the occasion of a division amongst themselves, and a strong party
soon declared itself in favor of discarding all of popish forms or doctrine
which the English establishment, in common with the Lutheran, had
retained, and of adopting in their place the simpler creed and ritual of the
Genevan church.
It was found impracticable to compromise this difference; a considerable
number finally seceded from the congregation, and it was from this division
at Frankfort that English nonconformity took its birth. No equally strong
manifestation of opinion occurred amongst the exiles in other cities; but on
the whole it may be affirmed, that the majority of these persons returned
from their wanderings with their previous predilection for the Calvinistic
model confirmed and augmented by the united influence of the reasonings
and persuasions of its ablest apostles, and of those sentiments of love and
hatred from which the speculative opinions of most men receive an
irresistible though secret bias.
Their more unfortunate brethren, in the mean time, who, unwilling to
resign their country, or unable to escape from it, had been compelled to look
persecution in the face and deliberately acquaint themselves with all its
horrors, were undergoing other and in some respects opposite influences.
An overpowering dread and abhorrence of the doctrines of the church of
Rome must so have absorbed all other thoughts and feelings in the minds of
this dispersed and affrighted remnant of the English church, as to leave
them little attention to bestow upon the comparatively trifling objects of
dispute between protestant and protestant. They might even be disposed to
regard such squabbles with emotions of indignation and disgust, and to ask
how brethren in affliction could have the heart to nourish animosities
against each other. The memory of Edward VI. was deservedly dear to
them, and they would contemplate the restoration of his ritual by the
successor of Mary as an event in which they ought to regard all their
prayers as fulfilled:—yet the practice, forced upon them by the vigilance of
persecution, of holding their assemblies for divine worship in places
unconsecrated, with the omission of every customary ceremonial and under

the guidance frequently of men whom zeal and piety alone had ordained to
the office of teachers and ministers of religion, must amongst them also
have been producing a secret alienation from established forms and rituals,
and a propensity to those extemporaneous effusions of devotion, or
urgencies of supplication, which seem best adapted to satisfy the wants of
the pious soul under the fiery trial of persecution and distress. The
Calvinistic model therefore, as the freest of all, and that which most
industriously avoided any resemblance of popish forms, might be the one
most likely to obtain their suffrage also.
Such being the state of religious opinion in England at the accession of
Elizabeth, it will not appear wonderful that the Genevan reformer should
have begun to indulge the flattering expectation of seeing his own scheme
established in England as in Scotland, and himself revered throughout the
island as a spiritual director from whose decisions there could be no appeal.
Emboldened at once by zeal and ambition, he hastened to open a
communication with the new government, in the shape of an exhortation to
the queen to call a protestant council for establishing uniformity of doctrine
and of church government; but his dream of supremacy was quickly
dissipated on receiving for answer, that England was determined to preserve
her episcopacy.
This decisive rejection of the presbyterian form was followed up by other
acts on the part of the queen which gave offence to all the real friends of
reformed religion, and went far to prove that Elizabeth was at heart little
more of a protestant than her father. The general prohibition of preaching,
which was strictly enforced during the first months of her reign, was
understood as a measure of repression levelled full as much against the
indiscreet zeal of the returned exiles, as against the disaffection of the
catholics. An order that until the next meeting of parliament no change
should be made in the order of worship established by the late queen,
except the reading of the creed and commandments in English, implied, at
least, a determination in the civil power to take the management of religion
entirely out of the hands of a clergy whose influence over the minds of the
people it viewed with a jealous eye. It was soon also discovered, to the
increasing horror of all true protestants, that the queen was strongly

disposed to insist on the celibacy of the clergy; and even when the
strenuous efforts of Cecil and others had brought her to yield with
reluctance this capital point, she still pertinaciously refused to authorize
their marrying by an express law. She would not even declare valid the
marriages contracted by them during the reign of her brother; so that it
became necessary to procure private bills of legitimation in behalf of the
offspring of these unions, though formed under the express sanction of then
existing laws. The son of Cranmer himself, and the son of archbishop
Parker, were of the number of those who found it necessary to resort to this
disagreeable and degrading expedient.
Other things which offended the reformists were, the queen's predilection,
already mentioned, for crucifixes, which she did not cause to be removed
from the churches till after considerable delay and difficulty, and retained in
her private chapel for many years longer,—and her wish to continue the use
of altars. This being regarded as a dangerous compliance with the Romish
doctrine, since an altar could only suit with the notion of a sacrifice of
Christ in the mass, earnest expostulations on the subject were addressed to
her by several of the leading divines; and in the end the queen found it
expedient, with whatever reluctance, to ordain the substitution of
communion-tables.
She was also bent upon retaining in the church of which she was the head
the use of vestments similar to those worn by the different orders of popish
priests in the celebration of the various offices of their religion. A very
natural association of ideas caused the protestant clergy to regard with
suspicion and abhorrence such an approximation in externals to that
worship which was in their eyes the abomination of idolatry; and several of
the returned exiles, to whom bishoprics were now offered, scrupled to
accept of them under the obligation of wearing the appointed habits.
Repeated and earnest representations were made to the queen against them,
but she remained inflexible. In this dilemma, the divines requested the
advice of Peter Martyr, who had quitted England on the accession of Mary
and was now professor of theology at Zurich. He persuaded compliance,
representing to them that it was better that high offices in the church should
be occupied by persons like themselves, though with the condition of

submitting to some things which they did not approve, than that such posts
should be given to Lutherans or concealed catholics, who, instead of
promoting any further reformation, would labor continually to bring back
more and more of the ancient ceremonies and superstitions. This argument
was deemed conclusive, and the bishoprics were accepted. But such a plea,
though it might suffice certain men for a time, could not long satisfy
universally; and we shall soon have occasion to take notice of scruples on
this point, as the source of the first intestine divisions by which the
Anglican church was disturbed, and of the first persecutions of her own
children by which she disgraced herself.
On the whole, it must be admitted that the personal conduct of Elizabeth
in this momentous business exhibited neither enlargement of mind nor
elevation of soul. Considerably attached to ceremonial observances, and
superior to none of the superstitions which she might have imbibed in her
childhood, she was however more attached to her own power and authority
than to these. Little under the influence of any individual amongst her
clergy, and somewhat inclined to treat that order in general with harshness,
if not cruelty,—as in the article of their marriages, in the unmitigated rigor
with which she exacted from them her first fruits, and in the rapacity which
she permitted her courtiers to exercise upon the temporalities of the
bishoprics,—the only view which she took of the subject was that of the
sovereign and the politician. Aware on one hand of the manner in which her
title to the crown was connected with the renunciation of papal authority, of
the irreconcileable enmity borne her by the catholic powers, and of the
general attachment of her subjects to the cause of the reformation, she felt
herself called upon to assume the protection of the protestant interest of
Europe, and to re-establish that worship in her own dominions. On the other
hand, she remarked with secret dread and aversion the popular spirit and
republican tendency of the institutions of Calvin, and she resolved at all
hazards to check the growth of his opinions in England. Accordingly, it was
the scope of every alteration made by her in the service-book of Edward, to
give it more of a Lutheran aspect, and it was for some time apprehended
that she would cause the entire Confession of Augsburg to be received into
it.

Of toleration, of the rights of conscience, she had as little feeling or
understanding as any prince or polemic of her age. Her establishment was
formed throughout in the spirit of compromise and political expediency; she
took no pains to ascertain, either by the assembling of a national synod or
by the submission of the articles to free discussion in parliament, whether or
not they were likely to prove agreeable to the opinions of the majority; it
sufficed that she had decreed their reception, and she prepared, by means of
penal statutes strictly executed, to prevent the propagation of any doctrines,
or the observance of any rites, capable of interfering with the exact
uniformity in religion then regarded as essential to the peace and stability of
every well constituted state.
To Cecil her chief secretary of state and to Nicholas Bacon her keeper of
the seals, assisted by a select number of divines, the management of this
great affair was chiefly intrusted by the queen: and much might be said of
the sagacity displayed by her in this appointment, and of the wisdom and
moderation exercised by them in the discharge of their office; much also
might be, much has been said, of the excellencies of the form of worship by
them established;—but little, alas! of moral or of religious merit can be
awarded by the verdict of impartial history to the motives or conduct of the
heroine of protestantism in a transaction so momentous and so memorable.
Three acts of the parliament of 1559 gave the sanction of law to the new
ecclesiastical establishment; they were those of Supremacy, of Uniformity,
and a third empowering the queen to appoint bishops. By the first, the
authority of the pope was solemnly renounced, and the whole government
of the church vested in the queen, her heirs and successors; and an
important clause further enabled her and them to delegate their authority to
commissioners of their own appointment, who amongst other extraordinary
powers were to be invested with the cognisance of all errors and heresies
whatsoever. On this foundation was erected the famous High Commission
Court, which grew into one of the principal grievances of this and the two
following reigns, and of which, from the moment of its formation, the
proceedings assumed a character of arbitrary violence utterly incompatible
with the security and happiness of the subject, and hostile to the whole
tenor of the ancient charters.

The act of Uniformity ordained an exact compliance in all points with the
established form of worship and a punctual attendance on its offices; it also
rendered highly penal the exercise, public or private, of any other; and of
this law it was not long before several unfortunate catholics were doomed
to experience the utmost rigor.
Many parish priests who had been open and violent papists in the last
reign, permitted themselves to take the oath of supremacy and retain their
cures under the new order of things, a kind of compliance with the times
which the court of Rome is said sometimes to have permitted, sometimes
even to have privately enjoined,—on the principle of Peter Martyr, that it
was better that its secret adherents should continue to occupy the churches,
on whatever conditions, than that they should be surrendered entirely into
the hands of an opposite party. The bishops, on the contrary, considered
themselves as called upon by the dignity of their character and office to
bear a public testimony against the defection of England from the holy see;
and those of them who had not previously been deprived on other grounds,
now in a body refused the oaths and submitted themselves to the
consequences. All were deprived, a few imprisoned, several committed to
honorable custody. The policy of Elizabeth, unlike the genuine bigotry of
her sister, contented itself with a kind of negative intolerance; and as long
as the degraded bishops abstained from all manifestations, by words or
deeds, of hostility against her government and ecclesiastical establishment,
and all celebration of the peculiar rites of their religion, they were secure
from molestation; and never to them, as to their unfortunate protestant
predecessors, were articles of religion offered for signature under the fearful
alternative of compliance or martyrdom.
To supply the vacancies of the episcopal bench became one of the earliest
cares of the queen and her ministers; and their choice, which fell on the
most eminent of the confessors and exiles, was generally approved by the
nation.
Dr. Parker, formerly her mother's chaplain and the religious instructor of
her own childhood, was designated by Elizabeth for the primacy. This
eminent divine had likewise been one of the chaplains of Edward VI., and
enjoyed under his reign considerable church preferments. He had been the

friend of Cranmer, Bucer, Latimer, and Ridley; of Cook, Cheke, and Cecil;
and was the ardent coadjutor of these meritorious public characters in the
promotion of reformed religion, and the advancement of general learning,—
two grand objects, which were regarded by them as inseparable and almost
identical.
On the accession of Mary, being stripped of all his benefices as a married
priest, Parker with his family was reduced to poverty and distress; and it
was only by a careful concealment of his person, by frequent changes of
place, and in some instances by the timely advertisements of watchful
friends, that he was enabled to avoid a still severer trial of his constancy.
During this period of distress he found support and solace from the pious
task of translating into English metre the whole of the Psalms. The version
still exists in manuscript, and is executed with some spirit, and not
inelegantly, in the old measure of fourteen syllables.
Parker's "Nolo episcopari" is supposed to have been more than ordinarily
sincere: in fact, the station of metropolitan must at this juncture have been
felt as one of considerable difficulty, perhaps even of danger; and the
stormy temper of the queen afterwards prepared for the prelate so much of
contradiction and humiliation as caused him more than once to bewail his
final acceptance of the highest dignity of the English church.
With all her personal regard for the primate, Elizabeth could not always
refrain in his presence from reflections against married priests, which gave
him great pain.
During a progress which she made in 1561 into Essex and Suffolk, she
expressed high displeasure at finding so many of the clergy married, and the
cathedrals and colleges so filled with women and children; and in
consequence she addressed to the archbishop a royal injunction, "that no
head or member of any college or cathedral should bring a wife or any other
woman into the precincts of it, to abide in the same, on pain of forfeiture of
all ecclesiastical promotion." Parker regarded it as his duty to remonstrate
with her in person against so popish a prohibition; on which, after declaring
to him that she repented of having made any married bishops, she went on

to treat the institution of matrimony itself with a satire and contempt which
filled him with horror.
It was to his wife that her majesty, in returning acknowledgements for the
magnificent hospitality with which she had been received at the
archiepiscopal palace, made use of the well-known ungracious address;
"Madam I may not call you, mistress I am ashamed to call you, and so I
know not what to call you; but howsoever I thank you."
But these fits of ill-humor were transient; for Parker learned the art of
dispelling them by submissions, or soothing them by the frequent and
respectful tender of splendid entertainments and costly gifts. He did not
long remain insensible to the charms of rank and fortune; and it must not be
concealed that an inordinate love of power, and a haughty intolerance of all
opposition, gradually superseded that candor and Christian meekness of
which he had formerly been cited as an edifying example. Against that sect
amongst the clergy who refused to adopt the appointed habits and scrupled
some of the ceremonies, soon after distinguished by the appellation of
Puritans, he exercised his authority with unsparing rigor; and even stretched
it by degrees so far beyond all legal bounds, that the queen herself, little as
she was inclined to tolerate this sect or to resent any arbitrary conduct in her
commissioners, was moved at length to interpose and reverse some of his
proceedings. The archbishop, now become incapable of yielding his own
will even to that of his sovereign, complained and remonstrated instead of
submitting: reproaches ensued on the part of Elizabeth; and in May 1575
the learned prelate ended in a kind of disgrace the career which he had long
pursued amid the warmest testimonies of royal approbation.
The fairest, at least the most undisputed, claim of this eminent prelate to
the gratitude of his contemporaries and the respect of posterity, is founded
on the character which his high station enabled him to assume and maintain,
of the most munificent patron of letters of his age and country. The study
which he particularly encouraged, and to which his own leisure was almost
exclusively devoted, was that of English antiquities; and he formed and
presented to Corpus Christi college a large and valuable collection of the
manuscripts relative to these objects which had been scattered abroad at the
dissolution of the monasteries, and must have been irretrievably lost but for

his diligence in inquiring after them and the liberality with which he
rewarded their discovery. He edited four of our monkish historians; was the
first publisher of that interesting specimen of early English satire and
versification, Pierce Plowman's Visions; composed a history in Latin of his
predecessors in the see of Canterbury, and encouraged the labors of many
private scholars by acts of generosity and kindness.
Grindal, a divine of eminence, who during his voluntary exile at Frankfort
had taken a strong part in favor of king Edward's Service-book, was named
as the successor of Bonner in the bishopric of London; but a considerable
time was spent in overcoming his objections to the habits and ceremonies,
before he could be prevailed upon to assume a charge of which he deeply
felt the importance and responsibility.
To the reputation of learning and piety which this prelate enjoyed in
common with so many of his clerical contemporaries, he added an
extraordinary earnestness in the promotion of Christian knowledge, and a
courageous inflexibility on points of professional duty, imitated by few and
excelled by none. His manly spirit disdained that slavish obsequiousness by
which too many of his episcopal brethren paid homage to the narrow
prejudices and state-jealousies of an imperious mistress, and it soon became
evident that strife and opposition awaited him.
His first difference was with archbishop Parker, whom he highly offended
by his backwardness in proceeding to extremities against the puritans, a sect
many of whose scruples Grindal himself had formerly entertained, and was
still inclined to view with respect or pity rather than with indignation. Cecil,
who was his chief friend and patron, apprehensive of his involving himself
in trouble, gladly seized an occasion of withdrawing him from the contest,
by procuring his appointment in 1570 to the vacant archbishopric of York; a
hitherto neglected province, in which his efforts for the instruction of the
people and the reformation of the state of the church were peculiarly
required and eminently successful.
For his own repose, Grindal ought never to have quitted this sphere of
unmolested usefulness; but when, on the death of Parker in 1575, the
primacy was offered to him, ambition, or perhaps the hope of rendering his

plans more extensively beneficial, unfortunately prompted its acceptance.
Thus was he brought once more within the uncongenial atmosphere of a
court, and subjected to the immediate control of his sovereign in matters on
which he regarded it as a duty, on the double ground of conscience and the
rights of his office, to resist the fiat of a temporal head of the church.
The queen, whose dread and hatred of the puritans augmented with the
severities which she exercised against them, had conceived a violent
aversion to certain meetings called prophesyings, at this time held by the
clergy for the purpose of exercising their younger members in expounding
the Scriptures, and at which the laity had begun to attend as auditors in
great numbers and with much interest. Such assemblies, her majesty
declared, were nothing else than so many schools of puritanism, where the
people learned to be so inquisitive that their spiritual superiors would soon
lose all influence over them, and she issued positive commands to Grindal
for their suppression. At the same time she expressed to him her extreme
displeasure at the number of preachers licensed in his province, and
required that it should be very considerably lessened, "urging that it was
good for the world to have few preachers, that three or four might suffice
for a county; and that the reading of the homilies to the people was
enough." But the venerable primate, so far from consenting to abridge the
means of that religious instruction which he regarded it as the most sacred
duty of a protestant church to afford, took the freedom of addressing to her
majesty a very plain and earnest letter of expostulation. In this piece, after
showing the great necessity which existed for multiplying, rather than
diminishing, opportunities of edification both to the clergy and the people,
and protesting that he could not in conscience be instrumental to the
suppression either of preaching or prophesyings, he proceeded to
remonstrate with her majesty on the arbitrary, imperious, and as it were
papal manner, in which she took upon herself to decide points better left to
the management of her bishops. He ended by exhorting her to remember
that she also was a mortal creature, and accountable to God for the exercise
of her power, and that she ought above all things to be desirous of
employing it piously for the promotion of true religion.

The event showed this remonstrance to be rather well-intended than well-
judged. Indignation was the only sentiment which it awakened in the
haughty mind of Elizabeth, and she answered it by an order of the Star-
chamber, in virtue of which the archbishop was suspended from his
functions for six months, and confined during the same period to his house.
At the end of this time he was urged by Burleigh to acknowledge himself in
fault and beg the queen's forgiveness but he steadily refused to compromise
thus a good cause, and his sequestration was continued. It even appears that
nothing but the honest indignation of some of her ministers and courtiers
restrained the queen from proceeding to deprive him.
At the end of four or five years, her anger being somewhat abated, it
pleased her to take off the sequestration, but without restoring the primate
to her favor; and as he was now old and blind, he willingly consented to
resign the primacy and retire on a pension: but in 1583, before the matter
could be finally arranged, he died.
Archbishop Grindal was a great contributor to Fox's "Acts and
Monuments," for which he collected many materials; but he was the author
of no considerable work, and on the whole he seems to have been less
admirable by the display of any extraordinary talents than revered and
exemplary for the primitive virtues of probity, sincerity, and godly zeal.
These were the qualities which obtained for him the celebration of Spenser
in his "Shepherd's Calendar," where he is designated by the name of
Algrind, and described as a true teacher of the Gospel and a severe reprover
of the pride and worldliness of the popish clergy. The lines were written
during the period of the prelate's disgrace, which is allegorically related and
bewailed by the poet.
Another distinguished ornament of the episcopal bench was Jewel,
consecrated to the see of Salisbury in 1560. It is remarkable that this
learned apologist of the church of England had expressed at first a stronger
repugnance to the habits than most of his colleagues; but having once
brought himself to compliance, he thenceforth became noted for the rigor
with which he exacted it of others.

In the time of Henry VIII. Jewel had become suspected of opinions which
he openly embraced on the accession of Edward, and he was sufficiently
distinguished amongst the reformers of this reign to be marked out as one of
the first objects of persecution under Mary. As a preliminary step, on which
proceedings might be founded, the Romish articles were offered for his
signature, when he disappointed alike his enemies and his friends by
subscribing them without apparent reluctance. But his insincerity in this act
was notorious, and it was in contemplation to subject him to the fierce
interrogatories of Bonner, when timely warning enabled him, through many
perils, to escape out of the country. Safe arrived at Frankfort, he made a
public confession, before the English congregation, of his guilt in signing
articles which his conscience abhorred, and humbly entreated forgiveness of
God and the church. After this, he repaired to Strasburgh and passed away
the time with his friend Peter Martyr.
The erudition of Jewel was profound and extensive, his private life
amiable, his performance of his episcopal duties sedulous; and such was the
esteem in which his celebrated "Apology" was held, that Elizabeth, and
afterwards James I., ordained that a copy of it should be kept in every
parish-church in England.
Of Dr. Cox, elevated to the see of Ely, mention has already been made;
and it would be superfluous here to enter more largely into the ecclesiastical
history of the reign.
A careful consideration of the behaviour of Elizabeth towards the two
successive primates Parker and Grindal, will furnish a sufficiently accurate
notion of the spirit of her religious policy, besides affording a valuable
addition to the characteristic traits illustrative of her temper and opinions.

CHAPTER XIIIa.
1561.
Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex.—Translations of ancient
tragedies.—Death of Francis II.—Mary refuses to ratify the
treaty of Edinburgh—returns to Scotland.—Enmity between
Mary and Elizabeth.—Philip II. secretly encourages the English
papists.—Measures of rigor adopted against them by Elizabeth.
—Anecdote of the queen and Dr. Sampson.—St. Paul's struck by
lightning.—Bishop Pilkington's sermon on the occasion.—Paul's
Walk.—Precautions against the queen's being poisoned.—The
king of Sweden proposes to visit her.—Steps taken in this matter.

T eighteenth of January 1561 ought to be celebrated as the birthday of
he

the English drama; for it was on this day that Thomas Sackville caused to
be represented at Whitehall, for the entertainment of Elizabeth and her
court, the tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, otherwise called Gorboduc, the
joint production of himself and Thomas Norton. From the unrivalled force
of imagination, the vigor and purity of diction, and the intimate knowledge
and tasteful adaptation of the beauties of the Latin poets displayed in the
contributions of Sackville to the Mirror of Magistrates, a lettered audience
would conceive high expectations from his attempt in a new walk of poetry;
but in the then barbarous state of our Theatre, such a performance as
Gorboduc must have been hailed as not only a novelty but a wonder. It was
the first piece composed in English on the ancient tragic model, with a
regular division into five acts, closed by lyric choruses.
It offered the first example of a story from British history, or what passed
for history, completely dramatized and represented with an attempt at
theatrical illusion; for the earlier pieces published under the title of
tragedies were either ballads or monologues, which might indeed be sung or

recited, but were incapable of being acted. The plot of the play was fraught
with those circumstances of the deepest horror by which the dormant
sensibilities of an inexperienced audience require and delight to be
awakened. An unwonted force of thought and dignity of language claimed
the patience, if not the admiration, of the hearers, for the long political
disquisitions by which the business of the piece was somewhat painfully
retarded.
The curiosity of the public respecting a drama which had been performed
with general applause both at court and before the society of the Middle
Temple, encouraged its surreptitious appearance in print in 1565, and a
second stolen edition was followed, some years after, by a corrected one
published under the inspection of the authors themselves. The taste for the
legitimate drama thus awakened, may be supposed to have led to the
naturalization amongst us of several of its best ancient models. The
Phœnissæ of Euripides appeared under the title of Jocasta, having received
an English dress from Gascoigne and Kinwelmershe, two students of Gray's
Inn. The ten tragedies of Seneca, englished by different hands, succeeded. It
is worthy of note, however, that none of these translators had the good taste
to imitate the authors of Ferrex and Porrex in the adoption of blank verse,
and that one only amongst them made use of the heroic rhymed couplet; the
others employing the old alexandrine measure, excepting in the choruses,
which were given in various kinds of stanza. Her majesty alone seems to
have perceived the superior advantages, or to have been tempted by the
greater facility of Sackville's verse; and amongst the MSS. of the Bodleian
library there is found a translation by her own hand of part of Seneca's
Hercules Oetæus, which is in this measure. Warton however adds, that this
specimen "has no other recommendation than its royalty."
The propensity of Elizabeth, amid all the serious cares of government and
all the pettinesses of that political intrigue to which she was addicted, to
occupy herself with attempts in polite literature, for which she possessed no
manner of talent, is not the least remarkable among the features of her
extraordinary and complicated character.
At the period of her reign however which we are now considering, public
affairs must have required from her an almost undivided attention. By the

death of Francis II. about the end of the year 1560, the queen of Scots had
become a widow, and the relations of England with France and Scotland
had immediately assumed an entirely novel aspect.
The change was in one respect highly to the advantage of Elizabeth. By
the loss of her royal husband, Mary was deprived of that command over the
resources of the French monarchy by which she had hoped to render
effective her claim to the English crown, and she found it expedient to
discontinue for the present the use of the royal arms of England. The enmity
of the queen-mother had even chased her from that court where she had
reigned so lately, and obliged her to retire to her uncle, the cardinal of
Lorrain at Rheims. But from the age and temper of the beautiful and
aspiring Mary, it was to be expected that she would ere long be induced to
re-enter the matrimonial state with some one of the princes of Europe; and
neither as a sovereign nor a woman could Elizabeth regard without jealousy
the plans for her reestablishment already agitated by her ambitious uncles of
the house of Guise. Under these circumstances, it was the first object of
Elizabeth to obtain from her rival the formal ratification, which had hitherto
been withheld, of the treaty of Edinburgh, by one article of which Mary was
pledged never to resume the English arms; and Throgmorton, then
ambassador to France, was instructed to urge strongly her immediate
compliance with this certainly not inequitable demand. The queen of Scots,
however, persisted in evading its fulfilment, and on pleas so forced and
futile as justly to confirm all previous suspicions of her sincerity.
Matters were in this state between the two sovereigns, when Mary came to
the resolution of acceding to the unanimous entreaties of her subjects of
both religions, by returning to govern in person the kingdom of her
ancestors; and she sent to request of Elizabeth a safe-conduct. The English
princess promptly replied, that the queen had only to ratify the treaty of
Edinburgh, and she should obtain not merely a safe-conduct but free
permission to shorten the fatigues of her voyage by passing through
England, where she should be received with all the marks of affection due
to a beloved sister. By this answer Mary chose to regard herself as insulted;
and declaring to the English ambassador in great heat that nothing vexed
her so much as to have exposed herself without necessity to such a refusal,