Chapter XI: The Reign of Mary (2)

Courtenay had been arrested on the 12th of February, at the house of the Earl of Essex, and committed to the Tower. Mary was averse from sending her sister there, and asked each of the lords of the Council in rotation to admit Elizabeth to their houses, and take charge of her. All declined the dangerous office; she was, therefore, compelled to sign the warrant for her committal, and Elizabeth was conducted to the Tower by the Earl of Sussex and another nobleman on the 18th of March. Even whilst performing this duty, it appears that Elizabeth had influence enough with these noblemen to make them dilatory in the execution of their office, to the great anger of the queen, who upbraided them with their remissness, telling them they dared not have done such a thing in her father's time, and wishing that "he were alive for a month." Elizabeth on entering the Tower was dreadfully afraid that she was doomed to leave it as so many princes and nobles had done, without a head. She inquired whether Lady Jane's scaffold were removed, and was greatly relieved to hear that it was. But what alarmed Elizabeth still more, was that the Constable of the Tower was discharged from his office, and Sir Henry Bedingfield, a zealous Romanist, appointed in his place. The fact of Sir Robert Brackenbury having been seventy years before, in like manner, removed, and Sir James Tyrell put in, when the princes were murdered, appeared an ominous precedent, but there was no real cause for apprehension; Mary had no wish to shed her sister's blood. Elizabeth, spite of the evidence against her, protested vehemently her innocence, and wished "that God might confound her eternally if she was in any manner implicated with Wyatt."

The Court of Spain, through Renard the ambassador, urged perseveringly the execution of Elizabeth and Courtenay. Renard represented from his sovereign that there could be no security for her throne so long as Elizabeth and Courtenay were suffered to live. But Mary replied that though they had both of them, no doubt, listened willingly to the conspirators, and would have been ready had they succeeded to step into her throne, yet they had been guilty of no overt act, and, therefore, by the constitutional law of England which had been enacted in her first Parliament, they could not be put to death, but could only be imprisoned, or suffer forfeiture of their goods.

In spite of the many warnings and the most universal expression of dislike to the match, Mary persisted in her engagement of marriage with Philip of Spain, though he himself showed no unequivocal reluctance to the completion of it; never writing to her, but submitting to his fate, as it were, in obedience to the parental command. At the end of May the unwilling bridegroom resigned his government of Castile--which he held for his insane grandmother, Juana--into the hands of his sister, the Princess-Dowager of Portugal, and bade adieu to his family. He embarked at Corunna on the 13th of July for England, and landed at Southampton on the 20th, after a week's voyage. He married his wife, who was much older than himself, and whose importunate love soon began to annoy him, at Winchester.

On the 11th of November the third Parliament of Mary's reign was summoned, and she and her Royal husband rode from Hampton Court to Whitehall to open the session. The king and queen rode side by side, a sword of State being borne before each to betoken their independent sovereignties. The queen was extremely anxious to restore the lands reft from the Church by her father and brother to their ancient uses, but she must have known little of the men into whose hands those lands had fallen, if she could seriously hope for such a sacrifice. The Earl of Bedford, than whom no one had more deeply gorged himself with Church plunder, on hearing the proposition, tore his rosary from his girdle and flung it into the fire, saying he valued the abbey of Woborn more than any fatherly counsel that could come from Rome. All the rest of the Council were of the same way of thinking as Bedford, and Mary saw that it was a hopeless case to move them on that point, though she set them a very honourable example by surrendering the lands which still remained in the hands of the Crown, to the value of £60,000 a year.

Though Mary could not recover the property for the Church, she resolved to restore that Church to unity with Rome. She expressed her earnest desire to have the presence of her kinsman, Cardinal Pole, in her kingdom, and he now set out for England, from which he had been banished so many years. He rendered this return the more easy, by bringing with him from the Pope a bull which confirmed the nobles in their possession of the Church property, on condition that the Papal supremacy was restored. The queen despatched Sir Edward Hastings to accompany the cardinal; and Sir William Cecil, who had been Edward's unhesitating minister in stripping the Church, set out of his own accord to pay homage to the Papal representative. Cecil's only real religion was ambition, and Mary knew that so well that, in spite of all his time-serving, she never would place any confidence in him, whence his bitter hostility to her memory.

Pole, on his arrival, ascended the Thames from Greenwich in a splendid State barge, at the prow of which he fixed a large silver cross, thus marking the entrance of the legatine and Papal authority into the country, as it were, in a triumphal manner. On the 24th of November the king and queen met the united Parliament in the presence-chamber of the palace of Whitehall: this was owing to the indisposition of the queen. Gardiner introduced the business, which, he told them, was the weightiest that ever happened in this realm, and begged their utmost attention to Cardinal Pole. Pole then made a long speech, reverting to his own history as well as that of the nation. All listened in solemn seriousness and yet apprehension when he announced to them the fact that the Pope was ready to absolve the English from their crimes of heresy and contumacy. But when he added that this was to be done without any reclamation of the Church lands, there was a unanimous vote of both Houses for reconciliation with Rome.

The next morning, the king, queen, and Parliament met again in the presence-chamber, when, Pole presenting himself, Philip and Mary rose, and, bowing profoundly to him, presented him with the vote of Parliament. The cardinal, on receiving it, offered up thanks to God for this auspicious event, and then ordered his commission to be read. The Peers and Commons then fell on their knees and received absolution and benediction from the hands of the cardinal, and thus for a time again was the great breach between England and the Papacy healed.

Parliament proceeded to pass Acts confirming all that was now done, and repealing all the statutes which had been passed against the Roman Church since the 20th of Henry VIII., while the clergy in Convocation made formal resignation of the possessions which had passed into the hands of laymen. The legate also issued decrees authorising all cathedral churches, hospitals, and schools founded since the schism, to be preserved, and that all persons who had contracted marriage within prescribed degrees should remain married notwithstanding.

The year 1555 opened with dark and threatening features. The queen's health was failing; and, under the idea that she was merely suffering maternal inconvenience, she was rapidly advancing in a dropsy which, in less than four years, was destined to sink her to the tomb. The king, gloomy, despotic, and, consequently, unpopular, though he often endeavoured to act against his nature, and assume a popular character, still hoping for an heir to the English crown, had obtained from Parliament an Act constituting him regent, in case Mary should die after the birth of a child, during the minority of that child. Thus, whether the queen lived or died, he appeared to possess a reasonable prospect of obtaining the supreme power in this country; and how he would have used it, we may judge from his government of Spain and the Netherlands. If the child was a female, he was made governor till her fifteenth year; if a male, till his eighteenth year. Philip protested on his honour that he would give up the government faithfully when the child came of age; but Lord Paget asked "who was to sue the bond if he did not?"--a suggestion never forgiven. With this flattering but illusive prospect before him, the tempest of persecution soon burst forth; and, had Providence permitted, England would soon have exhibited the same scene of tyranny, bloodshed, and insult which Flanders did under his rule. As it was, for a short period, terrible war for conscience' sake burst forth, the prisons were thronged, and the fires of death blazed out in every quarter of the island. Mary, with failing health, and doting absurdly on her husband, was easily drawn to acquiesce in deeds and measures which made her name a byword to all future times.

We are now called upon to pass through a reign of terror, a time of fire and blood, such as has no parallel in the history of England. The statutes against the Lollards enacted in the reigns of Richard II., Henry IV., and Henry V., were revived and were to come into force on the 20th of January. Bonner, accompanied by eight bishops and 160 priests, made a grand procession through the streets of London, and held services of public thanksgiving for the happy restoration of Catholicism. A commission was then held in the Church of St. Mary Overy, in Southwark, for the trial of heretics. The first man brought before this court, over which Gardiner presided, was John Rogers, a prebendary of St. Paul's, who had nobly distinguished himself by defending the first priest sent by Mary to preach Papacy at St. Paul's Cross. The Court condemned him to be burnt, and on the 4th of February this horrible sentence was executed in the most barbarous manner. The day of his death was kept a profound secret from him, and early that morning he was suddenly awakened out of a sound sleep and informed that he was to be burnt that day. The condemned man, so far from sinking under the appalling announcement, only calmly observed, "Then I need not truss my points." He requested to be permitted to take leave of his wife and children, of whom he had eleven--one still at the breast--but this Bonner refused. As he was led by the sheriffs towards Smithfield, where he was to suffer, he sang the "Miserere." His wife and children were placed where he would have a full view of them at the stake, and it was expected that this would induce him to recant and save his life, and thus induce others to follow his example; but outwardly unmoved, he maintained the most sublime fortitude.

Bishop Hooper, Ferrar, Bishop of St. David's, Dr. Rowland Taylor of Hadleigh, in Suffolk, and Lawrence Saunders, Rector of Allhallows, Coventry, were all condemned to the same death, and, like Rogers, were offered their lives on recantation, which one and all refused. The treatment of the pious Bishop Hooper was a most glaring case of ingratitude. Decided Protestant as he was, and of the most primitive simplicity of faith, he had from the first manifested the most staunch loyalty to Mary. In his own account of himself he says, "When Mary's fortunes were at the worst, I rode myself from place to place, as is well known, to win and stay the people to her party. And whereas when another was proclaimed [Lady Jane Grey] I preferred our queen, notwithstanding the proclamations. I sent horses in both shires [Gloucestershire and Worcester] to serve her in great danger, as Sir John Talbot and William Lygon, Esq., can testify." Hooper was sent down to Gloucester, his own diocese, to suffer, where he was burnt on the 9th of February, in a slow fire, to increase and prolong his agonies to the utmost. On the same day Dr. Taylor was burnt at Hadleigh.

This shocking state of things was interrupted for some time by the sudden and extraordinary outbreak of Alphonso di Castro, the confessor of King Philip, a Spanish friar, who preached before the Court a sermon in which he most vehemently and eloquently inveighed against the wickedness and inhumanity of burning people for their opinions. He declared that the practice was not learned in the Scriptures, but the contrary; for it was decidedly opposed to both the letter and the spirit of the New Testament; that it was the duty of the Government and the clergy to win men to the Gospel by mildness, and not to kill but to instruct the ignorant. A mystery has always hung over this singular demonstration. Some thought Philip, some that Mary, had ordered him to preach this sermon, but it is far more probable that it was the spontaneous act of zeal in a man who was enlightened beyond his age and his country. It is not probable that it proceeded from Philip, for he could at once have commanded this change; it is besides contrary to his life-long policy. Had it been the will of the sovereigns it would have produced a permanent effect. As it was, it took the Court and country by surprise. The impression on the Court was so powerful that all further burnings ceased for five weeks, by which time the good friar's sermon had lost its effect; and the religious butcheries went on as fiercely as ever, till more than two hundred persons had been slaughtered on account of their faith in this short reign. Miles Coverdale, the venerable translator of the Bible, was saved from this death by the King of Denmark writing to Mary and claiming him as his subject.

(_From the Portrait in the Collection at Lambeth Palace._)]

Mary had now, according to the custom of English queens, formally taken to her chamber in expectation of giving birth to an heir to the throne. She chose Hampton Court as the scene of this vainly-hoped-for event, and went there on the 3rd of April, where she continued secluded from her subjects, only being seen on one occasion, till the 21st of July, after she had again returned to St. James's. This occasion was on the 23rd of May, St. George's Day, when she stood at a window of the palace to see the procession of the Knights of the Garter with Philip at their head, attended by Gardiner the Lord Chancellor, and a crowd of priests with crosses, march round the courts and cloisters of Hampton Court. A few days afterwards there was a report that a prince was born, and there was much ringing of bells and singing _Te Deum_ in the City and other places. But it soon became known, that there was no hope of an heir, but that the queen was suffering under a mortal disease, and that such was her condition, "that she sat whole days together on the ground crouched together with her knees higher than her head." On the 21st of July she removed for her health from London to Eltham Palace.

Gardiner took advantage of the pause in persecution caused by the sermon of Di Castro to withdraw from his odious office of chief inquisitor. Might _he_ not have instigated the friar to express his opinion so boldly, for it is obvious that he wanted to be clear of the dreadful work of murdering his fellow-subjects for their faith? He therefore withdrew from the office, and a more sanguinary man took it up. This was Bonner, Bishop of London. He opened his inquisitorial court in the consistory court of St. Paul's, and compelled the Lord Mayor and aldermen to attend and countenance his proceedings. Burnet gives a letter written in the name of Philip and Mary exhorting him to increased activity; but from what we have seen of Mary's condition we may safely attribute the spur to Philip. Cardinal Pole did all in his power to put an end to the persecutions, but in vain.

It was now resolved to proceed to extremities with the three eminent prelates, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. But the charge of high treason was dropped, undoubtedly because it was hoped that they might, by the prospect of the flames, be brought as heretics to recantation. On the 15th of April, 1554, they were led from their prisons to St. Mary's Church, Oxford, where the doctors of the university sat in judgment upon them. They were promised a free and fair discussion of their tenets, and the still more vain assurance was given that if they could convince their opponents they should be set free. The so-called disputation continued three days, but it more truly represented a bear-baiting than the discussion of men in quest of the truth.

On the 16th of April, the day appointed, Cranmer appeared before this disorderly assembly in the divinity school. He was treated with peculiar indignity, for they had a deep hatred of him from the long and conspicuous part which he had enacted in the work of Reformation. It was in vain that he attempted to state his views, for he was interrupted at every moment by half a dozen persons at once; and whenever he advanced anything particularly difficult of answer, the doctors denounced him as ignorant and unlearned, and the students hissed and clapped their hands outrageously. The next day Ridley experienced the same treatment, but he was a man of a much more bold and determined character, of profound learning, and ready address, and, in spite of the most disreputable clamour and riot, he made himself heard above all the storm, and with telling effect. When his adversaries shouted at him five or six at a time, he calmly observed, "I have but one tongue, I cannot answer all at once."

Latimer was not only oppressed by age but by sickness, and he was scarcely able to stand. He appealed to his base judges to pity his weakness and give him a fair hearing. "Ha! good master," he said to Weston, the moderator, "I pray ye be good to an old man; ye may be once as old as I am: ye may come to this age and this debility." But he appealed in vain; his judges and hearers were lost to all sense of what was due to truth and religion, of what was due to the age and spirit of a veteran servant of God, whatever might have been his errors or failings. The rude students only laughed, hissed, clapped their hands, and mocked the old man the more. Seeing that all hopes of a hearing were vain, he told the rabble of his judges and spectators, for such they truly were, "that he had spoken before attentive kings for two and three hours at a time, but that he could not declare his mind there for a quarter of an hour for mockings, revilings, checks, rebukes, and taunts, such as he had not felt the like in such an audience all his life long." The three insulted and unheard prisoners wrote to the queen that they had been silenced by the noise, not by the arguments of their opponents, and Cranmer in his letter said, "I never knew nor heard of a more confused disputation in all my life; for albeit there was one appointed to dispute against me, yet every man spake his mind, and brought forth what him liked without order; and such haste was made that no answer could be suffered to be given."

On the 28th of April they were all three brought again into St. Mary's Church, and asked by Weston whether they were willing to conform, and on replying in the negative, were condemned as obstinate heretics, and returned to their prison. There they lay till the October of the following year (1555), when Ridley and Latimer were ordered to prepare for the stake. On the 16th of that month a stake was erected in the town ditch opposite to Balliol College. Soto, a Spanish priest, had been sent to them in person to try to convert them, but in vain; Latimer would not even listen to him; and now at the stake a Dr. Smith, who had renounced Popery in King Edward's time, and was again a pervert, preached a sermon on the text, "Though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." The two martyrs cheered each other, and exhorted one another to be courageous. Ridley, on approaching the pile, turned to Latimer who was following him, embraced and kissed him, saying, "Be of good heart, brother, for God will either assuage the fury of the flame, or strengthen us to bear it;" and when Latimer was tied to the stake back to back with his fellow-sufferer, he returned the consolation, exclaiming, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." A lighted faggot was placed at the feet of Ridley, and matches were applied to the pile. Bags of gunpowder were hung round their necks to shorten their sufferings, and as the flames ascended Latimer quickly died, probably through suffocation in the smoke; but Ridley suffered long. His brother-in-law had piled the faggots high about him to hasten his death, but the flames did not readily find their way amongst them from their closeness, and a spectator hearing him cry out that he could not burn opened the pile, and an explosion of gunpowder almost instantly terminated his existence.

Cranmer was reserved for a future day. The punctilios of ecclesiastical form were strictly observed, and as he enjoyed the dignity of Primate of England, it required higher authority to decide his fate than that which had pronounced judgment on his companions. Latimer and Ridley had been sentenced by the commissioners of the legate, Cranmer must only be doomed by the Pontiff himself. He was therefore waited on in his cell by Brooks, Bishop of Gloucester, as Papal sub-delegate, and two Royal commissioners, and there cited to appear before him at Rome within eighty days, and answer for his heresies. As this was impossible, the citation was a mockery and an insult. When the archbishop saw his two friends led forth to their horrible death, his resolution, which never was very great, began to fail, and he now presented a woful image of terror and irresolution, very different to the bravery of his departed friends. He expressed a possibility of conversion to Rome, and desired a conference with Cardinal Pole. But soon he became ashamed of his own weakness, and wrote to the queen defending his own doctrines, which she commissioned the cardinal to answer. When the eighty days had expired, and the Pope had pronounced his sentence, and had appointed Bonner, and Thirlby, Bishop of Ely, to degrade him, and see his sentence executed, he once more trembled with apprehension, and gave out that he was ready to submit to the judgment of the queen; that he believed in the creed of the Catholic Church, and deplored and condemned his past apostacy. He forwarded this submission to the Council, which they found too vague, and required a more full and distinct confession, which he supplied. When the Bishops of London and Ely arrived to degrade him, he appealed from the judgment of the Pope to that of a general Council, but that not being listened to, he sent two other papers to the commissioners before they left Oxford, again fully and explicitly submitting to all the statutes of the realm regarding the supremacy, and professing his faith in all the doctrines and rites of the Romish Church.

On the 21st of March, 1556, Cranmer was conducted to St. Mary's Church, Oxford, where Dr. Cole, provost of Eton College, preached a sermon, in which he stated that notwithstanding Cranmer's repentance, he had done the Church so much mischief that he must die. That morning Garcina, a Spanish friar, had waited on him before leaving his cell, and presented him with a paper making a complete statement of his recantation and repentance, which he requested him to copy and sign. It seems that his enemies calculated that, having so fully committed himself, the fallen Primate would not, at the last hour, depart from his confession; but they were mistaken. Cranmer now saw nothing but death before him, and he most bitterly repented of his weakness and the renunciation of what he felt to be the holy truth. He therefore transcribed once more the paper which had been brought to him, but in place of the latter part of it he wrote in a very different conclusion. Accordingly, when he read his paper at the conclusion of the sermon, there was a profound silence till he came to the fifth article of it, which went on to declare that through fear of death, and beguiled by hopes of pardon, he had been led to renounce his genuine faith, but that he now declared that all his recantations were false; that he recalled them every one, rejected the Papal authority, and confirmed the whole doctrine contained in his book. The amazement was intense, the audience became agitated by various passions, there were mingled murmurings and approbation. The Lord Williams of Thame called to him to "remember himself and play the Christian." That was touching a string which woke the response of the hero and the martyr in the Primate. He replied that he did remember; that it was now too late to dissemble, and he must now speak the truth.

When the first astonishment at this unlooked-for declaration had passed, there was a rush to drag down Cranmer, and hurry him to the stake in the same spot where his friends Ridley and Latimer had suffered. There he was speedily stripped to the shirt and tied to the stake; through it all he was firm and calm. He no longer trembled at his fate; he declared that he had never changed his belief; hope of life only had wrung from him his recantation; and the moment that the flames burst out he thrust his right hand into them, saying, "This hath offended." The writers of those times say that he stood by the stake whilst the fire raged round him, as immovable as the stake itself, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, exclaimed, "Lord, receive my spirit," and very soon expired.

The day after the death of Cranmer, Cardinal Pole, who had now taken priest's orders, was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury; and showed his anxiety to check this fierce and impolitic persecution, but, as we shall find, with no great result.

While these terrible transactions had been taking place King Philip had quitted the kingdom. With all his endeavours to become popular with the English, Philip never could win their regard. He conformed to many national customs, and affected to enjoy the national amusements; threw off much of his hauteur, especially in his intercourse with the nobles, and conferred pensions on them on the plea that they had stood by the queen during the insurrection. But nothing could inspire the English with confidence in him. They had always an idea that the object of the Spaniards was to introduce the Spanish rule and dominance here. They had always the persuasion that it was no longer their own queen, but the future King of Spain and the Netherlands who ruled. It was clearly seen that Philip never had any real affection for Mary; it was the public opinion that he had now less than ever, whilst the poor invalid Mary doated on him, and was ready to yield up everything but the actual sovereignty to him. And now came a very sufficient cause for the departure of Philip from England. His father, Charles V., wearied of governing his vast empire, was anxious to abdicate in favour of his son. Philip embarked at Dover on the 4th of September, 1555. Mary accompanied him from Hampton to Greenwich, riding through London in a litter, in order, as the French ambassador states, "that her people might see that she was not dead." The queen was anxious to proceed as far as Dover, and see him embark, but her health did not permit this; and after parting from him with passionate grief, she endeavoured to console herself by having daily prayers offered for his safety and speedy return.

Charles V., at the age of only fifty-five, had now resigned his vast empire to his son and his brother Ferdinand; and Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, Milan, and the new lands of South America, owned Philip as their lord. On the 25th of October, 1555, Charles, in an assembly of the States of the Netherlands, resigned these countries to Philip, and in a few months later he also put him in possession of the government of other parts of his dominions, Ferdinand succeeding to the Imperial crown. Charles then retired to the monastery of St. Just, near Placentia, on the borders of Spain and Portugal, where this great king, who had so long exercised so strong an influence on the destinies of Europe, lived as a simple private gentleman, retaining only a few servants and a single horse for his own use, and employing his now abundant leisure in religious exercises, in gardening, and clock-making.

During Philip's absence, a series of insurrections took place which disturbed the quiet of the queen, and in which the King of France seems to have borne no inconsiderable part. His assiduous minister, Noailles, disseminated reports that Mary, hopeless of issue, had resolved to settle the Crown on her husband. This having produced its effect, a conspiracy was set on foot to put Elizabeth on the throne, and depose Mary. Sir Henry Dudley, a relative of the late Duke of Northumberland, was to head it and the French king, to secure his interest, had settled a pension on him. The worthless Courtenay, who was at this moment on his way to Italy, whence he never returned, was still to play the part of husband to Elizabeth, though the management of the plot was to be consigned to Dudley. Elizabeth had again, it is said, fully consented to this plot, though the health of Mary was such as must have promised her the throne at no distant day. Dudley was already on the coast of Normandy with some of his fellow-conspirators, making preparations, when the King of France unexpectedly concluded a truce for five years with Philip. He therefore advised Dudley and his accomplices to lie quiet for a more favourable opportunity. This was a paralysing blow to the scheme of insurrection, and the coadjutors in England had gone so far that they did not think it safe to stop. Kingston, Uedale, Throgmorton, Staunton, and others of the league determined to seize the treasure in the Tower, and, once in possession of that, to raise forces and drive the queen from the throne. But one of them revealed the design; several of them were seized and executed, and others escaped to France. Mary applied by her ambassador, Lord Clinton, to Henry II. to have them delivered up, and received a polite promise of endeavour to secure them, which there was in reality no intention to fulfil. Amongst the conspirators arrested were two officers of the household of Elizabeth, Peckham and Werne, who made very awkward confessions; but again the princess escaped, it is said at the intercession of Philip, who was apprehensive, if Elizabeth was removed from the succession, of the claims of the French king on behalf of his daughter-in-law, the Queen of Scots. Elizabeth at all events escaped, protesting her innocence as stoutly as ever, but receiving from the Council in place of those two officers executed, two other trusty ones, Sir Thomas Pope and Robert Cage.

But if Elizabeth was uneasy, Mary was still more so. The disquiets which surrounded her, and the wretched state of her health, made her very anxious for the return of her husband. She had lost her able minister, Gardiner, who died in November, 1555, and his successor, Heath, Archbishop of York, by no means supplied his place. Mary, therefore, wrote long and repeated letters to urge the return of Philip, and, finding them unavailing, she despatched Lord Paget to represent the urgent need of his presence in the kingdom. At last his difficulties with France and the Pope brought Philip home to his wife when all conjugal persuasions on her part had failed. He sent over, to announce his approach, Robert Dudley, son of the late Duke of Northumberland, whom Mary had liberated from the Tower, and who already, it seems, had contrived to win so much favour as to be taken into the royal service, in which he continued to mount till, in the next reign, he became the notorious Earl of Leicester and favourite of Queen Elizabeth. On the 20th of March, 1556, Philip himself arrived at Greenwich. As he wanted to win the English to join him in the war against France, he paid particular respect to the City of London. During this visit there appeared at Court the novel sight of a Duke of Muscovy, in the character of ambassador from Russia, who astonished the public by the enormous size of the pearls and jewels that he wore, and the richness of his dress.

Philip used all his influence to induce the queen and her Council to declare war against Henry of France, who had broken that five years' truce into which he had so recently entered. But the finances of the country were not such as to render either the queen or her Council willing to go to war with France, which, connected as France was now with Scotland, was sure to occasion a war also with that country. Cardinal Pole and nearly the whole Council were strongly opposed to it. They assured her that to engage lightly in Philip's wars was to make England a dependency of Spain, and Philip, on the other hand, protested to the queen that if she did not aid him against France he would take his leave of her for ever.

While matters were in this position a circumstance occurred which turned the scale in Philip's favour. Henry II. of France, on deciding to accept the Pope's invitation, and to make war on Philip, called on Dudley and his adherents to renew their attempts on England. Dudley and his coadjutors opened a communication with the families of the Reformers in Calais and the surrounding district, who had suffered from the persecution of the English Government, or who were indignant at the cruelties practised on their fellow professors, and they concurred in a plan to betray Hammes and Guines to the French. This scheme was defeated by the means of an English spy who became cognisant of the secret. The mischief, though stopped there, soon showed itself in another quarter. Thomas Stafford, the second son of Lord Stafford, and grandson of the late Duke of Buckingham, mustered a small army of English, French, and Scots, and, sailing from Dieppe, landed at Scarborough in Yorkshire, and surprised the castle there. But he soon found that, however much the public might dislike the Spanish match, they were not at all inclined to rebel against their queen. Wotton, the English ambassador in France, had duly warned his court of the designs of Stafford, and on the fourth day the Earl of Westmoreland appeared with a strong body of troops before the castle, and compelled Stafford to surrender at discretion. Stafford, Saunders, and three or four others were sent to London, and committed to the Tower, where, under torture, they were made to confess that the King of France had instigated and assisted their enterprise. Stafford was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 28th of May, 1557, and the next day three of his confederates were hanged at Tyburn.

The Council had been averse from the war, and had advised that, instead of appearing as principals, we should merely confine ourselves to the furnishing that aid which we were bound to by our ancient treaties with the House of Burgundy. Now, however, it felt itself justified in proclaiming open war against the King of France, as the violator of the treaty between the nations, in having harboured the traitors against the queen, and in having sent them over in French ships to Scarborough with arms, ammunition, and money. Philip, having obtained what he wanted, hastened over to Flanders, and neither Mary nor England ever saw him again.

The Earl of Pembroke, accompanied by Lord Robert Dudley as his master of ordnance, followed Philip at the end of July with 7,000 men. They joined the army of Philip, consisting of men of many nations--Germans, Italians, Flemings, Dalmatians, Croats, Illyrians, and others--making altogether a force of 40,000 men, the supreme command of which was given to the rejected suitor of the Princess Elizabeth, Philibert Duke of Savoy. The duke successfully threatened an attack upon Marienberg, Rocroi, and Guise, but he finally drew up before St. Quentin, on the right bank of the Somme. There he won a great victory. The English fleet made descents upon France at various points, menaced Bordeaux and Bayonne, and plundered the defenceless inhabitants of the coasts. This was all that was achieved, except what Philip probably most looked for, the drawing of the Duke of Guise out of Italy. But this, while it removed all danger from Philip's Transalpine possessions, led to a loss on the part of his English ally which might be termed the crowning mischief of his union with Mary.

The Duke of Guise, disappointed of his laurels in Italy, was now planning an attack on Calais. The English were never less prepared for the invasion. The fleet which had ravaged the coasts of France, and the troops sent to Flanders, had totally exhausted the exchequer of Mary, which at no time was well supplied. To victual that navy the queen had seized all the corn she could find in Norfolk without paying for it, and to equip the army sent to aid Philip, she had made a forced loan on London, and on people of property in different places; she had levied the second year's subsidy voted by Parliament before its time, and now was helpless at the critical moment. Lord Wentworth, the Governor of Calais, foreseeing the approaching storm, sent repeated entreaties for reinforcements for its defence. They were wholly unattended to.

The Duke of Guise, after entering the English pale, sent a detachment of his army along the downs to Rysbank, and led the other himself, with a very heavy train of artillery, towards Newnham Bridge. He forced the outwork at the village of St. Agatha, at the commencement of the causeway, drove the garrison into Newnham, and took possession of the outwork. The bulwarks of Froyton and Nesle were abandoned, for the lord-deputy could send no forces to defend them. At Newnham Bridge the garrison withdrew so silently that the French continued firing upon the fort when the men were already in Calais; but at Rysbank the garrison surrendered with the fort. Thus, in a couple of days, the Duke of Guise was in possession of two most important forts, one commanding the harbour, the other the causeway across the marshes from Flanders. A battery on the heath of St. Pierre played on the wall to create a false alarm, whilst another in real earnest played on the castle. A breach was made in the wall near the water-gate, and, while the garrison was busy in repairing it, Guise cannonaded the castle (which was in a scandalous state of neglect) with fifteen double cannons. A wide breach was speedily made. Lord Wentworth, well aware that the castle could not be maintained, had ordered mines to be prepared, and calculated on blowing the castle and the Frenchmen into the air together as soon as they were in. Guise, seeing no garrison defending the breach, ordered one detachment to occupy the quay, and another, under Strozzi, to take up a position on the other side of the harbour. Strozzi was repulsed; but at ebb-tide in the evening, Grammont, at the head of 100 arquebusiers, marched up to the ditch opposite to the breach. No one being seen in the castle, Guise ordered plenty of hurdles to be thrown into the ditch, and, putting himself at the head of his men, forded the ditch, finding it not deeper than his girdle. The lord-deputy, seeing the French in the castle, ordered the train to be fired; but there was no explosion. The soldiers crossing from the ditch to the breach, with their clothes deluging the ground with water, had wet the train, and defeated Wentworth's design. The next morning Guise sent his troops to assault the town, calculating on as easy a conquest of it; but Sir Anthony Agar, with a handful of men, not only repulsed the French, but chased them back into the castle. The brave Sir Anthony, with a larger force, would have driven the French from the decayed old castle too, but he had the merest little knot of followers, and in the vain attempt to force the enemy out of the castle, he fell at the gate with his son, and eighty of his chief officers. Lord Wentworth perceiving the impossibility of continuing the defence, destitute of a garrison, and having waited in vain for reinforcements from Dover, that night demanded a parley, and surrendered.

The fall of Calais necessitated, as a matter of course, the loss of the whole Calais district. Having put Calais into a state of defence, Guise marched on the 13th of January, 1558, to Guines, about five miles distant, to reduce the town and fort there. These were defended stoutly by Lord Grey de Wilton, who had received about 400 Spanish and Burgundian soldiers from King Philip, but they were in too miserable a state of repair to be long held. The walls in a few days were knocked to pieces; the Spanish soldiers were nearly all killed, and the remaining force compelled their officers to surrender. The little castle of Hammes now only remained, and situated in the midst of extensive marshes, it might have given the enemy some trouble; but its governor, Lord Edward Dudley, the moment he heard of the surrender of Guines, abandoned it, and fled with his few soldiers into Flanders. The French were as elated at their success as the English were mortified with it, and the poor queen felt the loss so deeply, that she declared that if her body were opened after her death, the name of Calais would be found graven on her heart.

In England, during the spring, preparations were made for the invasion of France. Seven thousand troops were raised and diligently drilled. One hundred and forty ships were hired, which the Lord-Admiral Clinton collected in the harbour of Portsmouth, to be ready to join the fleet of Philip, and, in conjunction, to ravage the coasts of France; whilst Philip, with an army of Spanish, French, and English, should enter the country by land. But this fleet and the English army, instead of aiming to recover Calais, sailed to make an attack on Brest. But their progress had been so dilatory that the French had made ample preparations to receive them, and despairing of effecting any impression on Brest, they fell on the little port of Le Conquêt, which they took and pillaged, with a large church and several hamlets in its immediate neighbourhood. They then marched some miles up the country, burning and plundering, and the Flemings, in the eager quest of booty, going too far ahead, were surrounded, and 400 of them cut off.

It appeared as if the war would be brought to a conclusion by a pitched battle between the sovereigns of France and Spain. Philip had joined his general, the Duke of Savoy, and they lay near Dourlens with an army of 45,000 men. Henry had come into the camp of the Duke of Guise near Amiens, who had an army of nearly equal strength. All the world looked now for a great and decisive conflict. But Philip, though superior in numbers, as well as crowned with the prestige of victory, listened to offers of accommodation from Henry, and dismissing their armies into winter quarters, they betook themselves to negotiation. From the first no agreement appeared probable. Philip demanded the restoration of Calais, Henry that of Navarre, and they were still pursuing the hopeless phantom of accommodation, when the news of Queen Mary's death changed totally the position of Philip, and put an end to the attempt. She died, desolate and broken-hearted, on the 17th of November, 1558.

With all her bigotry, Mary had many excellent and amiable qualities. No English monarch ever maintained a less expensive and less corrupt court. She avoided all unnecessary taxation, and treated the cost of her war with France as largely a private charge of her own. She lived unostentatiously, went about amongst the poor with her maids, inquiring into their wants and relieving them. She was an enlightened patron of learning, and was the first to propose a hospital for old and invalid soldiers, leaving a legacy for this purpose, which was, however, never appropriated. Except in the matter of religious toleration, she showed a scrupulous regard for the maintenance of the Constitution and the law. Under her the administration of justice was pure and without respect of person. Nor were the interests of trade neglected. She was the first to make a commercial treaty with Russia, and she revoked the privileges of the Hanse Town merchants, who had exercised them to the hurt of her own people. By nature she was mild, but the persecution of her own faith in the persons of her mother and herself, and, above everything, the fatal Spanish marriage, produced a reaction which entailed all the calamities of her short and miserable reign.