Chapter XIX.

Persecution. Bloody Mary (1553-1558)

The Duke of Northumberland was more ambitious than able, and more bold than skillful. In seeking to disturb the natural order of succession he had undertaken a task beyond his strength; nor had he appreciated the relative power of the two religions now existing side by side; he thought the Catholics more weakened than they were, and the Protestants more disposed to sacrifice all for the accession of a Protestant sovereign than they showed themselves to be; the project of taking possession of the two princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, was thwarted from the first. The death of the young king was kept secret, and an express was despatched to the sisters to bring them to him. It was the second time that Mary had been summoned, and notwithstanding her repugnance, she had set out, when a note from the Earl of Arundel warned her of the state of affairs; she immediately retraced her steps, and shut herself up in her castle of Norfolk. Elizabeth had also been warned in time. Northumberland henceforth had to struggle against a rival, at liberty and fully aware of his sinister designs.

{294}

Edward VI. had been dead three days, and precautions had been taken in London when Lady Jane Grey, who had retired to Chelsea during the last weeks of the life of the king, was recalled to Sion House, the palace of her family. She was there alone on the 10th of July, 1553, occupied, it is said, in reading Plato in Greek--for Lady Jane was as learned as she was gentle and modest--when the arrival of the Duke of Northumberland, her father-in-law, accompanied by several lords of the council, was announced. Indifferent subjects were talked about; but the young woman was troubled by the watchful looks and respectful tone of her visitors, when her mother-in-law entered with the Duchess of Suffolk. "The king, your cousin and our sovereign lord, has given up his soul to God," said Northumberland; "but before his death, and in order to preserve the kingdom from the infection of Popery, he resolved to set aside his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, declared illegitimate by an act of Parliament, and he commanded us to proclaim your Grace as queen and sovereign to succeed him." At the same moment, the lords of the council prostrated themselves before Lady Jane, vowing fidelity to her; she started back a pace, uttered a loud cry, and fell to the floor. She was young, timid, in delicate health, fond of retirement, and addicted to serious studies; she protested, asserting that she did not feel herself capable of governing. "But if the right is mine," she said at length, raising her head with humble reliance, "I hope that God will give me strength to bear the sceptre for the glory and happiness of the people of England." She was immediately conducted to the Tower, the usual residence of sovereigns before their coronation; at the same time, the death of King Edward VI. and the accession of Lady Jane Grey were proclaimed in the streets and market-places, while the reason of the exclusion of the princesses was explained. {295} The crowd listened in silence, without any tokens of satisfaction, and the name of Mary was whispered among them. This infringement of the ordinary rules of succession was evidently viewed with no favour by the people of London.

In the country the movement was more vigorous. Mary had written to the council, haughtily claiming her rights in a tone befitting the sovereign power, and the lords had not yet replied to this appeal, when a certain number of noblemen and gentlemen hastened to join, their legitimate queen. The Catholics were not alone, for Mary promised to change nothing in the laws and the religion established by King Edward; she had a small army under her orders, when the Duke of Northumberland, who had hesitated to leave London, and the conspirators whom he held in some degree captive decided at length to march against Mary, leaving the Duke of Suffolk with his daughter to govern in her name. He had scarcely issued forth from the capital, when the members of the council crept out of the Tower under different pretexts, and met at Castle Baynard, the residence of the Earl of Pembroke. The Earl of Arundel was the first to announce his resolution of passing over to Queen Mary. "If reasons do not suffice," exclaimed Lord Pembroke, "this sword shall make Mary queen, or I will die in her cause!" All the nobles responded with acclamation, and the Duke of Suffolk, who had rejoined his colleagues, united his voice to theirs, thus basely abandoning his daughter. {296} Mary was proclaimed in the streets of London, in the open places where a week before the name of Lady Jane had resounded; at Paul's Cross, where Bishop Ridley had preached on the preceding Sunday in favour of the Protestant succession. This time the people applauded, and the Catholics triumphed; the Protestants had not learnt to connect religious principles with political freedom, or did not foresee the evils which they were about to suffer. On leaving London with his troops, Northumberland himself had augured ill from the coldness of the populace. "They come to see us pass," he said, "but nobody cries God bless you!" He was at Cambridge when he learned of Mary's proclamation in London, the defection of the members of the council, and that of the forces which he had raised in the north and who had rallied round Mary. Tears flowed down his cheeks when he repaired to the public square of the city, and throwing his cap in the air, was the first to proclaim Queen Mary. On the morrow he was arrested and taken to the Tower, which Lady Jane had quitted to return to Sion House as soon as Mary had been recognized by the council, but the little queen of ten days had been arrested, as well as her husband; the gloomy fortress began to be peopled by all the actors in the drama of which this poor girl was to be the victim. Mary advanced by short stages towards London, where she entered on the 3rd of August amidst the joyful acclamations of the populace; her sister, Elizabeth, came to meet her with a thousand noblemen and gentlemen. The conduct of Elizabeth had been as skillful as it was prudent, and worthy of the wise policy which she was to practise upon the throne, and she was already indebted for this to the counsels of the Secretary of State, Cecil.

{297}

When Northumberland had caused the accession of Lady Jane to be announced to her, proposing land and riches in exchange for her rights to the throne, Elizabeth replied that she had no rights to renounce, since her older sister, the Princess Mary, was alive. Then declaring herself ill, she awaited the event, knowing how to forecast it to the exact extent in order to arrive before her sister in London, muster her friends, and salute the new sovereign upon her entry into the capital. During the five years of the reign of her sister all the prudence of Cecil was required for the service of the mistress whom he had chosen.

The first care of the queen was to repair to the Tower; the prisoners awaited her, not those whom she had caused to be detained there, but the old Duke of Norfolk, a captive for so many years, the Duchess of Somerset, and Bishop Gardiner, who delivered in the name of all a brief speech of welcome to the sovereign whose accession restored them to liberty. Mary was moved to tears. "You are my prisoners," she said, embracing them. The Bishops Bonner and Tunstall were also delivered from their long captivity; the latter was admitted into the council as well as Gardiner, who soon became chancellor and prime minister. The corpse of King Edward had scarcely been interred, and the public obsequies celebrated according to the English rites, when already the sermons at Paul's Cross changed their character. Bourn, canon of St. Paul's, soon afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, rose against the innovations introduced into the Church under King Edward, declaring against those who had kept Bonner, the legitimate bishop of that diocese, for four years in prison. {298} The people were not accustomed to such tirades; the canon was upon the point of being beaten to death; two reformed preachers, who were shortly to seal their testimony with their lives, Bradford and Rogers, had great difficulty in conducting him back to his residence in safety.

Queen Mary had been a fortnight in London, but six weeks only had elapsed since the death of Edward VI., when the Duke of Northumberland, his eldest son, the Earl of Warwick, and the Marquis of Northampton appeared before the council as prisoners charged with high treason. The crime was manifest, but the judges assembled to condemn the guilty men were implicated in it like themselves. Northumberland tried to shelter himself behind the members of the council, who had all signed the edict emanating from the personal will of the deceased king; the councillors maintained that they had obeyed under the penalty of their own lives; the Duke of Norfolk, who had but just escaped from the Tower, presided over the court; Cranmer and the Duke of Suffolk signed the sentence. All the base acts of Northumberland could not save his head; in vain did he ask to confer with the doctors sent by the Queen in order to enlighten his conscience; the only favor granted him was that of being simply beheaded. The Earl of Warwick behaved with more self-respect; four secondary accomplices were condemned with the three great noblemen; but Northumberland, Sir John Gates, and Sir Thomas Palmer alone suffered their sentence. They died on Tower Hill on the 22nd of August; the duke was interred in the chapel of the Tower, beside the Duke of Somerset, his former victim; on his right and left reposed the remains of Anne Boleyn and Catharine Howard. {299} The queen was urged to rid herself also of Lady Jane Grey and her husband; but she called to mind the youth of the poor little usurper, saying that she had been but a tool in the hands of her father-in-law. Mary contented herself by detaining her at the Tower.

The Catholic party was triumphant; the Emperor Charles V. recommended prudence, advising that some few dangerous enemies be struck down, but that the new religion should not be touched, trusting to time the care of modifying errors, and taking care not to plunge the people into despair by too much severity. This wise policy agreed neither with the fervent convictions of Mary nor with the firmness of her character, embittered by long misfortunes, by reiterated acts of injustice and by shattered health. "God has protected me in all my misfortunes," she said, "it is in Him that I confide. I will not testify my gratitude slowly, in secret, but at once and openly." The public declaration promised to molest none of her subjects for religion; but mass had already been re-established in the principal churches in London, Cranmer and Latimer were sent to the Tower, and the Princess Elizabeth, prudently bowing her head before the storm, had renounced the practice of the Protestant worship to return to the Catholic faith, of which she always preserved some remains at the bottom of her heart; she accompanied her sister to mass, had a chapel established in her residence, and devoted a portion of her time to the embroidering of church ornaments. {300} Mary was crowned on the first of October at Westminister, by the hands of Gardiner. Five days afterwards Parliament assembled; a month had scarcely elapsed when the edifice raised with so much care by Cranmer and the English Protestants was falling in its entirety; matters had returned to the point at which Henry VIII. had left them: the prayer-book was set aside, the service in the vernacular tongue abolished, the marriage of priests and communion of the two kinds prohibited; the Bishops who were married, or were in favor of the reformed doctrines were deprived of their sees, while the marriage of Henry VIII. and Catharine was alone declared valid. The queen did not, however, renounce the title of chief of the Church; she did not wish to alarm the Protestants by placing them at the outset, under the yoke of Rome, and above all she avoided touching upon the question of the restitution of the property of the clergy, which would have raised all the House of Lords against the new form of government. The queen contented herself by setting the example by taking measures to restore to the Church all the estates annexed to the crown. Being reassured by this indulgence. Parliament voted all that was demanded, and destroyed all that it had formerly established; the convocation of the clergy returned in a mass to the old practices; the priests who had sincerely embraced the Protestant faith and who refused to repeat mass were replaced without difficulty by the monks who were everywhere issuing forth from their hiding-places. The prisons were soon filled by the refractory; those who were not prisoners were able to go about begging along the high roads with their wives and children; a certain number fled abroad. {301} Violent persecution had not yet commenced; Cranmer was acquitted upon the count of treason, but he was sent back to the Tower as a heretic. The sentence of death pronounced against Lady Jane Gray and her husband was not put into execution; the captives even enjoyed a kind of liberty in their prison. Queen Mary was occupied in a more important matter; although now thirty-seven years of age, moved by the solicitations of her councillors, she thought of marriage.

Many illustrious alliances for the Princess Mary had been contracted and broken off in succession; when she was yet in her cradle, the Emperor, the King of France, and the dauphin had each in turn aspired to her hand; but it was whispered at the court that the queen experienced some liking for Lord Edward Courtenay, son of the Marquis of Exeter, executed in 1538; scarcely had she released that handsome young man from the Tower, when she conferred on him the title of Earl of Devonshire, with all the confiscated estates of his father, and it was asserted that her favours did not stop there. Edward Courtenay did not know how to take advantage of fortune; he was thoughtless and a debauchee; his convictions did not incline to the side of Roman Catholicism, and he preferred, it was said, the society of the Princess Elizabeth to that of her royal sister. The queen manifested much coldness towards the princess, who retired to her residence at Ashridge in Buckinghamshire, closely watched by two agents of the court. {302} A union with Cardinal Pole, a cousin of the queen, and who was not in orders, was also spoken of; but he was fifty-three years of age, he was living in retirement by the Lake of Garda; and, although there was a project at that time at Rome for sending him as a legate to England, the Emperor increased the obstacles to his departure, in order to have time to accomplish an undertaking which he had greatly at heart and which the presence of Pole might have hindered.

Queen Mary had learnt during her misfortunes to depend upon Charles V., who had never failed her: since she had been upon the throne she had taken his advice in all her affairs; the Emperor took advantage of this circumstance to ask her for her hand in favor of his son, the Arch-duke Philip, soon afterwards Philip II., who had recently lost his wife, Isabella of Portugal. The foreign powers, and especially France, seconded by the ambassadors of Venice, dreaded this union, which was calculated to cause the balance in Europe to incline against them; their opposition was favored by a powerful party in the very bosom of the council; Gardiner was at its head. He vigorously represented to the queen the aversion which the English had always experienced towards foreign sovereigns, the discontent which the haughtiness of Philip had aroused among his own subjects, the continual hostilities with France which must result from this marriage, the anger and uneasiness of the reformed party. The Commons even presented an address praying the queen to choose her husband from among the distinguished men of her kingdom.

[Image] Mary Vows To Marry Philip II.

{303}

Courtenay was the soul of all the intrigues, encouraged and nourished by the French ambassador, M. de Noailles; but this opposition only aroused the obstinacy of Mary; she was a worthy daughter of Henry VIII., and on the very day on which the Houses had manifested their aversion to a foreign prince, she caused the Spanish ambassador to come to her private chapel; there throwing herself on her knees before the altar, she took God to witness that she plighted her troth to Philip, Prince of Spain, to belong to him and no other as long as she should live. The marriage treaty was communicated to Parliament on the 14th of January, 1554; the Emperor was very accommodating in the conditions, counting, no doubt, upon the influence which Philip might acquire over his wife. The queen was to remain sole mistress of the government in England, without any foreigner being able to participate in the offices or dignities; Burgundy and the Low Countries were secured to her children, and in the advent of Don Carlos, the son of the first marriage of Philip, happening to die, all the possessions of the crown of Spain were to devolve on the posterity of Mary. Gardiner himself unfolded before the two Houses and the burgesses of the City all the advantages of this alliance which he had so ardently opposed.

The arguments of the chancellor did not convince the country. Conspirators were encouraged by the promises of France; projects were various: some wished to place Elizabeth upon the throne while giving her Courtenay for a husband; others counted upon releasing Lady Jane Grey and proclaiming her again. They appeared to have determined on this project, when, on the 20th of January, the queen learnt that Sir Peter Carew had taken arms in Devonshire, resolved to oppose the disembarcation of Phillip; he had already taken possession of the city and citadel of Exeter. {304} Almost at the same time it was discovered that Sir Thomas Wyatt was inciting the population of Kent to rebellion. He was a Catholic, and had distinguished himself at the siege of Boulogne, but he had conceived the most violent horror of Spain, and he appears to have been disposed to support the claims of the Princess Elizabeth, for he had refused, from the first, to enter into the plot in favour of Lady Jane Grey. In London the terror was extreme; the guards at the gates were doubled; the Duke of Suffolk, whom Mary had pardoned, took refuge in Warwickshire, and loudly protesting against the marriage of the queen, he called the population to arms without much effect. The boldest as well as the most popular of the conspirators was Wyatt, who held the city of Rochester, against which place the old Duke of Norfolk was advancing with Lord Arundel. As the Duke was ordering the assault, five hundred men of the London train-bands, whom he had brought with him, suddenly stopped at the entrance of the bridge, and the captain addressing them said, "My masters, we are going to fight against our fellow-citizens and friends in an unjust quarrel: they have assembled here to resist the evils which would fall upon us if we were subject to the proud Spaniard, and I know not who is the Englishman who could say nay to them." The train-bands immediately began to cry, "Wyatt! Wyatt!" at the same time turning their field-pieces against the royalist troops. The Duke of Norfolk was compelled to retire in haste, and his return spread terror in London. {305} The queen alone remained firm, repairing with her ladies to the City protesting to the Lord Mayor, the aldermen, and burgesses, that she only wished to be married in a manner honourable and advantageous for her kingdom; that nothing compelled her to marry since she had delayed so long, and that she counted upon her good subjects to help her subjugate the rebels. On this same day she learnt that the Duke of Suffolk and Sir Peter Carew had been defeated in the inland shires and in the West. A full amnesty was promised to all the insurgents of Kent, the noblemen excepted; a price was set upon the head of Sir Thomas Wyatt. He had delayed in his march, but on the 3rd of February he entered the suburb of Southwark with considerable forces without doing any damage, except in the residence of Bishop Gardiner, which was pillaged. Wyatt had counted upon the good will of the inhabitants of London, but the gates of the City remained closed, and the population of Southwark, who had received him well, soon begged him to retire. When the cannon of the Tower began to roar, and the cannon-balls to rain upon the bridge and the two churches fortified by Wyatt, the insurgents directed their efforts to another point, and contrived to cross the river at Kingston; but Lord Pembroke awaited them at the head of the royal troops, and when Wyatt, with a handful of brave men, had opened up a passage for himself, the ranks closed behind him; he found himself seized in the streets. The citizens did not rise in his favour, as he had hoped; he defended himself bravely, but, overwhelmed by numbers, was captured and sent to the Tower; a great many of his followers were taken and hanged. The insurrection had miscarried.

{306}

The courage of Queen Mary had not belied itself for one moment; while her terrified courtiers were hastening to bring the grievous news she shamed them for their terrors, asserting that she would herself enter into a campaign to support the justice of her quarrel, and die with those who served her rather than yield an inch to a traitor like Wyatt; but she had already caused her anger to be felt by those whom she suspected of having taken part in the plot. Three of her councillors had by her orders arrived at Ashridge, where they found Elizabeth in bed. It was late, and the emissaries insisted upon entering the residence of the Princess. "Is the haste such that it might not have pleased you to come to-morrow in the morning?" she asked haughtily. "We are right sorry to see your grace in such a case," said the councillors. "And I," replied Elizabeth, "am not glad to see you here at this time of night." It was necessary, however, to give way and get into the litter which the queen had sent; Mary wished to see her sister, "dead or alive," she said. The house was surrounded by soldiers, they set out; the journey was slow; Elizabeth dreaded the arrival in London; some few noblemen who came to meet her reassured her; she learnt, however, that Courtenay had been sent to the Tower. She had not yet seen the queen when she was informed of the sad fate of Lady Jane Grey.

{307}

The insurrection had scarcely been stamped out and Wyatt made a prisoner, when Mary signed the order to execute Lady Jane and her husband, both of whom had been condemned to death several months before. The royal clemency had allowed a last interview between husband and wife, but Lady Jane refused the favour. "I shall see him again shortly," she said. She saw him, in effect, before the eternal reunion, but dead and mutilated; the corpse passed under her windows, on the return from Tower Hill. A few hours later, on the 12th of February, 1554, Jane in her turn mounted the scaffold, within the precincts of the Tower, after having firmly repelled the Dean of St. Paul's who pursued her with his arguments in favour of the Roman Catholic religion. She died in the faith which she had embraced in her infancy, serene and grave, without a complaint or a tear, simply avowing to the few spectators of her ordeal, that she deserved death for having consented, although with regret, to serve as an instrument to the ambition of others. She implored the mercy of God and delivered herself up into the hands of the executioner, moving all hearts by her constancy and and meekness. Her father was beheaded on Tower Hill, several days later, without arousing the compassion of any one. Passing from one treacherous act to another, he had at length found himself on the scaffold. Executions succeeded each other without intermission. To the last moment Sir Thomas Wyatt maintained that the Princess Elizabeth had been ignorant of all his projects. The jury had the courage to acquit Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, a devoted friend of the princess, compromised in the conspiracy; the verdict saved his life, but this unusual independence was to be dearly paid for by the jurymen: they were all sent to prison, and only regained their liberty after a long captivity, and upon the payment of a fine. {308} Meanwhile, appearances were unfavourable to Elizabeth; she had in vain solicited an audience of her sister, and finally wrote to her, absolutely disclaiming all complicity in the insurrection and denying the correspondence which she was accused of having carried on with the King of France. The order was nevertheless given to conduct her to the Tower, and on Palm Sunday, while the population of London thronged the churches, the princess conducted by Lord Sidney, was brought by the Thames to the Traitor's Gate. She refused at first to alight; then, as one of the guards offered her his hand, she repelled him abruptly, and placing her foot upon the gloomy stairs, she exclaimed, "Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs; and before Thee, O God, I speak it, having none other friend but Thee above." She sat down for a moment upon the stone; the lieutenant of the Tower begged her to take shelter from the cold and rain: "Better sitting here than in a worse place," she said, "for God knoweth whither you bring me." She entered, however, and found herself within the walls of a prison, fearing in the recesses of her soul the fate of her mother; and soon afterwards she was still more terrified, when a new governor, Sir Henry Beddingfield, was nominated to the Tower. He had the reputation of being harsh and cruel, and, several times Elizabeth asked the guards whether the scaffold of Lady Jane had been removed, expecting to ascend it in her turn. On the 19th of May, however, Elizabeth was taken to Richmond, and thence to Woodstock, where she remained, closely watched by Sir Henry Beddingfield, while Courtenay was removed to Fotheringay. {309} The arrival of Prince Philip was now expected, and the preparation for the marriage occupied all minds whether satisfied or discontented. The population of London daily manifested its aversion to the Spanish alliance and its attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation; the queen's preachers began to look upon the pulpit erected at Paul's Cross as a dangerous spot. One of them, Doctor Pendleton, received a shot there, from which he narrowly escaped death. The use of arms was thereafter prohibited.

The manœuvres of the Emperor had succeeded; his confidential ambassador, Renard, had prevailed over the intrigues of Noailles; Philip arrived in England with the title of King of Naples, Charles V. was unwilling, he said, that so great a queen should unite herself to a simple prince: the marriage was celebrated with great pomp, on the 25th of July, 1554; but the royal bridegroom had taken care to surround himself with troops at the moment of his landing, one of his emissaries, Count Egmont, having been assailed shortly before by the people, who mistook him for his master. The first care of the Houses of Parliament when they assembled on the 1st of November, was to increase the precautions against the Spanish influence in the councils of the queen: all the liberality of Philip, who had brought a quantity of money from Spain, could not lull a distrust, which on the other hand was nourished by the haughtiness of his manners and the rigid etiquette with which he surrounded himself.

{310}

The first Parliament convoked by Mary had voted the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic worship; the second had adopted the treaty of marriage; the third was summoned to declare the reunion with Rome; but the interests of the House of Lords were opposed to this measure. Before repealing the act of supremacy, the Lords, enriched by the spoliation of the monasteries, required guarantees from the court of Rome; the Pope gave them, through the mouth of Cardinal Pole, who had arrived in England as legate; Parliament then became submissive, and presented a petition to the king, queen and cardinal, begging them to intercede with the Holy Father to obtain the pardon of the English people and their reconciliation with the Holy See. Pole was furnished with the necessary powers, and he pronounced the absolution. The work of Henry VIII. as well as that of Edward VI. was destroyed; and the conscience of Queen Mary was able to rest in peace. Parliament thought to have done enough; but Mary desired to feel her way towards securing the royal crown to her husband, but she encountered so much ill-feeling that she was obliged to renounce her project; the commons also refused the subsidies which she had caused the Emperor and his son to expect, as an assistance in prosecuting the war with France. Philip in vain endeavoured to win a little popularity by interceding with the queen in favour of the prisoners of state detained at the Tower. Several were restored to liberty. Courtenay received permission to travel upon the Continent, and the Princess Elizabeth reappeared at court, but she did not long remain there; her position was difficult; she was constantly watched by jealous eyes; when she returned, however, to her residence at Ampthill, the queen began to look upon her sister with less uneasiness, for she was now expecting an heir to the throne.

{311}

The year 1555 opened under sinister auspices for the Reformed Church; the laws against heretics had been put in force again, and on the first day in January the Bishop of London, Bonner, followed by a great procession, repaired to St. Paul's, to return thanks to God for the light with which He had once more illumined the sovereign of the nation. A court commissioned to try heretics was soon formed. The prisons were filled with the accused; the first who was summoned belonged to the clergy of St. Paul's; Gardiner presided over the tribunal. "Did you not pray for twenty years against the Pope?" cried the prisoner, driven to extremities by the questions of his judge. "I was cruelly forced to it," replied the bishop. "Why, then, do you wish to make use of the same cruelty towards us?" asked Rogers; but this simple notion of liberty of conscience had not yet penetrated into the most enlightened minds, Catholic or Protestant; each party, in turn, had recourse to force, to aid what it looked upon as the truth, to triumph, and William of Orange, loudly proclaiming toleration towards the Catholics in a country which he was snatching from the horrors of the inquisition, drew down upon himself the censure of his Protestant friends. Rogers was condemned to be burned, and was refused the consolation of saying farewell to his wife. She was at the foot of the stake with her eleven children, the youngest at her breast, encouraging her husband until the last moment. He died worthy of her, augmenting by his firmness the long series of martyrs of the Reformed faith with whom the fanaticism of Mary was about to enrich the Church. Executions succeeded each other. {312} Hooper, the dispossessed bishop of Gloucester, an eloquent and austere divine, and Robert Ferrar, bishop of St. David's, were burned in their former dioceses. Condemnations and executions increased every day. Gardiner, weary of so many horrors, had ceased to preside over the court commissioned to try heretics, and the zeal of Bonner himself did not suffice to satisfy Philip and Mary. Cardinal Pole in vain endeavoured to moderate the persecuting ardour of the queen; the gentleness of his character and the experience which he had acquired in Germany, equally rendered him averse to executions as a means of conversion; but the conscience of Mary was pledged to the work; she desired to make England Roman Catholic; and, notwithstanding the terror of some, the hesitation of others, and the servility of a great number, she, day by day, found her task greater and more difficult; it was not the moment for relaxing her efforts.

Upon the accession of Mary, the relative strength of the two religions was about equal in her kingdom, although irregularly divided according to localities. The Protestants were numerous in nearly all the towns; the Catholics remained powerful in the north; but great influences were struggling against the royal authority, passionately engaged, as it was, in the struggle; the great noblemen were imperfectly assured of the security of their possessions, notwithstanding all the protestations and promises of the Pope. {313} The Protestant faith had taken firm hold upon a great number of souls among the clergy and the people. The ranks of the nobility did not furnish any religious martyrs, but the uneasiness which their temporal interests caused them contributed to keep up the agitation which produced so many political victims, and the masses of the people sealed their convictions with their blood. Two bishops and a great number of priests had already perished at the stake, in company with a host of unknown and obscure martyrs. The most illustrious witnesses of persecuted Protestantism were still captives; two bishops and an archbishop, all three celebrated for their eloquence and the part which they had played in the past, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, had been conducted to Oxford, in the month of March, 1554, there to argue in public with the Catholic doctors; all three had boldly maintained their opinions, and all three had been declared obstinate heretics. They had been awaiting their sentence for eighteen months, when, on the 12th of September, 1555, the royal commissioners arrived at Oxford. In his capacity of former Primate of England, Cranmer, a prisoner, was summoned to appear in Rome within eighty days, according to the forms of the canon law. Ridley and Latimer were condemned to die forthwith. A learned Spanish theologian was, however, despatched to them to enlighten them upon their errors. Latimer refused to see him, Ridley combated all his arguments; he was learned, eloquent, admirably versed in the Holy Scriptures, and it was he who had maintained the discussions with the Catholic doctors, with the most brilliant results. The day for argument had gone by, that of martyrdom was arriving. {314} On the 16th of October, 1555, the two prelates were conducted to the stake prepared for them near Baliol College, where the monument now stands which commemorates their execution. Latimer was old and worn out; he walked with difficulty. Ridley, who had preceded him, ran to meet him and embraced him "Be of good heart, brother," he said, "for God will either assuage the fury of the flame or strengthen us to bear it." The old man smiled, suffering himself to be stripped by the guards; Ridley divested himself of his clothing, which he distributed among the bystanders. When both were clothed in their shrouds and fastened back to back at the stake, the old bishop drew himself up, as though suddenly endowed with that superhuman strength which his companion in punishment had promised to him. "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley!" he cried, "and play the man, and we shall see this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out." The flames immediately suffocated him, but Ridley suffered for a long time. One of the bystanders at length had the charity to stir the embers, and the bag of gunpowder which had been attached to the necks of the victims having ignited, Ridley died by the explosion, while the prophetic words of old Latimer still resounded in every ear. England has remained illumined by the candle thus lighted by the martyrs of the sixteenth century.

{315}

Gardiner died on the 12th of November, and the queen confided the seals to the Archbishop of York, Heath, a prelate more zealous than his predecessor in the persecution of heretics, but less skilful and prudent in the conduct of public affairs. Upon the assembling of Parliament, Mary touched a tender chord; she asked for authority to restore to the Holy See the first-fruits and tithes, annexed under the reign of her father to the crown. "I set more value upon the salvation of my soul," she said, "than upon the possession of ten kingdoms such as England." The Houses did not oppose the salvation of the soul of the sovereign, but they trembled to see her lay hands upon _their_ property, and the subsidies rendered necessary by the decrease in the royal revenues which the return of the annats to the court of Rome involved, were voted with ill-humor, and not without objections. The queen was obliged to have recourse to many vexatious courses in order to procure the money which her husband constantly demanded of her, thus increasing every day, the unpopularity of the Spaniards in the kingdom. All the English detested Philip. Mary alone loved him, with the sad tenderness of an unrequited affection. The king was almost always away from his wife, and only replied to her constant letters when he demanded of her the sums which he needed to maintain the wars with France. It was in vain that English prudence stipulated that peace should be maintained between France and England. What could laws effect against the devotion of the queen for her husband?

The weakness and timidity of Cranmer, deprived of the firm example of his companions in captivity, had been counted upon with good reason. The eighty days had elapsed, and the Primate, not having appeared at Rome, was declared guilty, degraded from his holy office, and delivered up to the secular power. {316} Then began the attempts at conversion. The prisoner was transferred to the house of the Dean of Christchurch, where indulgences were lavished upon him. It was represented to him that he was still in the prime of life, healthy and vigorous; why should he be obstinate in his errors and die like Latimer, who had only renounced a few years of a miserable existence? The unhappy archbishop suffered himself to be gained over, and signed six abjurations in succession, adding each time something to his shame. At the termination of these humiliations, at the moment when he at length thought to have purchased his liberty, it was announced to him that penitence did not absolve from punishment, that his return to the bosom of the Church insured, indeed, eternal life to him, but could not save him from the stake, and he was condemned to die on the 21st of March. In view of this perfidy, which deprived him of the fruits of all his acts of cowardice, Cranmer at length saw the extent of his mistake, and from the platform upon which he was placed, read to the people his last confession, boldly rejecting the Papal authority and the doctrines which he had recognized a few days previously, protesting his attachment to the Reformed faith, and his resolution to die faithful to it. At the same time he humbled himself before God and men for the base fear of death which had led him to belie the truth and his conscience. The agitation among the people was great; something totally different had been expected. "Recall your senses," said Lord Williams, "and show yourself to be a Christian." "That is what I am doing: at this moment," replied Cranmer; "it is too late to dissemble, I must come to the truth." {317} When he was conducted to the stake, before the flames reached him, he plunged his right hand into the raging fire to punish it for having signed the abjuration. "That is the one which has sinned," he exclaimed. Motionless in the midst of the flames, he appealed neither to the mercy nor the justice of men. "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," he cried, and expired. The impression produced by his execution was immense; he had redeemed, by his firm courage at the stake, all the vacillations and inconsistencies of his life, and his executioners had placed upon him the seal of glory as the Reformer of the Church of England, by employing against him a base act of perfidy somewhat rare in the annals of the persecutions under Mary. Those who recanted sometimes died of remorse, like the diplomatist Sir John Cheke; they were rarely dragged to the stake. Cardinal Pole was immediately nominated Archbishop of Canterbury; but his counsels were unable to arrest the persecutions, stimulated by the violent zeal of Pope Paul IV., recently elevated to the pontifical throne. Eighty-four persons perished that year by the flames. Nor did the living only suffer condemnation; the bones of Martin Bucer, who had died in England, whither he had been summoned by Cranmer during the reign of Edward VI., were disinterred and publicly burned. The body of the wife of Pierce., the martyr, suffered the same outrage; after her grave had been first desecrated she was buried in a dunghill. The reign of Mary lasted but five years; but in this short space of time two hundred and eighty-eight persons were legally condemned to execution on account of religion, and it would be impossible to enumerate the obscurer martyrs who died of hunger or suffering in the prisons. {318} The greater part of the victims belonged to the middle classes and the people; it was in those ranks that the most faithful attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation was manifested. The great enriched by by the spoliation and governmental reform of King Henry VIII., took no care but for their property. The poor defended their precious convictions by dying for them. Secret discontent was great even among the Roman Catholic population; the Spaniards were detested; crimes increased. Notwithstanding the stern repression which they had suffered under Henry VIII.,--seventy-two thousand murderers, thieves, or vagabonds, had, it is said, perished upon the gallows during his long reign,--the executioners of Queen Mary also had much to do; several times men of good birth, who had degraded themselves to the profession of highwaymen, were detected and seized. Certain parts of the kingdom were secretly agitated, and it was amidst this general uneasiness that Philip, who had become King of Spain in 1556, through the abdication of the Emperor Charles V., at length contrived to involve his wife and England in his quarrels with France.

The personal influence of Philip over Queen Mary was alone able to obtain this concession; the king was aware of this, and he arrived in England in the month of March, determined to recruit his armies with English forces. The whole of the council of Mary, with Cardinal Pole at their head, at first opposed the measure; in vain did Philip threaten to leave her for ever. {319} The ministers of the queen appealed to the marriage contract, affirming that England would find herself reduced to the state of a vassal if she allowed herself to be dragged at the heels of Spain into a war of no interest to her. An enterprise attempted by an English refugee in France, Thomas Stafford, who crossed the British Channel with some few troops, and took the castle of Scarboro by surprise, happened to second the solicitations of Philip II. Being made a prisoner, Stafford asserted that the King of France, Henry II., had encouraged him in his attempt, and the queen eagerly seized this pretext to satisfy the wishes of her husband by declaring war with France. When Philip quitted England, upon the 6th of July, 1557, never to return, he was shortly afterwards followed to Saint-Quentin, by a thousand English knights and six thousand foot-soldiers, commanded by the Earl of Pembroke. Queen Mary had great difficulty in raising this small corps; for the first time, perhaps, war with France was not popular in England.

It was destined soon to become still less popular, notwithstanding the successes of the King of Spain in France. The capture of Saint-Quentin, and the fear of seeing the victorious army advance against Paris, recalled the Duke of Guise from Italy, where he had threatened the territories of Philip; the latter took up his winter-quarters in Flanders, when the French general laid siege to Calais. The Spaniards had foreseen the danger and proposed to strengthen the garrison, but the council of England had jealously rejected this offer; they were preparing to send reinforcements. {320} Meanwhile, the French had appeared before Calais, on the 1st of January, 1558; on the 8th, after a skilful and bold attack upon the ramparts, the town capitulated and the garrison issued forth with their arms and baggage, while the English troops were waiting at Dover until the state of the sea should permit them to proceed to the assistance of their fellow-countrymen. On the 20th, Guisnes succumbed in its turn, and the English lost the last foot of ground which they possessed in France. Calais had been in their hands two hundred and eleven years, and the loss of it was bitterly painful to the queen and the people. Parliament immediately voted subsidies for prosecuting the war more vigorously. The Dauphin, subsequently Francis II., had recently married the young Queen of Scotland (April 24th, 1558), and the Scotch took up arms upon the frontiers, thus associating themselves with the quarrel of their sovereigns, by one of those aggressions towards which they were always disposed. They refused, however, to formally declare war with England, as they were urged to do by Mary of Guise, the regent of Scotland in the name of her daughter. The English fleet, under the orders of Lord Clinton, ravaged the coast of Brittany without much result; but a small squadron of ten vessels contributed to the victory of Gravelines by ascending the Aa, as Egmont was beginning the combat, and opening fire upon the right wing of the French. The Marshal de Termes, and a great number of French noblemen were made prisoners in this battle, which cost France dearly, yet brought nothing to England but a little glory in the wake of the Flemish general.

{321}

Meanwhile, Mary had been taken ill; she had seen her deceitful hopes of issue fade away, and the eyes of all turned towards the prudent Elizabeth, in retirement at her house at Hatfield. She professed a minute attachment to the practices of Roman Catholicism, following, in that matter, without difficulty, the counsels of her politic adviser, Cecil. She had refused the proposals of marriage which had been made to her by several princes, among others by the Duke of Savoy, and the Duke Eric of Sweden. Philip II. would have been glad to rid himself of his sister-in-law by causing her to marry, but Elizabeth contrived to thwart his projects without offending her sister, who ordinarily adopted all the wishes of her husband. She replied to the emissaries of the King of Sweden, who had addressed themselves directly to her, that she could not think of listening to any overtures which had not been sanctioned by her Majesty. Mary was touched by this confidence, and she manifested more friendliness to the princess, who always walked with caution upon the brink of abysses into which the imprudence or unskilful zeal of her friends might have precipitated her. The great nobles attached to the Reformation lived, as she did, in retirement. The Earls of Oxford and Westmoreland, as well as Lord Willoughby, had been reprimanded by the council, upon a question of religion. The Earl of Bedford had even suffered a short imprisonment. Sir Ralph Sadler, one of the usual negotiators of King Henry VIII.--a gentleman who was afterwards often employed by his daughter--had quitted the court, weary of the fanaticism which was displayed there. {322} All awaited in silence the death of Mary, bowing their heads under a yoke which could not last long. The queen, always delicate, had for several months been deeply attacked by a slow fever. She had vainly hoped to recover her strength at Hampton Court. She was brought back to London, and expired in St. James's palace, at the age of forty-three, on the 17th of November, 1558, without having seen the king her husband again. She sighed so bitterly in her death agony that her ladies asked her if she was suffering, commiserating her for the absence of King Philip. "Not that only," she said, "but when I am dead and opened you shall find Calais lying in my heart." On the morrow morning, almost at the same hour, Cardinal Pole died at Lambeth. The two pillars of the Catholic Church in England fell at the same time. Pole would have desired to insure the triumph of his cause by means of gentleness and justice; Mary had supported it by iron and fire. Both were equally sincere and convinced. Mary was of a narrow mind; her character, naturally stern and harsh, had been embittered by injustice and, suffering, but she was straightforward and honest, avoiding the subterfuges and deceits which Queen Elizabeth too often practised; she was animated by a fervent faith, which she deemed it her right and duty to impose by force upon all her subjects. In her breast the sufferings of the heretics excited little compassion, she was hardened against them, but in her private life, and towards her servants, she was good, generous, and capable of affection and devotion. She blindly loved her husband, who neglected and despised her on account of her lack of youth, and the few charms which nature had bestowed upon her. {323} Mary, however, was learned; she wrote pure Latin, she had studied Greek, and spoke French, Spanish, and Italian with ease. She was a good musician, and danced gracefully, her household was a model of order and regularity, and she was a noble example of piety and virtue. The memory of these good qualities and misfortunes pales in the presence of a supreme fault; a terrible stain remains imprinted upon the brow of the unfortunate queen by her fanaticism and her conscientious cruelty. She persecuted piously, she burned sincerely; her acts more than her character, merit the odious name which history has given her. On examining her life closely one is tempted to pity "Bloody Mary."

{324}