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HISTORY OF ENGLAND
FROM
THE FALL OF WOLSEY TO THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA.
VOLUME V.
EDWARD THE SIXTH. MARY.
HISTORY OF ENGLAND
THE FALL OF WOLSEY
^ S
TO
THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA.
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
VOLUME V.
EDWARD THE SIXTH. MARY.
JJeto
LONDON : LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1893.
CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, LONDON & BDNOAV.
V *•
4 P
o
\ k £?l ^Vs>
* LH.
l3
CONTENTS OF VOLUME V.
CHAPTER XXVIII. EXECUTION OF THE DUKE Of SOMERSET.
PAGE
Alliance between England and France r^*O . . i
Edward is betrothed to a French Princess , . . . 3
The Emperor and the Princess Mary . . . . 5
Likelihood of War with the Empire . . . . 7
The Rise of Prices . . . . . . . . 9
The Silver Coin is called down . . . . . . 10
Fresh Issue of Base Money ... . . . . li
Proclamation of Prices .. .. .. .. 13
Partial Restoration of the Currency . . . . 14
The Sweating Sickness . . . . . . . . 15
Suppression of Bishoprics .. .. .. 18
The Princess Mary . . . . . . . . 19
Intrigues of Somerset ... . . . . . . 31
Somerset's Conspiracy . . . . . . . . 32
Evidence of Sir Thomas Palmer . . . . . . 35
Elevations in the Peerage . . . . , . 38
Arrest of Somerset . . . . r; /*/<!•.'! • • 3^
the Trial . .' i/t^o . . . . , ,,, 41
Sentence of Death . . . . . . ;v>! 44
The Execution . . . . . . . . . * 5 1
Conduct of Cranmer . . t .-(f » = • • • • 52
The Liturgy .' .* .. ,, ,. , [ ,,, 54
ri CONTENTS.
PAGE
Second Act of Uniformity . . . . . . 57
The London Hospitals . . . . . . 58
Statute of Usury . . . . . . 60
Reform of the Law of Treason . . . . . . 6 1
The Lutheran Preachers are expelled from Augsburg . . 63
The Emperor goes to Innspruck . . . . . . 65
The Council of Trent . . . . .- . ' . . 65
Duke Maurice declares against the Emperor . . 67
Peace of Passau . . . . . . 69
State of Ireland . . . . . . ..71
First Administration of Sir Anthony St Leger . . 71
Deputation of Sir Edward Bellingham . . . . 74
Character of Bellingham . . . . . . . . 79
Results of his Government . . . . . . 82
Return of St Leger . . . . . . . . 84
The Irish Mint . . . . !!-v.*>i ::*^w 85
St Leger and the Reformation . . . . . . 87
St Leger and Bellingham's Captains . . . . 87
Sir James Crofts is made Deputy . . . . TV,. I 91
The Irish Currency . . . . . . . . 91
Irish Council of Trade . . . . . . 93
Artificial Famine and General Misery . . . . 96
CHAPTER XXIX. NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY.
Moral Results of the Reformation . . . . . . 99
Character of Edward . . . . . . . . 101
Edward's Opinions on the State of England . . 103
Proposed Protestant Synod .. ... .. 105
Church Discipline . . . . . . . . 106
Continued Disorders in the Country . . . . 108
The Antwerp Loans . . . . . . . . no
CONTENTS. vii
PAGE
The Crown Debts .. .. .. ..112
Differences with France .. .. .. ..113
England and the Empire . . . . ..117
Commissions to raise Money . . . . 119
The Churches are again spoiled . . . . 120
The Public Accounts . . . . . . ..121
A new Parliament to be called . . . . 123
A General Election . . . . . . . . 124
Nomination of the Members . . . . . . 124
The Council and the Estates of the Church . . . . 126
The Merchant Adventurers and the Fellowship of Ixm-
don Merchants . . . . . . . . 130
A Subsidy . . . . . . . . . . 134
John Knox and the Duke of Northumberland . . 136
John Knox preaches before the Court . . . . 137
Dissolution of Parliament . . . . . . 139
Prospects of Northumberland . . . . 140
The King's Illness . . . . . . 142
Siege of Metz . . . . . . . . . . 143
England offers to mediate between France and the
Empire . . . . . . . . . . 144
Renard and Noailles . . . . . . 148
Anticipations of the King's Death . . 149
Popular Good Feeling towards Mary .. .. 150
Possible Alteration of the Succession . . . . 153
Views of France . . . . . . . . 154
Northumberland determines to set Mary aside . . 157
He persuades Edward . . . . . . 159
The King's Device for the Succession . . .;';. 160
Opposition of the Council and of the Judges ". . 163
The Letters Patent . . . . . . '..164
The Signatures . . . . ' "."*'''• . . 167
Conduct of Craniner . . . . . . V.' 169
Cranmer yields to Edward's Entreaties .. :ir'!!i'.: 170
Features of the King's Disease . . . . 172
viii COMTEfrTS.
PAQB
General Discontent .-. .... . . . . 173
Edward dies .. .-.- >'«v' .. .. 175
CHAPTER XXX. QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MART.
Flight of Mary . . .' . . . . . ..177
Advice of the Flemish Ambassadors . . . . 177
Position of Northumberland . .".' .. .. 180
Lady Jane Grey . .' . . . . ' ",'... 181
Proclamation of Queen Jane . . ' * J . . 186
Letter of Mary to the Lords ....,' . . ' ". , 187
Guilford Dudley and the Crown '.', * * . . . . 190
Mary's iParty gains Strength .'."' . . . . 193
Northumberland levies Troops . . . . ..194
Lord Pembroke .'.' .. .. ..197
The Council prepare to declare for Mary . . . . 199
Revolt of the Fleet and Army . . . . ^V 200
Sunday during the Crisis V. .. .; 200
Northumberland invites a French Invasion . . . . 203
The Meeting at Baynard's Castle . ,:> ' . . . . 205
Proclamation of Mary in London . . . . . . 207
Arrest of Northumberland . . . . . . 210
The Emperor and the Queen's Marriage . . . . 213
Funeral of Edward VI. .. . . . . . . 216
The Emperor's Advice . . ?r;>.t 4 • • . . 218
Gardiner returns to the Council . . . . . . 220
The Ambassador Renard .. .. .. ..222
Mary enters London . . '. '. . . . . 224
Advice of Renard . . . . . . 226
Restoration of the deprived Bishops . . . . 227
Reduction of Expenditure . . . . 229
The Hot Gospeller . . , , . . .229
CONTENT* ix
PAGE
Mass at the Tower . . . . . . . . 233
Disputes in Council . . fm* •-! *f . . . . 233
Sermon at Paul's Cross . . . . . . 235
The Marriage Question . . . . . . . . 236
Northumberland's Trial . . . . . . . . 238
Northumberland under Sentence . . . . . . 241
The Recantation ; ." . . . . . . 243
The Executions *5r¥fa . . . . ... 245
The Reaction . . . . . . . . . . 249
The Purging of Convocation . . . . . . 252
Arrest of Latimer . . . . . . . . 253
Arrest of Cranmer •/. • • • • . . 256
General Restoration of the Mass , , . . ..257
Reginald Pole . . . . , t . , . . 258
England and the Papacy . . LutaA,- • • 260
Visit of Commendone to the Queen (J •$& •": . . 261
Difficulties in restoring the Papal Authority . . 263
The Prince of Spain proposed as the Queen's Husband 265
Parties in England . , . . . . . . 266
Elizabeth and the Mass , . , , , , . . 270
Lord Courtenay and the Queen . . . . . . 270
The Coronation Oath . . . . . . . . 273
The Coronation . . . . . . 275
The Spanish Marriage . . . . . . 276
The Queen and Renard . . . . . . :j • 278
Philip's Virtues . . . . . . .. ^;« 279
Reginald Pole . . . . . , «Tj*y»-7 uif.«o*I 280
Meeting of Parliament . . . . . . 283
Preliminary Discussion . . . . . . . . 285
The Queen's Legitimacy and the Authority of the Pope 285
Convocation . . . . . . OfcilH . . 287
Debate on the Real Presence . . . . . . 288
The Spanish Marriage . . . . :iiUtt~J . . 290
Mary's Prayer . . . . . . . . . . 292
Views of Gardiner and Paget . . , , 293
x CONTENTS.
PAGE
Impending Fate of Cranmer . . . . . . 295
Petition of the House of Commons . . . . 296
The Queen and Council . . . . . . . . 298
The Succession . . . . . . . 299
Menace of Rebellion . . . . . . 301
The Queen and Elizabeth . . . . . 302
CHAPTER XXXI. THE SPANISH MARRIAGE
Conflicting Parties . . . . . . . . 304
Advice of Pole . . . . . . . . . . 307
The Marriage Articles . . . . . . . . 309
Opposition of the People . . . . • . . 312
Arrival of Count Egmont . . . . . . 314
The Marriage Treaty . . . . . . -.315
Alarm of France . . . . . . . . 316
Conspiracies .. .. .. .. ..317
Plans for a General Insurrection . . . . . . 318
Commencement of Disturbance . . . . . . 319
Flight of Sir Peter Carew . . . . . . 322
Conference at AUingham Castle . . . . . . 323
Rising in Kent . . . . . . . . 323
The Duke of Suffolk . . . . . . . . 326
Sir Thomas Wyatt . . . . . . . . 326
Intercepted Despatches of the French Ambassador . . 329
The Queen's Troops join Wyatt . . . . . . 331
Alarm at the Court . . . . . . . . 333
The Queen at the Guildhall . . . . . . 336
111 Success of Suffolk in the Midland Counties . . 338
Storming of Cowling Castle . . . . • • 339
State of Coventry . . . . . . . . 340
Suffolk is taken . . . . . . . . 342
CONTENTS. xi
PAGE
Wyatt at Southwark . . . . . . . . 343
Agitation of the Council . . . . . . 344
Wyatt crosses the Thames . . . . . . 347
The Night at Whitehall . . . . . . . . 349
Advance of Wyatt . . . . . . . . 351
The Insurrection fails .. .. .. --354
The Queen's Revenge . . . . . . . . 355
Lady Jane Grey the first Victim . . . . • • 357
General Havoc among the Prisoners . . . . 361
Arrest of Elizabeth . . . . . . . . 363
Parties in the Council . . . . . . . . 366
The Proxy Marriage .. .. .. '••367
Gardiner and the intended Persecution . . . . 370
Creation of Catholic Peers . . . . 371
The Eefugees in France . . . . . . . . 372
Perils of Elizabeth . . . . . . . . 376
Sentence of Wyatt . . . . . . . . 377
Elizabeth writes to the Queen . . . . . . 379
The Tower . . . . . . . . . - . , 382
Protest of the Lords . . . . . . . . 384
Renard and the Queen . . . . . . . . 384
Meeting of Parliament . . . . . . . . 385
The Marriage Bill . . . . . . . . 387
Execution of Wyatt . . . . . . . . 389
Trial and Acquittal of Throgmorton . . . . 391
The Succession. . . . . . . . . . 392
The Persecution Bills . . . . . . . . 393
Resistance of the Lay Lords . . . . • • 393
The Bills are lost '/^ ..„ .. .. ... 396
The Court and Lord Howard of Effingham . . . . 398
Elizabeth is sent to Woodstock . . . . . . 399
The Queen's Troubles . . . . . . . . 401
Philip sails from Spain . . . . . . . . 404
Philip at Southampton . . . . . . . . 405
The Wet Ride to Winchester . . . . . . 409
xli CONTENTS.
PAGE
The Marriage .. ,- ,.. ,, .. . . 410
AVar in Belgium . . . . . . . . 412
Charles V. at Xamur , . . . . . . . 413
CHAPTER XXXII.
RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.
Pole and the Emperor . . . . . . . . 416
The Church Lands . . . . . . . , 419
The Papal Commission . . . . . . . . 420
Objections to Pole's Return . . . . . . 422
Pole appeals to Philip . . . . . . . . 423
The Spaniards in London . . . . . . 426
Philip is weary of England . . . . . . 428
Bomier's Articles . . . . . . "... 429
Agitation in the City . . . . -•>• , • • 43°
A New Parliament .. ,. .. . ,: 432
The Elections . . . . . . . . . . 433
The Roman Question . . . . . . . . 434
An Embassy is sent to Pole . . . . . . 437
Pole's Return . . . . . . . . . . 441
The Journey . . . . , VV-,', . . . . 441
Pole at Canterbury . . . . . . . . 442
The Salutation . . , . . . . , 444
The Queen enceinte . . .1* _ . . . . 446
Speech of Pole at Whitehall . . . . . . 448
Parliament petitions for Absolution . . . . 454
St Andrew's Day ^''. '. ' . . . . . . 454
Absolution and Reconciliation of England . . . . 458
Pole writes to the Pope . . . . . . . . 460
Catholic Exultation . . . . . . . . 462
Petition of the Clergy . . . . ... . . 464
The Act of Reconciliation . . . . . . 465
CONTENTS. &
PAGE
The Passing of the Heresy Acts . . . . . , 466
Impenitence of Parliament, and Discontent of Pole . . 468
The Act of Reconciliation ' 'v-l^ .. ..470
Regency Bill . . . . . . . . . . 478
Dissolution of Parliament . . . . . . 480
The Limits of the Catholic Reaction . . . . 48 1
The Legate's Injunctions . . . . . . 484
Commencement of the Persecution . . . . 486
Trials of Hooper and Rogers . . . . . . 486
Rogers is burnt at Smithfield . . . . . . 490
Hooper is sent to Gloucester . . . . . . 491
Martyrdom of Hooper . . . . . . . . 494
Effect upon the People . . . . . . . . 497
Conspiracy and Failure . . . . . . . . 499
Renard's Advice to Philip . , . . . . 500
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE MARTYRS.
The Persecution continues ^ . . ,
Burning of William Hunter . .
Ferrars, Bishop of St David's
The Crimes of Ferrars
Ferrars is burnt
Prospects of European Peace
Proposed Conference
The Queen's expected Confinement
Litanies and Processions . .
The Child is not born
Condition of the Queen . .
Fresh Stimulus to the Persecution
Burning of Cardmaker and Warne
The Child is not born
5°4 508 508 5°9 512 5M
520 522 524 525
xiv CONTENTS.
PAOE
Change in the Queen's Prospects . . . , . . 526
Release of Elizabeth .. .. . . 528
Interview between the Sisters . . . . . . 529
Intended Abdication of the Emperor .. • *. 532
Philip leaves England . . . . . . 533
Views of the Spaniards . . . . . . • • 536
Philip on the Continent . . . . . . • • 539
The Persecution . . . . . . . . 540
Trial of Cranmer at Oxford •..„,* ,.i .. .. 542
Trials of Ridley and Latimer ! !^i .. .. 550
Ridley and Latimer are burnt . . . . • • 557
Effects of the Persecution . . . . . . 560
Paul IV. and the Church Lands . . . , . . 562
Death and Character of Gardiner . . . . . . 564
Meeting of Parliament . . . . . . . . 566
The Subsidy and the First-fruits . . . . 567
First-fruits cannot be restored to the Pope . . 569
Irritation of the Queen . . . . . . . . 5 7 1
Further Failures and Dissolution . . . . . . 571
Correspondence of Mary with Philip . . . . 573
Fate of Cranmer referred to the Pope . . . . 574
Sentence arrives from Rome . . . . • • 576
The Archbishop is condemned . . . . '-578
Pole writes to him . . . . . . 578
He wavers and recants . . . . . . . . 583
The Court nevertheless will kill him . . • . . 587
Cranmer at St Mary's Church . . . !.'; . . 588
The Sermon . . . . . . . . . . 589
The Archbishop's last Speech . . . . . . 592
His Penitence . . ..'» . . . . . . 598
His Death . . . . . . . . . \ • • 599
CHAPTER XX VIII.
THE EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET.
FRANCE and England having completed I55I. their private understanding, special em- bassies on both sides paraded the friendship before the world. The Marshal St Andre came to London in splen- dour, with a retinue of lords ; Northampton, Goodrick,1 Sir Philip Hoby, and others, carried powers to Paris to arrange a marriage between Edward and the Princess Elizabeth. Though France had quarrelled with the Pope, though Henry was disclaiming an allegiance to the Council of Trent, it was remarked that the English ambassadors were received with processions, masses, and litanies in approved Catholic form. In England, such decorations of altars and churches as had escaped the mint or the hands of the grandees, were employed to decor- ate the royal tables on the reception of St Andre.2 The
Bishop of Ely, afterwards
Chancellor.
2 ' It was appointed that I should receive the Frenchmen that come
hither at Westminster, when was made preparations for the purpose, and for garnish, of new vessels taken out of Church stuff, mitres, golden
VOL. v. 1
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 28.
French faction in Italy interpreted the alliance to pro- mise a return of England to the faith. The credulous among the English laboured to revive the old hope that France might unite with them in schism.1 At both Courts there was, as it were, an ostentatious declaration that, in matters of religion, the two countries had no intention of approximating ; on neither side would the creed be sacrificed to the exigencies of policy.
Courtesy and mutual good offices might compensate, however, for differences of opinion, and the English had an opportunity for a display of integrity which passed for magnanimous. The death of Mary Stuart would have broken the chain by which the French held her subjects linked to them. A Scot sent in an offer to take her off by poison.2 But the council resisted the tempt- ation amidst the applause of their friends ; and the intended assassin was delivered in custody over the Calais frontier.3
missals, primers, crosses, and rel- iques.'— EDWARD'S Journal, June 2,
1 'There is much talk in Italy of this marriage between our master and France. They that would the French to seem hig say the league is offensive and defensive. They also add, that one of the covenants is that we must return to the true faith of Holy Church, as they call it ; that is, as we know it — to the blind Romish synagogue. "Would God the French King were as like to become a right Protestant as our •master is unlike to become a blun-
dering Popistant.' — Morryson to the Council : MS. Germany, Edward VI. bundle 15, State Paper Office.
2 ' One Stewart, a Scotchman, meaning to poison the young Queen of Scotland, thinking thereby to get favour here, was, after he had been awhile in the Tower, delivered over the frontiers at Calais to the French, to have him punished according to his deserts.' — EDWARD'S Journal, May 9.
3 ' Men talk in this Court that one made oifer to your Lordships to poison the young Scottish Queen, and that you forthwith sent to the
F551-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET.
June.
St Andre's was a visit of ceremony; he brought with him the order of St Michael for the young King. The business of the connection was transacted on the Continent.
The differences with Scotland had been adjusted on the loth of June in a treaty in which the engagements of 1543 for the marriage of Edward and Mary were passed over in silence. The French and English commissioners meeting to arrange a new connection, found it necessary to peruse and con- sider those engagements. The Scottish promises were produced, and Northampton first demanded that the contract should be fulfilled.
' To be frank and plain with you/ Montmorency replied, ' seeing you require us so to be, the matter hath cost us both much riches and much blood ; and so much doth the honour of France hang thereupon, as we can- not talk with you therein, the marriage is already con-
French King word thereof ; where- upon the man is committed to prison, and the young lady out of danger. Your honours are much increased by this your nohle fact. Your integrities so much the more commended, that they see many are glad largely to hire whom they may hy any means corrupt, and find few complaints made against such as in this point offer service. It is to your Lordships' eternal praise that ye, by this your honourable example, do teach the King's Majesty, in these his young years, to abhor foul
practices — a lesson better and more worthier than is the violent catching of the fairest kingdom that the sun sheweth light unto. In spite of spite here, even those are forced to like, to allow, yea, to wonder at things rightly done, that by no en- treaty can mean to follow them.' — Morryson to the Council from the Emperor's Court : MS. Germany, Edward VI. bundle 15, State Paper Office. I know no keener satire on the public morals of the age than this passage.
4 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
eluded between her and the Dauphin, and therefore we would be glad to hear no more thereof/1 The answer was of course anticipated, and was perhaps precon- certed. The King of France said that, although he had been at war with England, ' he never enterprised anything with worse will, nor more against his stomach.' ' He thanked God it was at an end, he trusted, for ever/2 The English waived their claims on Mary, and made their proposals in exchange for the hand of a princess of France. Acquiescence in general terms was promptly conceded ; but when the details of the ar- rangement came under consideration, it appeared that the French still intended to profit by the weakness and the necessities of Edward's Government. Northampton suggested that they should give with the princess, a-s a moderate dowry, 1,500,000 crowns. He lowered his terms OL. being refused, amidst shouts of laughter, to 1,400,000 crowns ; then to a million, then to 800,000, and at last to 200,000 ; which only, ' after great reason- ings and showings of precedents/ the French com- missioners consented to allow. These terms, or any terms, England was obliged to accept. Dr Wotton was gone on his errand of defiance to Charles. The liberty demanded for Mary Tudor had not only been refused, and her chaplains imprisoned, but she had been in- formed that, if she continued obstinate, she might not herself be exempt from punishment.3 Lord Warwick and his friends had cast in their fortune with extreme
Northampton to the Council ; TYTLER, vol. i. p. 385, &c. 2 Ibid. 3 EDWARD'S Journal, June 24.
1 55 1-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET 5
measures, and were in no condition to drive a bargain hard.
The Emperor, however, on his side, was unable im- mediately to fulfil his threat of declaring war ; he was compelled to content himself with repeating it. Dr Wotton's report of his interview has been injured, and is in parts illegible.1 Where the letter begins to be intelligible the conversation was turning upon the Protestant refugees in England.
* Here/ says Wotton, ' the Emperor, by signs and nods, willed those of his chamber to go from thence and leave him alone with me/ He then said that he had a great love for the King, and had every good will to his country ; ' but the English were all now/ he said, ' so far out of the way/ that he did not know what to do about them ; ' they did infect his own realm/ Wotton begged him to think better of the English ; they were a people who feared God, and desired only to know how God delighted most to be served. ' You have well travailed/ Charles answered scornfully ; * you say you have chosen a good way ; the world takes it for a naughty way ; and ought it not to suffice you that ye spill your own souls, but ye have a mind to force others to lose theirs too. My cousin the Princess is evil
1 The surviving portions of this despatch contain so much which is characteristic of Charles, that the loss of the rest is especially to be regretted. The more so indeed be- cause the destruction of the MS. is not due to legitimate decay, but to
the use of ox-gall by some careless antiquary, who, to facilitate his own researches, wetted the ink with a material which imparts a momentary clearness, at the expense of making the writing illegible afterwards for evermore.
6 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SfXftf. [GH. 28.
handled among you, her servants plucked from her ; and she still cried upon to leave mass, to forsake her religion in which her mother, her grandmother, and all our family have lived and died/
' Sacred Majesty/ Wotton answered, ' at my coming out of England she was honourably entertained in her own house, and had such about her as she liked : and I think she is so still. I do not hear to the contrary/
' Yes, by St Mary,5 said Charles, ' there is to the con- trary, and therefore say you hardly to them, I will not suffer her to be evil handled by them— I will not suffer it. Is it not enough that my aunt, her mother, was evil entreated by the King that dead is, but my cousin must be worse ordered by councillors now. I had rather she died a thousand deaths than that she should forsake her faith. The King is too young to skill of such matters.'
When Wotton urged that Mary was a subject, and must submit to the law, Charles gave the usual answer that a law made in a minority was no law at all. The Church had been ruined, the bishoprics plundered, the religion of Christ set aside or altered by the violent will of a few men who had no authority to meddle with such things. Wotton said the changes had been discussed in Parliament : the Emperor replied that Parliament was no place for the discussion of any such questions.
Seeing his humour, Wotton passed unwillingly to the second part of his instructions, and required the license for Sir Thomas Chamberlain to use the commu- nion service at Brussels. The Emperor said distinctly
I55I-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. ^
and at once, that he would have no service used in his dominions which was not allowed by the Church ; and if his own ambassador was refused the mass, he should be recalled ; ' the cases were not like ; the English service was new and naught ; ' ' the mass was old and approved/
'Again/ wrote Wotton, 'he went to the Lady Mary, willing me to require your Lordships that she might have her masses still ; if not, he would pro- vide for her remedy: and if his ambassador was re- strained, he had already given him orders that if the restraint came to-day, he should to-morrow depart, and ours as well.' ' He fell to earnest talk ; ' he spoke again of the danger of introducing changes in Edward's in- fancy, ' who, when he came to his years, would take sharp account of it, and make them know what it was to bring up a king in heresy/ Wotton answered that, ' the Lords of the Council did well understand with what fear and danger they made the alteration ; and the greater the peril, the more were they to be praised that would rather venture land, life, and all than not do that that God required at their hands.'1
The interview ended stormily. Whether war would follow, the ambassador said he could not tell. He was certain only that the Emperor meant him to believe that there would be war ; arid he recommended the council not to press matters to extremity about the Princess for a month or two ; ' in that space it should
1 Wotton to the Council : MS. Germany, bundle 15, State Paper (Mice.
8 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [en. 28
appear whether the Emperor should need English amity, or whether England should have cause to be afraid of his displeasure/ The council took his advice, and mean time the French alliance was consolidated. The Euro- pean difficulties of the Emperor thickened. The country, after drifting close upon a reef, escaped shipwreck, more by a change of wind than the skill of its pilots. The dominant factions were again at leisure to follow their career of misgovernment.
In contemplating the false steps of statesmen, it is difficult at all times to measure their personal responsi- bility, to determine how much of their errors has been due to party spirit, how much to pardonable mistake ; how much again seems to have been faulty, because we see but effects, which we ascribe absolutely to the con- duct of particular men, when such effects were the result, in fact, of influences spreading throughout the whole circle of society. The politicians who governed Eng- land in the minority of Edward VI., however, succeeded, at any rate, in making themselves individually execrated, and in bringing discredit upon the cause of which they were the professed defenders. All over the country dis- content, social, political, and religious, was steadily on the increase. In the Privy Council Records are to be found entries perpetually recurring of persons con- spiring here, or conspiring there, and being put to death occasionally on the spot by martial law.1 The -orisons were full to overflowing
1 'August 31. The Duke of i a new conspiracy for the destruction Somerset, taking certain that began of the gentlemen at Okingham, two
155'.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 9
with. Catholic recusants, who would not relinquish the mass, or with persons guilty of ' lewd talk/ or ' seditious words ; ' this or that prisoner, as his place was required for another, being taken out to have his ears slit, or to be set upon the pillory.1 The greatest of the offences of the Government, the issue of base money, was draw- ing to an end ; but it was ending as hurricanes end, the worst gust being the last.
In the teeth of statutes, in defiance of proclamations, prices rose to the level of the metallic value of the cur- rent coin, and, at last, rose beyond it. The exchanges ceased to be intelligible. In the absence of accessible tests, and with coin circulating of all degrees of purity and impurity, the common processes of buying and sell- ing could no longer be carried on, and the council were compelled at last to yield before the general outcry.
From the enormous quantity of base silver which was now in circulation, the honest redemption of it appeared, and at the time, perhaps, really was, impossi- ble. It remained, therefore, to throw the burden upon the country, to accept the advice of the city merchants, and call it down to its actual value. By this desperate remedy every holder of a silver coin lost upon it the difference between its cost when it passed into his hands, and its worth as a commodity in the market. Taking an average of the whole coin in
days past executed them with death for their offence.'— EDWARD'S Jour-
Privy Council Records, MS. 1 Especially, it would seem, in j
the months of April, May, and June, 1551, when a crisis was so near.—
10
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
May.
circulation, the proportion of alloy was fifty per cent., and in the end, the silver currency would have to de- scend to half its nominal value. But the entire descent, though inevitable, was not to be accomplished at once. To relieve the shock (so the Government pretended), the first fall was made a partial one. A resolution was taken in council on the 3oth of April that the shilling in future should pass for ninepence, and the groat for threepence. But anxiety for the convenience of the public was not the only cause of the de- lay in the completion of the operation. The treasury XV as as usual exhausted. The economy which had been attempted in the household had been more than defeated by the cost of the gendarmerie, as the force was called, which the council had been obliged to raise for their protection. The wages, food, and clothing of nine hundred men were added to the ordinary expenditure, and the revenue, which had been unequal to the usual demands upon it, was now hopelessly deficient. ' Pur- veying/ by which the Court was accustomed to supply its necessities, by taking what it required from the farmers at statute prices, had been forbidden by Act of Parliament.1 The prohibition had not been observe^ for the Court, it was said, must live, and the King had no money. The royal purveyors continued to take at their pleasure, paying exactly half the market prices for everything.2 But rapacity of this kind could supply
1 2 and 3 Edward VI.
2 'To show what hurt cometh by provisions to the poor man it
shall not need ; experience doth make it too plain. But, for ex- ample, the purveyors alloweth for a
tSSi-1 EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. ii
but very poorly the hungry deficiency which was per- petually growing. In April a fresh issue of base money had been contemplated,1 but was for the moment post- poned. The Fuggers were the resource instead ; and being increasingly bad debtors, the Government were made to pay for fresh accommodation by buying a hun- dred thousand crowns' worth of rubies and diamonds.2 It was with no good humour, therefore, that they found themselves compelled to keep their hands for the future from the mint ; and they determined to dip once more, and to dip deeply into the closing fountain. The fall of the coin, as I have said, was resolved upon on the 6th of May. The intention was made known to the public, and it was to take effect in the following July. The second fall could be at no great distance ; it is im- possible, therefore, that the council could have been any longer under a delusion on the nature of the course which they had pursued. With the consequence of it immediately before their eyes, they issued, on the 3Oth of May, 8o,ooo/. worth of silver, in a coin of which two-
lamb worth two shillings but twelve pence ; for a capon worth twelve pence, sixpence ; and so after that rate : so that, after that rate, there is not the poorest man that hath anything to sell but he loseth half in the price, besides tarrying for his money ; which sometimes he hath, after long suit to the officers, and great costs suing for it ; and many times he never hath it.' — Causes of the dearth in England: TYTLER, vol. i. p. 369.
1 For the amendment of the currency, so Edward was led to be- lieve. ' It was .appointed,' he writes, 4 to make 20,000 pound Aveight for necessity somewhat baser, to get gain sixteen thousand clear, by which the debt of the realm might be paid, the country defended from any sudden attempt, and the coin amended.' — EDWAKD'S Journal^ April 10.
2 Ibid. April 25.
12
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 28.
June.
thirds was alloy ; on the 1 8th of June they issued a further 40,000^ worth in a coin of which three-quarters was alloy. Possibly, or rather probably, it was put out subject to the partial deprecia- tion of the first fall ; but every creditor of the Court, artisan, or labourer, servant, tradesman, farmer, or soldier was forced to receive that money at a fictitious value, although the council knew that a further depre- ciation was immediately and necessarily imminent.1
This was the last grasp at the departing prey, and perhaps it transpired to the world : for so profound and so wide was the public distrust, that when the first fall took effect on the pth of July, prices every- where rather rose than declined, even allow- ing for the difference of denomination. In vain the
1 The numerous entries in ED- WARD'S Journal on this dry subject are curious. The King appears to have been keeping his eyes upon the council, and seeking information on the subject without their knowledge. William Thomas, Clerk of the Coun- cil, whose name has been more than once mentioned, was one of his se- cret advisers ; and, I sometimes think, may have assisted him in the composition of his Journal. ' Upon Friday last,' Thomas writes, in an undated letter to the King, 'Mr Throgmorton declared your Majes- ty's pleasure unto me, and delivered me withal the notes of certain dis- courses, which, according to your Highness' s commandment, I shall most gladly apply, to send you one
every week, if it be possible for me in so little time to compass it — as indeed it were more than easy, if the daily service of mine office required not the great travail and diligence that it doth. And because he told me your Majesty would first hear mine opinion touching the reforma- tion of the coin, albeit that 1 think myself both unmeet and unable to give any judgment in so great and Aveighty a matter without the advice of others ; yet, since it is your High- ness's pleasure to have it secret, which I do much commend, I there- fore am the bolder to enterprise the declaration of my fantasy, trusting that, upon this ground, better de- vices and better effects may ensue than my head alone can contrive.' —
1 55 1.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 13
council admonished the Lord Mayor, and required the Lord Mayor to admonish the wardens of the trading companies.1 Confidence was steadily refused to the currency as long as the worth of the coined shilling was artificially greater than the worth of the bullion of which it was made. The falling process having once begun, had to be completed with as little delay as possi- ble, and on the I7th of August the shilling was ordered by proclamation to pass for no more than sixpence, the groat for no more than two- pence,2 and all other silver coins in proportion. To
August 17.
Thomas to Edward VI.: Cotton. MSS. Vespasian, D. 18. Printed in STKYPE'S Memorials, vol. iv. p.
389.
1 Privy Council Records, MS.
2 The second proclamation was drawn on the ist of August, but was not put out till the lyth. The fol- lowing is the text of it. In such a matter the Government must be heard for themselves : —
'Whereas the King's Majesty, minding to reduce the coin of this his Highness' s realm to a more fineness, hath of late, for sundry weighty considerations, partly men- tioned in our proclamation of the last of April last past [It was drawn on the last of April, and issued on the 6th of May], ordained and established that the piece of silver called the teston, or shilling, should be current for nine pence, and no more ; and the piece of silvered coin called the groat should likewise be current for three pence, and no
more ; minding, both at the time of the said proclamation and sithens also, to have reduced the coin of this realm to a fineness by such de- grees as should have been less bur- denous to his Majesty, and most for the ease of his Highness' s loving subjects: forasmuch as sithens which time his Majesty is sundry ways in- formed that the excessive prices of all victuals and all other things, which of reason should have grown less as the coin is amended, is rather, by the malice and insatiable greedi- ness of sundry men, especially such as make their gain by buying and selling, increased and waxen more excessive, to the great hindrance of the commonwealth and intolerable burden of his Majesty's loving sub- jects, especially of those of the poorer sort : for the remedy whereof, no- thing is thought more available than the speedy reduction of the said coin more nigher his just fineness. His Majesty, therefore, by the advice of
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
pacify the people, to prevent curious inquiries, and also perhaps to soften the blow to the holders of the money, the Government declared their intention of enforcing the Farm Statutes, and of prohibiting the exportation of coin. A scale of prices was again issued for articles of food, with a hope that it would now be maintained ; and if the cost of living was ' not to be so good cheap as when the coin was at its perfectest/ it should be ' within a fifth part of it.'1
It was now possible to restore a pure silver currency — possible and also necessary ; for although the depre- ciation was calculated fairly on the average value of the coin, the good and the bad were affected equally by the proclamation ; and unless the whole existing circulation was called in and recoined, to call it down was merely
the Lords and others of his High- ness's privy council, more esteeming the honour and estimation of the realm, and the wealth and commodi- ty of his Highness' s most loving subjects, than the great profit which, by the baseness of the coin, did and should continually have grown to his Majesty, hath, and by the advice aforesaid doth, ordain that, from the 1 7th day of this present month of August, the piece of coin called the teston, or shilling, shall be current within the realm of England and the town and Marches of Calais only for six pence sterling, and not above ; and the groat for two pence sterling, and not above ; the piece of two pence for a penny, the piece of a
penny for a halfpenny, and the piece of a halfpenny for a farthing ; and therefore straightly chargeth and commandeth every person of what estate, degree, or condition he or they may be, to pay and receive, after the said day of the present month, the said coins for no higher nor no lower value or price within this realm, upon pain of forfeiture to his Majesty of all such money as shall be paid or received at other values than by this proclamation is put forth, and also upon pain of fine and imprisonment during his Ma- jesty's pleasure.' — MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xiii. State Paper Office.
1 EDWARD'S Journal.
1551.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 15
to offer a premium oil the debasement of all the pure shillings and groats which remained in the realm. The council saw half the truth, but unhappily only half. They undertook to set the presses at work coining silver at a pure standard ; an honest shilling was to be given at the mints for every two testons, and the alloy, it was thought, would pay the cost of the stamping.1 But from ignorance, carelessness, or some less worthy motive, men were left to their own discretion either to bring in their money or leave it circulating at its new rate ; and those who held the old coin found more advantage in exporting it as bullion, or in melting it down to the level of the lowest recent issues, in which a third or a fourth part only was pure silver. Thus the people lost their money, and prices, nevertheless, would not sub- side. The council abstained from further peculation. That was the extent of the amendment.
To increase the misery of the summer, there reap- peared, in July, the strange and peculiar plague of the English nation. The sweating sickness, the most mortal of all forms of pestilence which have ever appeared in this country, selected its victims ex- clusively from among the natives of Great Britain. If it broke out in a foreign town, it picked out the Eng- lish residents with undeviating accuracy. The sufferers were in general men between thirty and forty, and the stoutest and the healthiest most readily caught the in- fection. The symptoms were a sudden perspiration,
1 EDWARD'S Journal.
16 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
accompanied with faintness and drowsiness. Those who were taken with full stomachs died immediately. Those who caught cold shivered into dissolution in a few hours. Those who yielded to the intense temptation to sleep, though but for a quarter of an hour, awoke only to die ; and so rapid was the operation of the disorder that, of seven householders who one night supped together in the city of London, six before morning were corpses. ' The only remedy was to be kept close with moderate air, and to drink posset ale or such like for thirty hours, and then the danger was passed.'1 'It was a terrible time,' says Stow. ' Men lost their friends by the sweat, and their money by the proclamation.' In London alone eight hundred men died in one week in July.
Visitations of pestilence in Christian countries have ever operated as a call to repentance. The effect upon the English was heightened by the singularity which confined the attack to themselves. The council, in an address of profound solemnity, invited the nation to ac- knowledge humbly the merited chastisements of Heaven : it was not the first time, as it will not be the last, that men have been keen- eyed to detect in others their own faults, and to call upon the world to repent of them.
The bishops were charged to invite all men July 18. . -, i •
to be more diligent in prayer, and less anxious
for their personal interests ; especially to refrain their greedy appetites from that insatiable serpent of covetous-
1 HOUNSHEP,
1 55 1-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET.
ness, wherewith, most men were so infected that it seemed the one would devour another, without charity, or any godly respect ' to the poor, to their neighbours, or to the commonweal : ' this it was, the council said, l for which God had not only now poured out this plague on them, but had also prepared another plague that after this life should plague them everlastingly : ' the bishops must ' use persuasions that might engender a terror to redeem men from their corrupt and naughty lives ; but the clergy 'were chiefly to blame; 'the members of a dull head could not do well ; ' ' the flocks wandered be- cause the ministers were dull and feeble/1
The people, says Holinshed, for a time were affected and agitated. ' They began to repent, to give alms, and to remember God ; but as the disease ceased, so de- votion in a short time decayed/ The council perhaps confined their own penitence to the exhortation of others, seeing that at the time when the disease was at its worst, they were engaged upon their last great fraud with the currency. Lulled by the panegyrics of the Protestants, who saw in them all that was most excel- lent, most noble, most devout, the Lords, or rather the triumvirate of Warwick, Northampton, and Sir William Herbert, who now governed England, were contented to earn their praises by fine words, by persecuting and
1 TYTLER, vol. i. p. 404. Lord Warwick affected to Cecil a keen re- gret for the shortcomings of the clergy, which he attributed to their marriages. ' These men,' he said, ' that the King's Majesty hath of late
preferred, be so sotted of their wives and children, that they forget both their poor neighbours and all other things which to their calling apper- taineth.'— Ibid. vol. ii.
iS
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
depriving bishops inclined to be conservative, and by confiscating and appropriating the estates of the vacated
"When Ponet was installed as the successor of Gardiner, the estates of the bishopric of Winchester were transferred to the Crown in exchange for a few impropriated rectories. The woods on the lands of the See of London were cut down and sold.1 Heath, Bishop of Worcester, was deposed, and his place was taken by Hooper, the See of Gloucester, which Henry had founded, being suppressed, and the estates surrendered.2 West- minster, another of Henry's Sees, had been suppressed before ; while a further project was on foot to depose Tunstal from the bishopric of Durham. The diocese was to be divided, part to be given to the Dean of Durham, to be endowed out of the estates of the chapter, and part to Newcastle, with a trifling salary ; while the princely domains of the bishopric itself were to be shared between Warwick and his friends.
But the Protestants looked on with ad- miration and applause. The Papists were put out of the way. The doctrinalists were promoted to honour. Miles Coverdale went to Exeter, in the place of Voysey, Scory went to Rochester, Taylor to Lincoln. When men like these were raised to dignity, what more could be desired ?
1 STRYPE; TYTLEK.
2 RYMEE, vol. vi. part 3, p. 216. The intention was to suppress both Worcester and Gloucester, and to
found a new see out of the combin- ation.— See Strype's Memorials, vol. iv. p. 45.
15$ i.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 19
' What a swarm of false Christians have we among us/ said the large-minded Becon ; ' gross gospellers, which can prattle of the gospel very finely, talk much of justification by faith, crack very stoutly for the free remission of their sins by Christ's blood. As for their almsdeeds, their praying, their watching, their fasting, they are utterly banished from these gospellers. They are puffed up with pride, they swell with envy, they wallow in pleasures, they burn with concupiscence. Their covetous acts are insatiable, the increasing their substance, the scraping together of worldly possessions. Their religion consisteth in words and disputations ; in Christian acts and godly deeds nothing at all.' 1
Of this class of men the highest living represent- ative was the Earl of Warwick, the ruling spirit of the English Reformation in the phase into which it now had drifted.
To return to the Princess Mary.
There being no longer, as it seemed, occasion to fear the resentment of the Emperor, the council, on the 9th of August, resolved to execute their resolution, and put an end to her resistance with a high hand. ' They considered how long and patiently the King had laboured in vain to bring her to conformity.' They ' considered how much her obstinacy and the toleration of it endangered the peace of the realm.5 Her chaplains, therefore, should be compelled for the future to perform in her chapel the English service
BECON' s Jewel of Joy.
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 28.
established by law, and none other ; while Edward un- dertook to write to his sister with his own hand. The Flemish ambassador was informed at the same time, that the terms of his own residence in England must be identical with those granted to Sir Thomas Chamberlain. He should use the mass on condition only that Chamber- lain might use the communion.1 The Duke of Somerset only defended Mary's interests. His name was attached with the rest to the resolutions of the council ; 2 but as to him the Princess had been indebted for her first license ' to keep her sacrificing knaves about her/ 3 so he endeavoured to prevent the withdrawal of it ; and partly, perhaps, from good feeling, partly from op- position to Warwick, he had begun to advocate a general toleration.4 Somerset, in fact, was growing weary of Protestantism, seeing what Protestantism had become. He preferred the company of his architects and masons to attendance at chapel and sermons ; 5 and Burgoyne, writing to Calvin, said that he had become so lukewarm in the service of Christ, as scarcely to have anything less at heart than religion.6
No cause, however, at that time, could be benefited
1 Council Records, MS.
2 Ibid.
3 John ab Ulmis to Bullinger : Zurich Letters.
4 Charges against the Duke of Somerset : Infra.
5 Master Bradford spared not the proudest, and among many others, will't them to tak example be the lait Duck of Somerset, who became
so cald in hering God's word, that the yeir before his last apprehension hee wald gae visit his masonis, and wald not dingye himself to gae from his gallerie to his hall for hearing of a sermon. — Letter of John Knox to the Faithful in London.
6 Burgoyne to Calvin : Zurich Letters.
1 55 1.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE Of SOMERSET. 21
by tne advocacy of Somerset ; and Warwick was sup- ported by the powerful phalanx of able and dangerous men whose interest committed them to the Reformation — those who had shared, or hoped to share, in the spoils of the Church or the State — those who had divided among them the forfeited estates of the Percies, the Howards, the Courtenays, and the Poles, and would support any men or any measures which would prevent reaction.
The Princess was at Copt Hall, in Essex. On the 1 4th of August three of the officers of her household, Sir Robert Rochester, Sir Francis Englefield, and Sir Robert Waldegrave, were sent for by the council : the King's letter was put in their hands, with a charge to deliver it to their mistress. They were instructed to inform the chaplains that the mass must cease, and to take care, for their own part, that the order was obeyed. At the end of a week they returned to say that the Lady Mary was ' marvellously offended/ She had for- bidden them to speak to her chaplains ; if they persisted, she said she would discharge them from her service, and she herself would immediately leave the country. She was subject to a heart complaint, and her passion was so violent, that they were afraid to press her further for fear of the possible consequences. They had approached the subject only once afterwards, ' when they not only did not find her more conformable, but in further choler than she was before.' They could, therefore, go no further. She had written to her brother, and they had brought the letter with them.
22 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
A message, Mary said in this letter, had been brought to her by her servants on a matter which con- cerned the salvation of her soul ; her servants were no fit messengers for the lords to have chosen. The meanest subjects in the realm would ill bear to receive such treatment through their own attendants. For the letter which Edward had written to her, it was signed indeed with his hand, but it was not his own composition, and he was too young to be a fit judge in such questions. Her father had brought her up in the Catholic faith, and she would not believe one thing and say another, nor would she submit to rule her mind by the opinions of the privy council. She entreated, therefore, that her want of conformity might be tolerated till the King was old enough to act for himself, and if this could not be,
* rather than offend God and my conscience/ she said,
* I offer my body at your will, and death shall be more welcome than life.' l
The appeal was naturally ineffectual. The council would not have ventured so far, had they not been de- termined to go farther ; and with a reprimand for the neglect of their orders, Rochester and his companions were commanded to go back and execute them. They refused. They were commanded again on their allegi- ance to go, and again refused, and were committed to the Fleet for contumacy. 'Pinnaces' were sent to cruise between Harwich and the mouth of the Thames to pre- vent an attempt at flight on the part of the Princess ; and
1 Privy Council Records, MS. The Lady Mary to King Edward : ELLIS, vol. ii. p. 176, 1st series; FOXE, vol. vi.
155 1-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 23
JRich, the Lord Chancellor, Sir William Petre, and Sir Anthony Wingfield took the ungracious office on. them~ selves. Her servants, they were directed to inform Mary, had not returned to her, and would not return. They had disobeyed the King's orders, and if a privy councillor had so far misconducted himself, he would have been equally punished. Competent officers would be furnished for her household in their places. For the rest, his Majesty was grieved that her conscience was so settled in error, as he would himself express to her.1 She offered her body to be at the King's service, but no harm was meant to her body — the King desired only that she might have mentem sanam in corpore sano. If she had a conscience, so had the King a conscience, and the King must avoid giving offence to God by tolerating error. The adventures of the new messengers, character-
1 Right dear and entirely be- loved Sister, we greet you well, and let you know that it grieveth us much to perceive no amendment in you of that which we, for God's cause, your soul's health, our con- science, and the common tranquillity of the realm, have so long desired ; assuring you that our sufferance hath much more demonstration of natural love than contentation of our con- science and foresight of our safety. "Wherefore, although you give us occasion, as much almost as in you is, to diminish our natural love, yet we he loath to feel it decay, and mean not to be so careless of you as we be provoked. And therefore meaning your weal, and therewith
joining a care not so be found guilty in our conscience to God, having cause to require forgiveness that we have so long, for respect of love to- wards you, omitted our bounden duty, we send at the present the Lord Rich, the Lord Chancellor of Eng- land, and our right trusty and right well-beloved Councillors, Sir An- thony Wingfield and Sir William Petre, in message to you touching the order of your house, willing you to give them firm credit in those things they shall say to you from us. Given under our signet. Windsor, August 24. — Letter of King Edward to the Lady Mary : FOXE, vol. vi.
24 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
istic of Mary and of the times, shall be related in their own words.
1 Having received commandment and in- August 28.
structions from the King s Majesty,1 we re- paired to the Lady Mary's house at Copt Hall, on the 28th instant in the morning, where, shortly after our com- ing, I, the Lord Chancellor, delivered his Majesty's letter to her, which she received upon her knees, saying that, for the honour of the King's Majesty's hand wherewith the said letter was signed, she would kiss the letters, and not for the matter contained in them ; for the matter, said she, I take to proceed not from his Majesty, but from you his council.
' In the reading of the letter, which she did read secretly to herself, she said these words in our hearing — Ah ! good Mr Cecil took much pains here. When she had read the letter, we began to open the matter of our instructions unto her ; and as I, the Lord Chancel- lor, began, she prayed me to be short, for, said she, I am not well at ease, and I will make you a short answer.
' After this, we told her at good length how the King's Majesty having used all the gentle means and exhortations that he might, to have reduced her to the rites of religion and order of divine service set forth by the laws of the realm, and finding her nothing conform- able, but still remaining in her former errors, had
1 Report of the Commissioners to the Lady Mary, August 29 : MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xiii.
State Paper Office, printed by ELLIS, ist series, vol. ii. p. 179.
I55I-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 25
resolved, by the whole estate of his Majesty's privy council, and with the consent of divers others of the nobility, that she should no longer use the private mass, nor any other divine service than is set forth by the laws of the realm ; and here we offered to show her the names of all those which were present at this consulta- tion and resolution. But she said she cared not for any rehearsal of the names, for, said she, I know you to be all of one sort therein.
1 We told her further that the King's Majesty's pleasure was we should also give strait charge to her chaplains that none of them should presume to say any mass, and the like charge to all her servants that none of them should presume to hear any mass.
' Hereunto her answer was thus —
'To the King's Majesty she was, is, and
& J J August 29.
ever will be his Majesty's most humble and
most obedient subject and poor sister, and would most willingly obey all his commandments in anything — her conscience saved — yea, and would willingly and gladly suffer death to do his Majesty good. But rather than she will agree to use any other service than was used at the death of the late King her father, she would lay her head on a block and suffer death. But, said she, I am unworthy to suffer death in so good a quarrel. When the King's Majesty, said she, shall come to such years that he may be able to judge these things himself, his Majesty shall find me ready to obey his orders in religion; but now in these years, although he, good, sweet King, have more knowledge than any
26 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
other of his years, yet it is not possible that he can be a judge of these things. If ships were to be sent to the sea, or any other thing to be done touching the policy and government of the realm, I am sure you would not think his Highness yet able to consider what were to be done. And much less, said she, can he in these years discern what is fit in matters of divinity. If my chap- lains do say no mass, I can hear none ; no more can my poor servants. But as for my servants, I know it shall be against their will, as it should be against mine ; for if they could come where it were said, they should hear it with good will, and as for my priests, they know what they have to do. The pain of your law is but imprison- ment for a short time, and if they will refuse to say mass for fear of that imprisonment, they may do there- in as they will ; but none of your new service, said she, shall be used in my house, and if any be said in it, I will not tarry in the house.
' After this, we declared to her Grace, for what causes the Lords of the Council had appointed Ro- chester, Englefield, and Waldegrave, being her servants, to open the premises unto her, and how ill and untruly they had used themselves in the charge committed unto them ; and beside that, how they had manifestly disobeyed the King's Majesty's council. She said it was not the wisest counsel to appoint her servants to control her in her own house ; and that her servants knew her mind therein well enough, for, of all men, she might worse endure any of them to move her in any such matters. And for their punishment, said
155 1.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 27
she, my Lords may use them as they think good ; and if they refused to do the message unto her and her chaplains, they be, said she, the honester men, for they should have spoken against their own conscience.
' After this, when we had at good length declared unto her our instructions, touching the promises which she claimed to have been made to the Emperor, and, besides, had opened unto her at good length all such things as we knew and had heard therein, her answer was, that she was well assured the promise was made to the Emperor ;. and that the same was once granted before the King's Majesty in her presence, there being there seven of the council, notwithstanding the denial thereof at her last being with his Majesty. And I have, quoth she, the Emperor's hand testifying that this promise was made, which I believe better than you all of the council; and. though you esteem little the Emperor, yet should you show more favour to me for my father's sake, who made the more part of you all almost of nothing. But, as for the Emperor, said she, if he were dead, I would say as I do ; and if he would give me now other advice, I would not follow it. Not- withstanding, quoth she, to be plain with you, his am- bassador shall know how I am used at your hands.
' After this, we opened the King's Majesty's plea- sure, for one to attend upon her Grace for the supply of Rochester's place during his absence.
'To this her answer was, that she would appoint her own officers, and that she had years sufficient for that purpose ; and if we left any men there, she would
28 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28
go out of her gates, for they two would not dwell in one house. And, quoth she, I am sickly, and yet I will not die willingly, but will do the best I can to preserve my life. But if I shall chance to die, I will protest openly that you of the council be the causes of my death ; you give me fair words, but your deeds be al- ways ill to me.
' Having said this, she departed from us into her bed-chamber, and delivered to me, the Lord Chancellor, a ring upon her knees, with very humble recommenda- tions to her brother, saying, that she would die his true subject and sister, and obey his commandment in all things, except in these matters of religion. But yet, said she, this shall never be told to the King's Majesty. After her departure, we called the chaplains and the rest of the household before us, and the chap- lains, after some talk, promised all to obey the King's Majesty's commandment. We further commanded them, and every one of them, to give notice to some one of the council, at the least, if any mass, or other service than that set forth by the law, should hereaftei be said in that house.
1 Finally, when we had said and done as is afore- said, and were gone out of the house, tarrying there for one of her chaplains, who was Hot with the rest when we gave the charge aforesaid unto them, the Lady Mary's Grace sent to us to speak with her one word at a window. When we were come into the court, notwithstanding that we offered to come up to her chamber, she would needs speak out of the window,
155 1-] EXECUTION Of THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 29
and prayed us to -speak to the Lords of the Council that her controller might shortly return ; for, said she, since his departing, I take the accounts myself of my expenses, and learned how many loaves of bread be made of a bushel of wheat ; and I wis my father and my mother never brought me up with baking and brewing ; and, to be plain with you, I am weary of my office, and, therefore, if my Lords will send mine officer home, they shall do me pleasure ; otherwise, if they send him to prison, I beshrew him if he go not to it merrily and with a good will. And I pray God to send you well to do in your souls and bodies too, for some of you have but weak bodies/
As the moment draws near when Mary will step for- ward to the front of the historical stage, it is time to give some distinct account of her. She was born in February 1515-16, and was therefore, in her thirty-sixth year. Her face was broad, but drawn and sallow ; the forehead large, though projecting too much at the top, and indicating rather passion and determination than intellectual strength. Her eyes were dauntless, bright, steady, and apparently piercing ; but she was short- sighted, and insight either into character or thing was not among her capabilities. She was short and ill- figured ; above the waist, she was spare, from continued ill-health ; below, it is enough to say that she had inherit- ed her father's dropsical tendencies, which were begin- ning to show themselves. Her voice was deep like a man's, she had a man's appetite, especially for meat ; and in times of danger, a man's promptness of action
30 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. |CH. 28.
But she was not without a lady's accomplishments. She embroidered well, played on the lute well; she could speak English, Latin, French, and Spanish, and she could read Italian ; as we have seen, she could be her own housekeeper ; and if she had masculine energy, she had with it a woman's power of braving and enduring suffering.
By instinct, by temperament, by hereditary affection, she was an earnest Catholic ; and whatever Mary be- lieved she believed thoroughly, without mental reserva- tion, without allowing her personal interests either to tint her convictions or to tempt her to disguise them. As long as Queen Catherine lived, she had braved Henry's anger, and clung to her and to her cause. On her mother's death she had agreed to the separation from the Papacy as a question of policy touching no point of faith or conscience. She had accepted the al- terations introduced by her father; and, had nothing else intervened, she might have maintained as a sovereign what she had honestly admitted as a subject. Her own persecution only, and the violent changes enforced by the doctrinal Reformers, taught her to believe that, apart from Rome, there was no security for orthodoxy.
In her interview with the messengers, she had shown herself determined, downright, and unaffected, cutting through official insincerities, and fearless of consequences, standing out for the right as she understood it. The moral relations of good and evil were inverted ; and be- tween Mary, the defender of a dying superstition, and the Lords of the Council, the patrons of liberty and
iSSi-l EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 31
right, the difference so far was as between the honest watch-dog and a crew of prowling wolves.
The dominant faction had dragged on for two years, through mean tyranny and paltry peculation. The time had come when, no longer able to continue their ill ways unmolested, they were to venture into open crime.
The Duke of Somerset had neglected the debts of the realm, till they were past retrieval. He had rushed into expensive and unsuccessful wars, crippled the reve- nue, and continued the debasement of the currency. He had brought the country into discredit abroad ; and by forcing forward changes in religion for which the people were unprepared, he had thrown half England into in- surrection. He had justly been deprived of
September. the power which he had usurped and abused.
Yet, for the most part, he had failed in attempts which in themselves were noble ; and the Duke of Somerset might flatter himself that his own government showed brightly by the side of the scarcely less rash and more utterly ungenerous administration which had followed on his fall. Could he have recovered the Protectorate, it is not likely he would have profited by his past ex- perience ; a large vanity and a languid intellect incapa- citated him for sovereign power ; yet, in the face of the existing state of things, he need only be moderately blamed if he endeavoured to regain his power from the nands by which it had been wrested from him. In the past year he had provoked the jealousy and the suspicion of Warwick, by interfering in favour of Gardiner ; he had
32 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [011.28.
been exposed, as in the instance of his mother's funeral, to petty insults and mortifications; and early in the spring of 1551 he had begun to meditate the possibility of revenging himself. Whalley, the fraudulent receiver of Yorkshire, one of the least reputable of his friends, had felt the pulses of the peers with a view to his re- storation ; 1 he became privy to Catholic conspiracies without revealing them ; and, after his arrest, the miss- ing link in the evidence, the want of which had saved the Bishop of Durham from imprisonment a few months previously, was found in his desk. The council in their treatment of his friends provided him with unscrupulous partisans. Sir Ralph Yane, a distinguished soldier, had a right of pasturage by letters patent over lands which the Earl of Warwick claimed or coveted. Warwick sent his servants to drive Yane's cattle from the meadows ; Yane defended his rights in arms, and was arrested and sent to the Tower,2 as much, perhaps, because he was a follower of the Duke, as for any offence of his own.
The confinement was soon over ; but the injury re- mained, and Yane became ready at any moment to rise in arms. Suspected before his intentions had assumed a definite form, Somerset, on the 23rd of April, had been on the point of flying, in a supposed fear of his life, with Lord Grey, to the northern counties, to call out the people and place himself at their head. He had
1 On the 1 6th of February Whalley was examined before the council ' for persuading divers no- bles of the realm to make the Duke of Somerset Protector at the next
Parliament, and stood to the denial, the Earl of Kutland affirming it manifestly.'— EDWARD'S Journal.
2 Privy Council Records, MS. March 27, 1551.
1 55 1-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 53
been prevented only by Sir William Herbert, who as- sured him that he was in no danger,1 and he had re- mained to oppose Warwick in the treatment of Mary. Unable to effect anything by legitimate opposition, he had listened to suggestions for a general toleration in religion ; 2 he had consulted with Lord Arundel on call- ing a Parliament, and appealing to the country against Warwick by proclamation ; 3 and as the design of doing something assumed form, the Duchess of Somerset brought into it her brother Sir Michael Stanhope, and her half-brother Sir Thomas Arundel. Lord Strange was set to work upon the King to induce him to break his engagements with France, and marry Lady Jane Seymour instead. A scheme was formed to arrest and imprison Warwick, Northampton, and Herbert, into which the Earl of Arundel entered eagerly and warmly, and in which Lord Paget was, at least, a silent accom- plice. Sir John Yorke, the Master of the Mint, was to be
1 The principal authorities for the story of Somerset's real or sup- posed conspiracy are the depositions and examinations in the 131)1 volume of -the Domestic MSS. of the reign of Edward VI. State Paper Office ; and the entries in EDWAKD'S Jour- nal.
3 ' Whether did Sir Miles Par- tridge or any other give you advice to promise the people their mass, holy water, with such other, rather than to remain so unquieted?' — Questions addressed to the Duke of Somerset : TYTLEK, vol. ii. p. 48.
3 ' Did it proceed first from VOL. v.
yourself or from the Earl of Arundel to have a Parliament ? With how many have you conferred for the setting forth of the proclamation to persuade the people to mislike the Government, and specially the do- ings of the Duke of Northumber- land, the Earl of Pembroke, and the Marquis of Northampton, doing them to understand that they went about to destroy the commonwealth, and also had caused the King to be displeased with the Lady Mary's Grace, the King's sister ? '— TYT- LEB, voL ii. p. 48.
34 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [en. 28.
taken also, ' because he could tell many pretty things ; ' and as a violent arrest might perhaps be violently re- sisted, it was not impossible that lives might be taken in the scuffle. Somerset himself admitted that the deaths of Warwick and the other noblemen had been spoken of as a contingency which might occur : an intention that they should be killed, if he ever formed such, he soon relinquished. His plan, so long as it was enter- tained, was to treat the Lords as he had been treated himself, and to call Parliament immediately, ' lest per- adventure of one evil might happen another/ But his mind misgave him, and his purposes were vacillating First, there was a doubt whether Herbert should be in- cluded in the arrest ; afterwards, according to one wit- ness, the Duke changed his mind, ' and would meddle no further with the apprehension of any of the council, and said he was sorry he had gone so far with the Earl of Arundel.' *
So the matter stood in the beginning of October. Among those who had been privy to the conspiracy was Sir Thomas Palmer, a soldier who had gained some credit by desperate service in the French wars, and had led the forlorn hope of cavalry who sacrificed themselves at Haddington to enable sup- plies to reach the blockaded garrison : a brave man, but, as it seemed, a most unscrupulous one, whose serv- ices in a dangerous enterprise might be as useful as his fidelity was uncertain.
1 Charges against the Duke of I VI. vol. xiii. State Paper Office ; Somerset : MS. Domestic, Edward j printed imperfectly by TYTLEK.
i 5 5 r . ] EXE CUT ION OF THE D UKE OF SOMERSE T. 35
Palmer, on the 7th of October, came to Lord War- wick's house, and 'in my Lord's garden/ writes Ed- ward,1 ' he declared how St George's day last past, my Lord of Somerset, who was then going to the north, if the Master of the Horse, Sir Win. Herbert, had not as- sured him of his honour he should have no hurt, went to raise the people, and the Lord Grey went before to know who were his friends. Afterwards a device was made to call the Earl of Warwick to a banquet with the Marquis of Northampton and divers others, and to cut off their heads. Also, he formed a base company about them by the way to set upon them. He declared also, that Sir Ralph Yane had two thousand men in readi- ness ; Sir Thomas Arundel had assured my Lord that the Tower was safe ; Mr Partridge should raise London, and take the Great Seal with the apprentices ; Seymour2 and Hammond should wait upon himself, and all the horses of the gensdarmes should be slain/
Such was Palmer's story — truth and falsehood being mingled together ; truth, because part of it was con* firmed by other witnesses, and confessed by the Duke himself; falsehood, because Warwick (or Northumber- land, as he was immediately to be) confessed before his own death that the Duke of Somerset had through his means been falsely accused ; and Palmer, also, befo. - his death, declared that the evidence to which he had sworn had been invented by Warwick, and had been
1 EDWARD'S Journal, Oct. 8. * David Seymour ; some connection of Somerset's family.
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 28.
maintained by himself at Warwick's request.1 Whether Palmer's treachery for the first time acquainted Warwick with Somerset's designs against him, or whether War- wick had watched their growth and sprang a counter- mine when the time was ripe, I am unable to determine.
1 The Duke of Northumberland, before going to the scaffold, desired an interview with Somerset's sons : — Au quels il crya mercy de 1'injust- ice qu'il avoit faict a leur Pere Protecteur de 1'Angleterre, cong- noissant avoir procure sa mort a tort et faulsement. Palmer avant sa mort a confesse que I'escripture et F accusation qu'il advouche et maintint centre la feu Protecteur estoit fausse, fabricquec par le diet due (de Northumberland) et advoue par luy a la requeste du diet due. Et y a d' estranges loix par de 9a sur le faiet d' accusation que ce peult faire par deux temoings, encores qu'ils deposent singulierement et diversement. — Simon Renard to Charles V. : MS. Record Office. Transcribed from the archives at Brussels. If Palmer and Northum- land really made these confessions, the question whether there was or was not foul play at the trial of the Duke of Somerset is set at rest ; and by adopting Renard' s story in the text, I show of course that I think it true ; yet I have not adopted it without hesitation. Although there was a general belief, in which Cran- mer and Ridley shared, that Somer- set had been unfairly dealt with, it is strange that a foreign ambassador
should be the only authority for so important a feature in the evidence about it. Palmer's story had no- thing in it which in itself was in- credible or even improbable; and unless Edward was imposed upon (which it is hard to suppose), as to the acknowledgments which were made by Somerset in open court at that time of his trial, those acknow- ledgments confirm in substance all that Palmer stated. Renard's letter, too, was written when Northumber- land had just failed in his attempt to alter the succession ; and any charge against him, however mon- strous, found ready hearing among the Queen's friends. On the other hand, a distinct circumstantial state- ment of a competent witness is not to be lightly set aside, merely from circumstantial objections. No Eng- lish minister was better informed than Renard of everything which passed in London at the time of Mary's accession. He was writing from the spot, and he was not a per- son to report on hearsay the flying rumours of the hour.
I give the result of my own re- flections upon the subject. Readers who take an interest in the question will judge for themselves.
£551-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 37
Certain only it is that Somerset, and Somerset's party, were become dangerous to him. He felt, perhaps with reason, that, if once in their power, he would find as little mercy at their hands as he intended that they should receive at his own ; and inasmuch as the truth, if only the truth was known, might not ensure a con- viction, inasmuch as the mere attempt at the overthrow of a faction might se'em, in the eyes of the Lords who must try Somerset, rather a virtue than a crime — some additional atrocity had to be invented — something on which the law spoke too plainly for evasion, and which might diminish a sympathy otherwise likely to be troublesome.
Palmer's revelations were kept profoundly secret, except, it may be, froln Herbert and Northampton, and from Edward, who, duped by the plausible zeal of Warwick for the Protestant gospel, hearing only from the fanatic enthusiasts who surrounded him adulation of the Earl as a champion of the Lord, and suspicious of his uncle as a backslider and apostate, listened and believed with the simplicity of a boy.1 Though nothing definite transpired, however, there were movements in the State which created in Somerset a vague feeling of uneasiness : a report reached him that Palmer had been closeted with Warwick. Parliament, which was to
1 The frigid hardness with which Edward relates in his Jotirnal and one of his letters the proceedings against Somerset has been com- mented on with some sharpness. His age — he was but fourteen — and
the miserable influences around him might excuse a greater crime. He believed that Somerset was guilty in the worst sense of the word, and with such a conviction the cold tone was natural and right.
j8 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
have met on the T3th of October, was prorogued till January.1 A muster of the gendarmerie was ordered for the 8th of November; and on the nth of October there were significant and important changes in the peerage. Lord Dorset, Lady Jane Grey's father, was made Duke of Suffolk; Warwick became Duke of Northumberland; Paulet, Earl of ^ Wiltshire, Marquis of Winchester ; and Sir William Herbert Earl of Pem- broke.
The elevation of the men against whose power, if not life, the late Protector was conspiring, naturally alarmed him. He sent for Cecil (now Sir William Cecil, and Secretary of State), and inquired if he was in any danger. Cecil replied ' that, if he was not guilty, he might be of good courage ; if he was, he had nothing to say but to lament him/ It was an answer calculated neither to soothe nor please. The Duke, says Edward, defied Cecil, and sent for and cross-questioned Palmer. Palmer, of course, denied that he had said anything against him, true or false ; and he remained anxious and uncertain till the i6th, when he appeared as usual at the meeting of the privy council.
By this time Warwick's preparations were complete. It is to be hoped that the full extent of his iniquity was kept secret between himself and his instrument,, that the council, like Edward, were his dupes. In the after- noon of that day Somerset was arrested on a October 16.
charge of treason, and sent to the Tower,
1 Lords' Journal.
155 1. 3 EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 39
whither he was followed immediately after by the Duchess, Lord Arundel, Sir Thomas Arimdel, Paget, Grey, Stan- hope, Partridge, and many more. Vane escaped across the river, and hid himself in a stable at Lambeth ; but he was betrayed, or discovered, in a few hours.
Palmer now enlarged his evidence. The gen- darmerie, he said, were to have been assaulted on the muster-day by Somerset's retinue and Sir Ralph Yane's two thousand footmen ; the cry of liberty was to have been raised in London ; and, in case of failure, the con- spirators were to have fallen back on Poole or the Isle of "Wight. Another witness supported this part of the story ; and here, it is likely enough, that it was true. The banquet, it was further said, where the Lords were to have been killed, was to have been held at the house of Lord Paget.1
The next step was to send the usual circulars to the magistrates, informing them of the near escape of the King and commonwealth from conspiracy ; and letters to the same effect were sent to Pickering and Chamber- lain, to lay before the Courts of Paris and Brussels. Henry affected to believe — Northumberland being in the interests of France ; 2 the Regent Mary, perhaps for the same reason, scarcely cared to conceal her incre- dulity.3
1 It is to be remarked that, in the subsequent proceedings, although the banquet was alluded to, the in- tended scene of it was not again mentioned. Neither Paget nor A.rundel was tried, although, if any
plot was really formed for the mur- der, Arundel was one of the princi- pal persons concerned in it.
2 Pickering to the Council : TYTLEB, vol. ii.
8 Chamberlain told her of 'his
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 28.
The prosecution was temporarily interrupted by the arrival and entertainment in London of Mary of Guise, on her route from France to Scotland ; and, at the same time, by an invitation from Maurice and the other Pro- testant princes, to join in the great enterprise about to be attempted against the Emperor. But the pageant of a royal entertainment was soon over, and Warwick and his friends were too deeply disloyal to the cause of which they were so loud professors, to join in a religious confederacy. Their own idea of foreign policy was the balance of power, which no other object, divine or human, ought to derange ; l and the Germans were put off with an evasive answer, and at last with an equiva- lent to a refusal.2 Northumberland's attention was demanded for a more serious object.
Majesty's escape.' ' She said she was sorry to hear of the Duke's so evil behaviour ; yet was she glad and thanked God, who had so well preserved his Highness. But is it true, she said, that the Duke meant anything to the King's Majesty's person ; demanding hy what means he could be able to do the same, musing much at the matter why the Duke would shew himself so ingrate towards the King's Majesty. The thing, quoth she, is very strange, for that by all reason the Duke's whole wealth did depend upon the King's Majesty's prosperity and welfare.' — MS. Flanders, Edward VI. vol. i. State Paper Office.
1 It is well explained in a- de- spatch of Doctor Wotton, who, to do him justice, did not aft'ect much
interest in the Reformation. France, in spite of professions of friendship, he looked upon as a treacherous neighbour. ' From France/ he said, ' danger may, perhaps, be suspected, if the Protestants, plucking their heads out of the yoke, and labouring to recover their oppressed liberty, deliver the French from all fear and suspicion of the Emperor.' To sacrifice the Protestants, lest the Emperor should be too much weak- ened, to irritate the quarrels between the Emperor and France, lest either of them should meddle with Eng- land, was the ignoble policy of an English liberal Government. — Wot- ton to Cecil : JUS. State Paper Office 2 EDWARD'S Journal, Novem- ber, 1551, and March, 1552.
155 1.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 41
November was spent in a series of private
November. examinations of the prisoners in the Tower.
Crane, the witness who had supported Palmer, declared, on being cross-questioned, that Somerset's intentions, whatever they were, had been abandoned. Lord Arundel admitted reluctantly, and after many denials, a design formed by himself and the Duke to arrest Northumberland and Northampton at the council, and to compel a change in the mode of government.1 Ham- mond, one of the Duke's servants, deposed to a guard which the Duke kept in his ante-room. A collection of questions remain, which were addressed to the Duke himself, though his answers are lost ; and these ques- tions are important, as has been well observed,2 since they contain no allusion to the intended assassination. Other evidence was obtained also, but of an immaterial kind. On the 3oth the witnesses were examined sever- ally before the peers who were to sit upon the trial, and they swore all of them that their confessions were true, * without compulsion, fear, envy, or displeasure.' The next morning, the first of December, at five
T)PO T
o'clock, in the winter darkness, the Duke was brought in a barge from the Tower to Westminster Hall. In fear of a demonstration, which the popularity of Somerset made more than likely, an order of council had been sent out the day before, that every household should keep within-doors, and that in each house jne
1 Confession of Lord Arundel : MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xiii. printed partially by TYTLER.
2 By Mr TYTLER.
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
man at least should be ready with his arms, to be called out, if order should be disturbed. But the eagerness of the people defied the command to stay at home, and by daybreak Palace-yard and the court before the hall were thronged with a vast multitude, all passionately devoted to Somerset, all execrating his rival. The court was formed; Lord Winchester sitting as High Steward. Twenty- six peers, Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke among them, took their seats, and at nine o'clock the prisoner was led forward to the bar.1
Under the Act of Unlawful Assemblies2 the late Protector was charged, under various counts, with having treasonably collected men in his house for an ill intent, as to kill the Duke of Northum- berland ; with having devised the death of the Lords of the Council ; with having intended to raise the city of London to assault the Lords of the Council ; and, finally, with having purposed to resist his arrest. On the last three counts he was further indicted for felony. As usual in trials for treason, the principal witnesses
December.
1 For the particulars of Somer- set's trial, see EDWAKD'S Journal, STOW, HOLINSHED, tlie Privy Coun- cil Register, the papers in vol. xiii. of the Domestic MSS. of the reign of Edward VI., the Grey Friars' Chronicle, and the second volume of Mr TYTLER'S Edward and Mary.
2 3 and 4 Edward VI. cap. 5 : If any persons to the number of twelve or above, being assembled together, shall practise with force of arms unlawfully and of their own
authority to murder, kill, slay, take, or imprison any of the King's most honourable privy council, or unlaw- fully to alter or change any laws made or established by authority of Parliament, and being commanded by the Sheriff of the shire, or any justice of the peace, to retire to their own houses, shall remain together for one hour after such proclamation, or after that shall attempt or do anj of the things above specified, every such act shall be judged high treason.
IS5I-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 43
were not brought into court ; their depositions, taken down elsewhere, were read aloud. The Duke, when called on to answer, admitted that he had collected men, and that he had spoken of killing Northumberland and Northampton ; but afterwards he said he * determined the contrary/ 1 He denied an intention of raising the city of London, or the northern counties. The story of the banquet, he said, was altogether false. When Crane's evidence was read, he desired that Crane might be pro- duced in court and confronted with him. Palmer, he said, was a worthless villain. Lord Strange was the only witness who came forward in person. Strange declared that Somerset had moved him to persuade the King to break with France, and marry Lady Seymour. This, too, Somerset denied ; but Strange persisted. The peers withdrew. Northumberland, possibly in pretended moderation, but more likely to ensure a condemnation,2 disclaimed a desire to press the treason charge ; for a lighter verdict Somerset's own confession seemed suffi- cient. On the first count, therefore, the Lords returned a verdict of not guilty. Amidst a murmur of applause, the sergeant- at- arms left the hall with the axe of the Tower. The anxious crowd at the doors, mistaking his
1 And yet, says Edward, ' he seemed to admit that he went about their deaths.' — Journal, December,
I55i-
2 Lord Coke, commenting upon the trial, observes that, even admit- ting the truth of the evidence, the verdict was not justified, because there had been no proclamation call-
ing on the Duke and his confederates to disperse ; and it was only by per- sisting, after such proclamation had been read, that his conduct came under tbe Treason Act. Northum- berland probably anticipated the objection, and was contented with an ordinary verdict of felony undef the common law.
44
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 28.
appearance for a final acquittal, sent up a shout again, and again, and again, which pealed up to Charing Cross, and was heard in Long Acre. But congratulations were premature. Acquitted of treason, the Duke was found guilty of felony, which would answer equally to ensure his destruction ; l Winchester pronounced sentence of death ; and, amidst the awful silence which followed, the Duke fell on his knees, thanking the court for his trial, and, unless Edward was deceived by a purposely false report, asked Northumberland to pardon him, confessing that he had meant his destruction.2 ' Duke of Somerset/ Northumberland answered from his seat, ' you see yourself a man in peril of life and sentenced to die. Once before I saved you in a like danger, nor will I desist to serve you now, though you may not believe me. Appeal to the mercy of the King's Majesty, which I doubt not he will extend to you. For myself, gladly I pardon all things which you have designed against me, and Twill do my best that your life maybe spared/3 The truth is hard to read through such a maze of
1 Edward, writing to his friend, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, says, 'After debating the matter till nine of the clock till three, the Lords went together, and there weighing that the matter seemed only to touch their lives, although afterwards more inconvenience might have followed, and that men might think they did it of malice, acquitted him of high treason, and condemned him of felony, which he seemed to have con- fessed.' — Edward to Fitzpatrick :
printed in FULLER'S Church His- tory.
2 Edward to Fitzpatrick : Ibid. Edward adds, in his Journal, that two days after, Somerset confessed in the Tower that he had hired a man named Bertiville to kill North- umberland and Northampton ; that Bertiville was arrested, and on being examined, confessed also.
3 John ab Ulmis to Bullinger: Epistola TIGURIN^E, p. 291.
I55I-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 45
treachery. If it be true that Somerset confessed, either in the court or the Tower, that he had really meditated murder, he was no better than Northumberland ; interest or sympathy is alike wasted upon either, and Palmer's evidence may, in that case, have been exaggerated only because the intended crime was certain, though the proof was insufficient. Yet, if Northumberland had but anticipated a blow which had been aimed against him- self, his conduct would scarcely have sat so heavily on his conscience. Scarcely, too, would Cranmer or Ridley, unlike the pious flatterers of the now all-powerful states- man, have risked his anger with ' shewing their con- sciences ' in such a cause.1
But if to the historical inquirer it seems doubtful whether the guilt was on both sides or but on one, the world at the time entertained no such uncertainty. So deep was the excitement, so general the suspicion of the verdict, that it was found necessary to overawe London two days after with a parade of the gendarmerie. Arundel and Paget were examined in the Star Chamber with closed doors, but a second trial was a risk too great to be ventured.
When Parliament was prorogued in October, there
1 ' I have heard that Cranmer, and another, whom I will not name, were hoth in high displeasure ; the one for shewing his conscience se- cretly, hut plainly and fully, in the Duke of Somerset's cause ; and both of late, but especially Cranmer, for repugning against the spoil of the
Church goods taken away without law or order of justice, by command- ment of the higher powers.' — Rid- ley's Lamentation on the State of England: FOXE, vol. vii. p. 573. Ridley must be supposed to mean himself by the ' other ' whom he will not name.
kEIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
had been an evident dread of the humour which might be shown by the Lower House ; and measures had been taken to secure assistance there which might be depended upon.1 Meantime Northumberland's friends gave out that, on the trial, and since the trial, he had exerted himself in Somerset's interests with unparalleled gen- erosity. The execution was delayed perhaps to give colour to the story, and it was reported first that the King had granted a free pardon ; 2 next it was said that a pardon had been offered, but that the Duke, counting on his own or his friends' power, would not accept it, and had flung back the generous overtures of the council with scorn and insolence.3 The death of his brother was brought back against him with ingenious misrepre- sentation.4 His arrogance, it was pretended, could no longer be endured, and, should he escape punishment, he would throw the whole realm into confusion to revenge himself.6
1 ' A letter to be written to the Lord Chancellor to cause search to be made how many of the Parliament House be dead since the last session, to the intent that grave and wise men might be elected to supply their place, for the avoiding of the mis- order that hath been noted in sundry young men and others of small judg- ment. ' — Privy Council Register, MS. October 28, 1551. The Council had never ventured on a second trial of the disposition of the country. The same Parliament continued to sit which was elected in 1547.
2 John ab Ulmis to Bullinger :
Epistolce TIQUKIZOE.
3 Burgoyne to Calvin : Ibid.
4 ' It is notorious to every one that he was the occasion of his bro- ther's death, who was beheaded on his information, instigated by I know not what hatred and rivalry.' —Ibid. Elizabeth, a better au- thority than Burgoyne, said that, so anxious was Somerset to save the admiral, that those who were deter- mined on his death found it neces- sary to prevent an interview between the brothers. — Supra.
5 Burgoyne to Calvin.
EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 47
Calvin, more keen- sighted than the correspondent who furnished him with these stories, meditated a re- monstrance to the King, with a caution against the advisers who were betraying him.1 In England the general indignation could not be concealed by the loud applauses of the revolutionists. It was likely enough that, were Somerset free, there would be a convulsion ; but men could not be convinced that any change would be an evil which would deliver them from the hated Northumberland.2
No alteration could be expected in the popular feel- ing, and the irritation would be inflamed by longer delay. The execution was fixed at last for the j_-2 morning of the 22nd of January. January 22.
As an attempt at rescue was anticipated, an order of council again commanded all inhabitants of the city or the suburbs to keep to their houses. A thousand men-at-arms brought in from the country were drawn up on Tower Hill, and with the gendarmerie formed a ring round the scaffold ; but the proclamation was not more effectual at the execution than at the trial. As the day dawned, the great square and every avenue of
1 Addcbat ille te in animo habere de duels morte nescis quid adversus nostros homines scribere immo ad regem ipsum. — Valerandus Pollanus Joanni Calvino : Epistola TIGU- BIN.ZE.
2 The new coinage, good as it was, could find no favour, from the dread and suspicion in which the
Duke of Northumberland was held. ' December 16, there was a pro- clamation for the new coin, that no man should speak ill of it : for be- cause the people said divers .... that there was the ragged staff . . . it . .'—Imperfect Fragment in the Grey Friars' Chronicle.
48
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [en. 28.
approach to it were thronged with spectators, pressing on all sides against the circle of armed men.
A little before eight o'clock the Tower guard brought up their prisoner. Somerset's countenance was singularly handsome, and both his features and his person were marked with an habitual expression of noble melancholy. Amidst his many faults he was every inch a gentleman. He was dressed in the splen- did costume which he had worn in receptions of state. As he stepped upon the scaffold, he knelt and said a short prayer ; he then rose, and, bowing to the people, spoke bareheaded.1
1 Masters and good fellows. I am come hither to die ; but a true and faithful man as any was unto the King's Majesty and to his realm. But I am condemned by a law whereunto I am subject, as we all, and therefore to show obedience I am content to die ; wherewith I am well content, being a thing most heartily welcome to me ; for the which I do thank God, taking it for a sin- gular benefit as ever might have come to me otherwise. For, as I am a man, I have deserved at God's hand many deaths ; and it has pleased his goodness, whereas He might have taken me suddenly, \;hat I should neither have known Him nor myself, thus now to visit me and call me with this present death as you do see,
1 There are several reports of Somerset's last words. That in the text is from an MS. printed by Sir Henry Ellis, which is simpler and shorter than the version given by Foxe and Holinshed, and was most
likely the nucleus out of which the latter accounts were expanded. I have added one sentence, that marked between brackets, from Burgoyne's letter to Calvin.
(552-1 EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 49
where I have had time to remember and acknowledge Him, and to know also myself, for the which I do thank Him most heartily. And, my friends, more I have to say to you concerning religion : I have been always, being in authority, a further er of it to the glory of God to the uttermost of my power ; whereof I am nothing soriy, but rather have cause and do rejoice most gladly that I have so done, for the greatest benefit of God that ever I had, or any man might have in this world, be- seeching you all to take it so, and to follow it on still ; for, if not, there will follow and come a worse and great plague/
He was still speaking, when the crowd began sud- denly to wave and shift. Through the breathless silence a noise was heard like the trampling of the £eet of a large number of men approaching :^ some thought it was a rescue, some one thing, some another ; shouts rose, away ! away ! the packed multitude attempted to scat- ter, and as the sound had created the alarm, the alarm now increased the sound. Some cried that it thundered, some that an army was coming down from heaven, some felt the earth shake under their feet. The mystery was merely that a company of soldiers, who had been ordered to be at Tower Hill by eight o'clock, and had found themselves late, were coming at a run through an ad- joining street ; l but no one thought of looking for a reasonable cause. ' There was a rumbling/ says Ha- chyn,2 ' as it had been guns shooting, and great horses
1 Stow was present, and ascertained carefully the origin of the alarm. 2 MACHYN'S Diary, January 22.
VOL. V. 4
50 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
coming. A thousand fell to the ground for fear, for that they on the one side thought no other but that the one was killing the other ; a hundred fell into the Tower ditch, and some ran away for fear/
In the midst of the confusion, Sir Anthony Browne was seen forcing his horse through the throng towards the scaffold, and above the clamour rose a shout of 'Pardon, pardon ; a pardon from the King.'
Had Somerset been deceived, it would have been a cruel aggravation of his suffering ; but he knew North- omberland too well.
He had stood in the front of the scaffold with his cap in his hand, waiting till the noise should cease. At the cry of a pardon he exclaimed : ' There is no such thing, good people ; there is no such thing/ His voice quieted them, and h^ went on with his address : —
' It is the ordinance of Grod thus to die, wherewith we must be content ; [I beseech you do not grieve for my fortunes ; keep yourselves quiet and still, and make no disturbance, or attempt to save me, for I do not de- sire a longer life ;] and let us now pray together for the King's Majesty, to whose Grace I have always been a faithful, true, and most loving subject, desirous al- ways of his most prosperous success in all his affairs, and ever glad of the furtherance and helping forward of the commonwealth of his realm/
At the concluding words voices answered, ' Yes, yes, yes/ Some one cried above the rest, ' This is found now too true/
The Duke then drew off his rings, and gave them to
1552.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 51
the executioner. Dropping his cloak, lie unbuckled his sword,- which he presented to the Lieutenant of the Tower, and, after a few words with the Dean of Christ Church, who had attended him, he loosened his shirt- collar, and knelt quietly before the block. Three times he was heard to say, ' Lord Jesus, save me.' The heads- man's arm rose, fell, and all was over.
The English public, often wildly wrong on general questions, are good judges, for the most part, of personal character ; and so passionately was Somerset loved, that those who were nearest the scaffold started forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood. His errors were forgotten in the tragedy of his end ; and the historian who in his life sees much to censure, who, had he recovered his Protectorate, would, perhaps, have been obliged to repeat the same story of authority unwisely caught at and unwisely used, can find but good words only for the victim of the treachery of Northumber- land.
In revolutions the most excellent things are found ever in connection with the most base. The enthusiast for the improvement of mankind works side by side with the adventurer, to whom change is welcome, that he may better his fortune in the scramble : and thus it is that patriots and religious reformers show in fairest colours when their cause is ungained, when they are a struggling minority chiefly called upon to suffer. Gold and silver will not answer for the purposes of a curt en cy till they are hardened with some interfusion of courser metal ; and truth and justice, when they have forced
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 28
their way to power, make a compromise with the world, and accept some portion of the world's spirit as the price at which they may exercise their ever limited dominion. So it is at the best : too often, as the devil loves most to mar the fairest works, the good, when success is gained, are pushed aside as dreamers, or used only as a shield for the bad deeds of their confederates ; they are happy if their own nature escape infection from the instruments which they use, and from the elements in which they are compelled to work.
While the lay ministers' of Edward VI. were ' sowing the wind/ where the harvest in due time would follow, Archbishop Oranmer, keeping aloof more and more from them and their doings, or meddling in them only to protest, was working silently at the English Prayer- book. ISTo plunder of Church or Crown had touched the hands of Cranmer. No fibre of political intrigue, or crime, or conspiracy could be traced to the palace at Lambeth. He had lent himself, it was true, in his too great eagerness to carry out the Reformation, to the persecution and deposition of Bonner and Gardiner ; but his share1 had been slight in the more recent acts
1 Underbill, ' the hot gospeller, tells in his Narrative how in the palmy days of Northumberland he arrested the Vicar of Stepney, 'Abbot quondam of Tower Hill,' and carried him to Croydon before the Archbishop. The vicar had dis- turbed the preachers in Stepney Church, caused the bells to be rung when they were at sermon, and chal-
lenged their doctrine in the pulpit. 'The Archbishop was too full of lenity,' ' a little he rebuked him, and bid him do no more so.' The Puritan's zeal was kindled. ' My Lord/ said Underbill, ' methinks you are too gentle unto so stout a Papist.' — 'We have no law to punish them,' said the Archbishop. — 'No law ? my Lord,' the gospeller ex-
I552-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 53
of violence which recovered to the Catholics the hearts of the English people ; and to the last he was considered \)y the ultras as timid and intellectually weak.
Whether the charge of timidity was true, he had an opportunity of showing when Edward died and North- umberland recanted ; when the noisy tongues of the gospellers were heard only at a safe distance, and the so-called timid ones remained to witness to their faith in suffering. Happily for his memory, and happily for the Church of England, tho Archbishop was more nobly occupied than the ( gospellers ' desired to see him.
As the translation of the Bible bears upon it the imprint of the mind of Tyndal, so, while the Church of England remains, the image of Cranmer will be seen reflected on the calm surface of the Liturgy. The most beautiful portions of it are translations from the Bre- viary ; yet the same prayers translated by others would not be those which chime like church bells in the ears of the English child. The translations, and the ad- dresses which are original, have the same silvery melody of language, and breathe the same simplicity of spirit. So long as Cranmer trusted himself, and would not let himself be dragged beyond his convictions, he was the representative of the feelings of the best among
claimed, ' if I had your authority, I would be so hold to unvicar him, or minister some sharp punishment unto him. Tf ever it come to their turn, they will show you no such favour.' — « Well,' said the Arch- bishop, ' if God so provide, we must |
abide it.' — ' Surely,' said Underbill, ' God will never thank you for this, but rather take the sword from such as will not use it upon his enemies.' — -UNDERBILL'S Narrative, MS. Harleian, 425.
54 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
his countrymen. With the reverent love for the past, which could appropriate its excellencies, he could feel at the same time the necessity for change. While he could no longer regard the sacraments with a super- stitious idolatry, he saw in them ordinances divinely appointed, and therefore especially, if inexplicably, sacred.
In this temper, for the most part, the English Church services had now, after patient labour, been at length completed by him, and were about to be laid before Parliament. They had grown slowly. First had come the primers of Henry VIII.; then the Litany was added ; and then the first Communion-book. The next step was the Prayer-book of 1549 ; and now at last the complete Liturgy, which survives after three hundred years. In a few sentences only, inserted apparently under the influence of Ridley, doctrinal theories were pressed beyond the point to which opinion was legitimately gravitating. The priest was converted absolutely into a minister, the altar in.to a table, the eucharist into a commemoration, and a commemoration only. But these peculiarities were uncongenial with the rest of the Liturgy, with which they refuse to har- monize ; and o£ the final establishment of the Church of England, were dropped or modified.1 They were, in
* Prayer-book of 1549.
The priest shall first receive the communion in botli kinds, and next deliver it to other minis- ters, if any be there
Prayer-book 0/1552.
Then shall the minis- ter first receive the com- munion in both kinds himself; and next de- liver it to other urinis-
Prayer-book of Elizabeth.
Then shall the min- ister first receive the communion in both kinds himself ; and then proceed to deliver thp
t552.j EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OP SOMERSET. 55
fact, the seed of vital alterations, for which the nation was unprepared; which, had Edward lived two years longer, would have produced, first, the destruction of the Church as a body politic, and then an after-fruit of re-action more inveterate than even the terrible one
|
Prayer-book 0/1549. |
Prayer-book of 1552. |
Prayer-book of Elizabeth. |
|
present, that they may- |
ters, if there be any |
same to the bishops, |
|
be ready to help the |
present, that they may |
priests, and deacons in |
|
chief minister, and after |
help the chief minister ; |
like manner, if any be |
|
to the people. And |
and after to the people |
present ; and after that |
|
when he delivereth the |
in their hands, kneeling. |
to the people also in |
|
sacrament of the body of |
And when he delivereth |
their hands, all meekly |
|
Christ, he shall say to |
the bread, he shall say — |
kneeling. And when he |
|
every one — |
delivereth the bread to |
|
|
any one, he shall say — |
||
|
The body of our Lord |
Take and eat this in |
The body of our Lord |
|
Jesus Christ preserve |
remembrance that Christ |
Jesus Christ, which was |
|
thy body and soul to |
died for thee, and feed |
given for thee, preserve |
|
everlasting life. |
on him in thy heart by |
thy body and soul to |
|
And the minister |
faith with thanksgiv- |
everlasting life. Take |
|
delivering the sacrament |
ing. |
and eat this in remem- |
|
of the blood, and giv- |
And the minister that |
brance that Christ died |
|
ing every one to drink |
delivereth the cup shall |
for thee, and feed on him |
|
once, and no more, shall |
say— |
in thy heart by faith |
|
say— |
with thanksgiving. |
|
|
And the minister |
||
|
that delivereth the cup |
||
|
to any one shall say — |
||
|
The blood of our |
Drink this in re- |
The blood of our Lord |
|
Lord Jesus Christ, |
membrance that Christ's |
Jesus Christ, which was |
|
which ivas shed for thee, |
blood was shed for thee, |
shed for thee, preserve |
|
preserve thy body and |
and be thankful. |
thy body and soul to |
|
soul to everlasting life. |
everlasting life. Drink |
|
|
this in remembrance |
||
|
that Christ's blood was |
||
|
shed for thee and be |
||
|
thankful. |
Similarly in the consecration of the elements, the sign of the cross was di- rected to be used in 1549, and omitted in 1552- There were other changes. The discerning reader will see the spirit of them in these com-
55 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
under Mary. But Edward died before the Liturgy could be further tampered with ; and from amidst the foul weeds in which its roots were buried it stands up beautiful, the one admirable thing which the unhappy reign produced. Prematurely born, and too violently forced upon the country, it was, nevertheless, the right thing, the thing which essentially answered to the spiritual demands of the nation. They rebelled against it, because it was precipitately thrust upon them ; but services which have overlived so many storms speak for their own excellence, and speak for the merit of the workman.
As the Liturgy was prepared for Parliament and people, so for the Convocation and the clergy there were drawn up a body of articles of religion : forty-two of them, as they were first devised ; thirty-nine, as they are now known to the theological student. These also have survived, and, like other things in this country, have survived their utility, and the causes which gave them birth. Articles of belief they have been called ; articles of teaching ; articles of peace. Protestants who have restored the right of private judgment, who con- demn so emphatically the articles added by the Council of Trent to the Christian creed, not for themselves only, but because human beings are not permitted to bind propositions of their own upon the consciences of be- lievers, will scarcely pretend that they are the first. If it be unlawful for a Catholic council to enlarge the dog- matic system of Christianity, no more can it be permitted to a local Church tq impose upon the judgment a series
I552-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 57
of intricate assertions' on theological subtleties which the most polemical divines will not call vital, or on ques- tions of public and private morality, where the con- science should be the only guide.
The death of the Duke of Somerset was followed by the trial and execution of Yane, Partridge, Stanhope, and Sir Thomas Arundel. The condemnation of Arundel was effected with great difficulty. The jury were shut up on a day in January twenty-four hours, without fire, food, or drink, before they would agree upon a verdict, and the four sufferers died protesting their innocence.
On the 30th of January Northumberland met Par- liament.
The Prayer-book passed without difficulty. Cuth- bert Tunstal, the last bishop who would have opposed it, had joined Gardiner in the Towjer, the letter found among Somerset's papers having furnished an excuse to lay hands upon him ; and a second Act was passed for uniformity of religious worship — persons who refused to come to church being liable to censure or excom- munication, those who attended any other service to imprisonment.
A zeal was affected also for the more practical parts of religion, the humour of the people becoming danger- ous, and the more earnest among the Reformers insist- ing on being heard. In a sermon before the King, Ridley had spoken of the distress to which the spoliation of public charities had reduced the London poor. Ed- ward sent for him afterwards, thanked him for what he
&E1GN OF EDWARD THE SIX 77 f. [CH. 28.
February.
had said, and asked him what should be done. Too wise to refer such a question to the council, the Bishop said that the corporation of the city were the best persons to consult with, and Edward wrote a letter to Sir Richard Dobbs, the mayor, with which Ridley charged himself. The corporation, in the last few years, had shown in favourable contrast with the Government. While the dependents of Somerset and Northumberland were appropriating and absorbing hospitals and schools, the Lord Mayor and aldermen had founded others at their own expense ; and now, on the invitation of the King, they proceeded in the same direction with more effective energy. The House of the Grey Friars was repaired and refitted for the education of poor children, under the name of Christ's Hospital. St Thomas's Hospital, which had been suppressed, was purchased by the corporation for the reception of the impotent and diseased poor. St Bartholomew's was surrendered by the Crown into the mayor's hands, with fresh endowments ; and the royal palace of Bridewell, a little later, with the estate which had belonged to the Hospital of the Savoy, was made over as a workhouse for able-bodied labourers out of employ.1
1 HOLINSHED, STOW'S Survey of London. Bridewell was granted by the Crown at the particular entreaty of Ridley, whose characteristic letter to Cecil on the subject survives.
Good Mr Cecil,
I must be a suitor to you in our master Christ's cause. I beseech you be good unto him. The matter
is, sir, alas, he thath lyen too long abroad, as you do know, without lodging, in the streets of London, both hungry, naked, and cold. Now thanks be unto Almighty God, the citizens are willing to refresh him, and to give him both meat, drink, clothing, and tiring. But alas, sir, they lack lodging for him ; for in
i5$2.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET.
Not to be left too far behind by the citizens, the Government exerted themselves in the same direction. An Act was passed' in Parliament for the collection of alms for the poor in every parish. The contribution.?, were nominally voluntary, but payment might be en- forced by the reproofs of the clergy, the censures of the Church, and by punishment at the discretion of the Bishop.1 The scandalous frauds in the manufacture of woollen cloth having injured the credit of the trade,2 the sheep-farming no longer yielded its disproportionate profits ; the tillage question could, therefore, be taken up again with a chance of success. Commissioners were appointed to hold district courts, to empanel juries, and compel the owners to bring their recent
some one house they say they are fain to lodge three families under one roof. Sir, there is a wide large house of the King's Majesty's called Bride- well that would wonderful well serve to lodge Christ in, if he might find such good friends in the Court as would procure in his cause. Surely, I have so good an opinion in the King's Majesty, that if Christ had such faithful and hearty friends that would heartily speak for him, he should undoubtedly speed at the King's Majesty's hands. Sir, I have promised my brethren the citizens in this matter to move you, because I take you for one that feareth God, and would not that Christ should lie no more abroad in the street. There is a rumour that one goeth about to buy that house of the King's Ma-
jesty, and to pull it down. If there be any such thing, for God's sake speak you in our Master's cause. I have written unto Mr Gates more at large in this matter. I join you with him and all that look for Christ's benediction in the latter day. If Mr Cheke was with you, in whose recovery God be blessed, I would surely make him in this be- half one of Christ's special advocates, or rather one of his principal proc- tors ; and surely I would not be said nay. And thus I wish you in Christ ever well to fare. From my house at Fulham this present Sunday. Yours in Christ,
NIC. LONDON. —Lansdoune MSS. 3.
1 5 Edward VI. cap. 2.
a Ibid. cap. 6.
60 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28
pastures under the plough.1 The Flanders Jews hav- ing made the Government susceptible on money ques- tions, they passed a Statute of Usury, which formed a curious complement to their general administration of the finances. By the 9th of the 37th of Henry VIII., the legal interest of money was limited to ten per cent. ' But this was not meant/ it was now declared,2 ' as if to allow usury, which was a thing unlawful/ ' a vice most odious and detestable ; ' but only ' for the avoiding of more ill and inconvenience that before that time was used : ' and since a sense of their duties in this matter 1 could by no godly teaching and persuasion sink into the hearts of divers greedy, uncharitable, and covetous persons/ it was decreed that thenceforward no interest of any kind should be demanded or given upon any loan, under pain of forfeiture, imprisonment, and fine.
So far all had gone smoothly. On other matters the Commons were more suspicious and less tractable. The forfeiture of the estates of the Duke of Somerset gave occasion to a sharp debate. A Protestant heresy bill, introduced 'for the protection of the King's subjects from such heresies as might happen by strangers dwell- ing among them/ was referred to a committee of bishops ; but fell through and was lost.3 Northumber- land, intending to appropriate the estates of the bishopric of Durham, brought in a bill to deprive Tunstal, on a charge of treason, and succeeded, in spite of Cranmer's
1 5 Edward VI. cap. 5. - Ibid. cap. 20.
Lords Journals, 5 and 6 Edward VI.
1552.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 61
opposition, in carrying it through the Lords. The Lower House, however, required that Tunstal's accusers should be brought face to face with him, and that he should be heard in his defence, which for many reasons would be inconvenient. The Duke, therefore, withdrew his bill, and proceeded by commis- sion, which did the work for him less scrupulously, but did not improve his reputation. Cranmer refused to sit, and the Bishop of Durham was deposed by a court composed of laymen.
Still more significant was the treatment which a new Statute of Treason received in the House of Commons. As the administration became more detested, incendiary pamphlets and handbills multiplied, and it was desired to restore in some degree the sharp discipline of the last reign. The Lords again complied.1 The Commons rejected the Government measure, and drew another of their own.2 In the absence of a copy of the rejected bill, it is impossible to say what it contained ; it may be conjectured, however, with some certainty, that it did not contain a clause which appears in the Act as it was finally passed, a clause providing that no person should in future be attainted or convicted of treason under that or any other statute, unless the charges in
1 Tt is easy to see why : there wore but forty-seven lay peers who had seats in this Parliament ; thirty- one was the fullest attendance during this session, the Catholic lords syste- matically absenting them/selves. The council and their friends, therefore,
being punctually at their seats, and having bishops of their own creation at their backs, were certain in almost all cases of a majority.
2 Commons Journals. 5 and 6 Edward VI.
REIGN" OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
the indictment should have been first proved in the presence of the accused by two witnesses at least.1
Northumberland's endeavours to fill the vacant seats in the House with wise and discreet persons had been too successful. The composition did not please him,
and on the I ^th of April the first Parliament April 15. ~ ,*
of Edward YI. was dissolved.
Outward events, however, continued to favour him, tempting him to believe himself irresistible, and lead- ing him on to the fatal step which for the moment made shipwreck of the Eeformation. The English council had refused the application of Duke Maurice and the princes of the League for assistance. They had declined to take part in a movement which was to break the power of Charles Y. in Germany for ever, and give peace for three quarters of a century to the Lutheran churches. Magdeburg still held out ; but the secret of Maurice's intentions was so well kept that, although Charles suspected him of voluntary negligence, he seems to have entertained no serious misgivings about him.
1 'Provided always, and be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that no person shall be indicted, ar- raigned, condemned, convicted, or attainted for any treasons that now be, or hereafter shall be, which shall hereafter be perpetrated, committed, or done, unless the same offender or offenders be thereof accused by two lawful accusers, which said accusers, at the time of the arraignment of the party accused, if they be then living, shall be brought in person
before the party so accused, and avow and maintain that that they have to say against the said party, to prove him guilty of the treason or offences contained in the bill of in- dictment laid against the party ar- raigned.'— 5 and 6 Edward, cap. xi. sec. 9. The Act containing this salutary order was repealed by the 1st of Mary, or the reform of the English treason law would have been antedated by a century.
I55I-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 63
He had spies in the Duke's camp ; but his spies played him false, or were themselves deceived ; and while Maurice was corresponding with England and France, and making preparations for a general revolt, the Em- peror, in fancied security, had arranged to go to Inn- spruck, to be in the neighbourhood of the Council of Trent, when the Protestant representatives should pre sent themselves there in the course of the winter.
On leaving Augsburg Charles ventured on a measure of imprudent intimidation. His inability to enforce the Interim there, even in his own presence, and under his own eyes, had exasperated him. On the 26th of August the Bishop of Arras sent for the Pro- testant clergy, accused them briefly of disobedience to the Imperial rescripts ; and requiring them to take an oath to depart out of Germany, he ordered them at once, and without an hour's delay, to leave their houses and the town. In vain they appealed to the law, and claimed the privileges of citizens. They were driven out, and Sir Richard Morryson, writing from the spot, describes the consequences of this high-handed tyranny. ' Men do much marvel/ he wrote to the council, ' that M. dj Arras durst venture to do this ; more, that he durst do it at this time ; more than all, that the Em- peror would consent to a thing that so easily might have turned him, his Court, yea, his whole city, to trouble ; but what doth greedy ambition stick at, or what doth not desperate desire force men to attempt ? The Emperor's friends be fleeting again, his enemies ready to do their worst ; he must, therefore, make
64 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [en. 28.
friends of Julius III., his surety so long as it lasteth. He must do displeasure to as many as he may, so his friend Julius be thereby pleased. The wound is yet green, and not so felt as perhaps it will be when time and trouble shall lay open the multitude and greatness of these men's miseries. Men and women are at this present so astounded at the whole of their misery that they have no leisure to peruse the parts thereof. There be few shops but some men or women be seen weeping in them ; few streets but there be men in plumps, that look as they had rather do worse than suffer their pre- sent thraldom. On Friday last there were about a hundred women at the Emperor's gates, howling, and asking in their outcries where they should christen their children, or whether their children not christened should be taken as heathen dogs. They would have gone to the Emperor's house, but our Catholic Spaniards kept them out, reviling them. The Papist churches have for all this no more customers than they had — not ten of the townsmen in some of their greatest syna- gogues. The churches are locked up ; the people sit weeping at home, and do say they will beg among Protestants, rather than live in wealth where they must be Papists. Babes new born lie unchristened ; they will have no Latin christening.'1
The German troops mutinied ; they were ' almost all wont to go to the Protestant service, and talked
1 Morryson and Wotton to the Council : MS. Cypher, September I, State Paper Office.
1 55 1.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 65
madly of the banishment of their preachers.'1 Fresh companies of Spaniards were brought into the town, and the Germans marched beyond the walls.
Having lighted the match with his own hands, the Emperor set out for Innspruck, leaving Maurice behind him to follow out his own plans at his leisure. The Italian quarrel had expanded, and war with France was now openly declared. The Turkish fleet, as in the old times of Francis, came down into the Mediterranean as the allies of France ; a Turkish army again threatened Hungary ; and in the same spirit and in the same policy the French Court concluded a secret league with the Protestant princes. Maurice undertook to keep Charles in play with fair words till the moment came to strike, and, with the spring, the French troops were to enter Germany.
Over the thin crust of the mine which was to burst under their feet the Council of Trent recom- menced their sessions on the ist of September. The Italian and Spanish bishops were duly in their places ; the German Catholics were reported as on the way ; the Diet had undertaken for the appearance of the Lutherans ; the French bishops had not come, and nothing was known of them. France was the point to which the eyes of the fathers were most anxiously turn- ing. If France was true to the Church, her differences with the Emperor could be soon composed, and all would be well. But France, if the eldest child of the Church,
1 Morryson and Wotton to the Council, September I : MS. State Paper Office.
VOL. V. 6
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
ICH. 28.
was also the prodigal child, forgetful of her duties to "her parent. Instead of bishops, there came a letter from the King, addressed to the assembly— not as concilium, a holy council with authority ; but as comentua, a con- vention of mere human individuals. With many doubts they turned the covering over before they would ac- knowledge the irreverent despatch with reading it.1 .When the seal was broken they found professions of the utmost devotion to the Church, but a regret that the Grallican prelates would not be able to attend.
The terms on which the Lutherans were to be ad- mitted were still unsettled. To the Pope, Charles had promised that they should appear as criminals. To Maurice he had said ambiguously that the council should be free. On this point Maurice made his first open move. He now demanded that the Protestant theolo- gians should speak and vote with the Catholic bishops, and that the Scriptures should be the one single rule of the controversy.2 Further, although Charles had pro- mised the Protestants that their persons should be in no danger, the burning of Huss by the Council of Constance showed that Catholic prelates
October.
1 The Spanish bishops were for refusing altogether. As a middle course, the French ambassador was invited to request as a favour that the letter might be received ; but the ambassador, with the utmost politeness, said, that he had no com- mission. At last a learned prelate suggested that, if they refused a letter which was addressed to them
as a convention, they could not decently receive communications from the Germans, who called tbem concilium malignantium ; and on the whole, therefore, it was decided to read. — PALLAVICINO.
2 Mont to the Council : MS. Germany, bundle 15, State Paper Office. Compare SLEIDAN.
1 55 1.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 67
held ordinary engagements lightly when they had a chance of destroying a heretic. Maurice had a copy taken, therefore, of the safe-conduct extorted by Huss's followers from the Synod of Bale, and he forwarded a duplicate for the signature of the fathers at Trent.
The first step was followed instantly by a second. Unpermitted by the Emperor, he made terms with Magdeburg, conceding, under a show of fair words, every point for which the city was contending; and
the garrison immediately took service in Mau-
-vr , P , November.
rice s own army. JN ext, having so far thrown
off the mask, he sent a formal demand for the liberation of the Landgrave of Hesse ; the Elector Palatine, the Duke of Mecklenburg, the King of Denmark, Albert of Brandenburg, and Ferdinand of Austria, attaching their signatures to the petition.
The Emperor still affected to be blind to Maurice's attitude. It was his policy to avoid seeing what, if forced upon him, he would be obliged to resent, and, resenting, was for the moment unable to punish. About the Landgrave he answered vaguely neither yes nor no. On this and other matters he could speak best, he said, in person, and he desired that Maurice would follow him to Innspruck : meantime, the ambassadors of the
1 The terms of submission were not generally made known, but the truth was felt before it was acknow- ledged. A letter from Hamburg to the English council, on the 4th of November, says: ' The city of Magdeburg hath taken good success
in this treaty. They have a joyful peace. Duke Maurice is their de- fender, and hath taken all the soldiers of the city and camp to serve him.' — • John Brigantine to the Council: MS. Germany, bundle 15, State Paper Office
68
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [011.28.
Lutheran States — among them Sleidan the historian — presented themselves at Trent to request the safe- conduct for the divines,, and to settle the terms on which these divines were to be present. The differences between the intentions of one party and the expectations of the other became at once apparent. The ambassadors gave in a series of propositions on which their representatives ex- pected to be heard. The Papal legates wondered at the indecency of a desire to argue where the only fit course was submission. The safe-conduct was drawn and signed ; but it was altered from the Bohemian pattern, and the ambassadors would not receive it. The Arch- bishop of Toledo, who was acting for the Emperor, en- deavoured to persuade them ; but he could only prevail upon them to refer to Maurice, and Maurice ordered them to stand to their demands, and not to yield an inch. Fearful of provoking the Emperor, the fathers consented to grant the ambassadors a private audience, in which the Lutheran views could be generally stated.1 The ambassador of "Wurtemburg required a reconstitu- tion of the council ; the Pope, he said, was a party to the suit, and was no fit judge in his own cause. The ambassador of Saxe insisted most on the safe-conduct, with an express allusion to Constance and the declara- tion of the bishops there that faith need not be kept with heretics.2 The so-called heretics, he said, further, must
1 SLEIDAN.
2 Pallavicino exclaims angrily that the bishops at Constance de- clared nothing of the kind. They ruled only that safe- conducts granted
hy temporal princes did not bind ecclesiastical judges. The modern Romanist will, perhaps, decline all defence of a council which he regards as half heretical.
1552.] EXECUTION Of THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 69
be admitted to vote ; the past resolutions of the council must be reconsidered where they were at variance with the Confession of Augsburg. Finally, he desired to know what was to be said of the other resolution of the Council of Constance, that a council was above a Pope. This last question, says Pallavicino, drove the fathers at once among the reefs and breakers, of which Clement VII. long before had warned the Emperor.
Thus the time wore away till March, when the match had burnt to the powder. Maurice moved on Augsburg, which opened its gates to him. A French army ap- peared on the Rhine, and Protestant Germany was once more openly in arms.
Panic-stricken a second time, the bishops at Trent melted like the snow before the returning sun. Maurice, after restoring the expelled preachers, summoned a Diet to meet at Passau in July ; and while the French took possession of Yerdun and Metz, he himself, with the Duke of Mecklenburg, made his way by rapid marches into the Tyrol. Charles had invited him to Innspruck, and to Innspruck he would go. The mountain passes were fortified, but the hatred of the Tyrolese for the Spaniards was so intense, that they offered their services as guides, and betrayed the defences. The detachments which had been set to guard them were cut in pieces ; and so swift were the movements of the Grerman army, that the first intimation which Charles received that they had left Augsburg was the sound of their guns but a few miles distant. It was said that a mutiny among the Lanzknechte delayed the
76 REIGN- OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
last advance of Maurice, or the Emperor would have been a prisoner. It was said, also, that Maurice was unwilling to burden himself with so considerable a cap- tive ; ' he had no cage large enough for such a bird/ But Charles, to save himself, had to fly through a midnight storm. He himself weak with gout, in a litter, his Court with such comforts as they could carry on their backs and no more, made their way in the darkness through the mountain valleys and across the swollen streams to the Venetian frontier. Maurice did not follow. He gave his troops the plunder of the Imperial palace ; for himself, it was enough to know that he had broken the spell which threatened Germany with slavery. In July he dictated the terms of the pacification of Passau ; and the Em- peror, at war with France, with the Turks in the Medi- terranean, and the council for which he had so long la- boured scattered to all the winds, gave up the battle with the Reformation. The Landgrave and John Frederick were set free. The Confession of Augsburg was again acknowledged. The Imperial chamber was reorganized as the Protestants had so long demanded. These points, few but vital, satisfied the moderate desires of the Lutheran princes ; and making up his mind to leave them thenceforward unmolested in their freedom, Charles directed his remaining strength upon France.
Broken as he was, England was now finally safe from the Emperor. In his present weakness, whatever party were dominant in England, Puritan, Anglican, or Papist, Charles Y. would equally be compelled to re-
i$52.] EXECUTION Of THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 7!
cognize them, so long as he had France upon his hands; he would not only have to treat with them with courtesy, but be glad to accept their support. The opportunity was inviting. It tempted the Duke of Northumberland into dreams which, so long as Charles was powerful, he would not have dared to contemplate.
But, before I pass to the last phase of the Protestant administration, I must say something of the fortunes which during all this time had befallen Ireland. The men who had run so strange a course at home, had produced results no less astonishing in the sister coun- try.
The Celtic and Celto-Norman chiefs, with whom anarchy was chronic and peace the least endurable of calamities, had for the last five years of the reign of Henry VIII., under the mild rule of Sir Anthony St Leger, remained in comparative quiet. The isolation of England in the midst of enemies, the French invasion in 1545, the internecine war with the Scots, had given them excellent opportunities for insurrection. But the temptation left them unaffected. Companies of gallow- glass served in Henry's camp at Boulogne, and even in Leinster and Connaught there was a longer respite from murder and pillage than those provinces had experienced since the conquest.
Some part of his success St Leger owed to himself, but he owed more to fortune. The reins were placed in his hands, when, after a series of defeats, the Irish lords had gone to London, and had seen for the first time in their lives the wealth and resources of the coun-
72 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [en. 28.
try against which they had struggled ; when they had been rewarded with peerages for the trouble which they had occasioned, and had been permitted to appropriate, on easy terms, the estates of the Irish monasteries.
The spoliation for a time compromised their ortho- doxy, and committed them to English interests. It was not till Henry was gone that Ireland resumed her na- tural appearance. The policy of St Leger had been ' to make things quiet ; ' l to overlook small offences so long as the general order was unbroken, and to be contented if each year the forms of law could be pushed something deeper beyond the borders of the Pale. His greatest success had been in prevailing upon an O'Toole to accept the decent dignity of Sheriff of Wicklow. As a further merit, and a great one, he had governed economically. While the home exchequer was so heavily strained, the Deputy of Ireland had made but few applications for money— conciliation was cheaper than force, and he had been happy in having to deal with a set of circum- stances which enabled him to conciliate. His maxim had been — Ireland for the Irish ; he had recommended Henry to return to the old plan of appointing an Irish deputy, and he had especially recommended the Earl of Ormond.2 He had naturally not pleased every one. The all- censorious Chancellor Allen had occasionally found something to condemn, and even with Ormond the deputy had not always been on terms ; but so long
1 Edward Walsh to the Duke of Northumberland : Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. iv. State Paper Office.
2 Correspondence of St Leger : State Papers, vol. iii.
EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 73
as Henry lived, good management and good fortune combined on the whole in his favour, and his term of government was creditable and happy.
But the reform gusts which were borne across St George's Channel on the accession of the child King, swept the strings of the Irish harp, and woke the old music. ' If the Lords of the Council/ sighed a later deputy, ' had letten all things alone in the order King Henry left them, and meddled not to alter religion, the hurley-burleys had not happened.'1 But the Protector's mission to regenerate the world, the pillaged cathedrals, the emptied niches, and the white- washed church walls, rapidly stirred the jealousies of a passionate and sus- ceptible people, and gave the chiefs, who by this time had made themselves secure in their new properties, an opportunity for the display of their remaining devotion.
St Leger, the pilot of the calm, was unequal to the hurricane which instantly arose. He was recalled, and his place was taken by Sir Edward Bellingham.
The tourist who has visited Athlone may remember, on the edge of the town, a half-ruined castle, on which the letters E. R. [Edwardus Rex] stand out in high and distinct relief. It is one of the few surviving memorials of the brief administration of a remarkable man.
Edward Bellingham, brought up originally by the Duke of Norfolk, attracted, in 1540, the notice of Henry VIII., and was employed by him from that time forward in various secondary services. He was in
1 Sir James Crofts to the Council ; Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. iv. State Paper Office.
n
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 28.
Hungary with Sir Thomas Seymour when the Turks were at Pesth. He had been on a diplomatic mission at Brussels. He was in Wallop's army at Landrecy, and afterwards with the Earl of Surrey at Boulogne. His most distinguished achievement hitherto had been when, as Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight, he repulsed the attacks of the French in 1545.
When he arrived at Dublin the English Pale was fringed with a line of fire. The Irish harbours swarmed with pirates. Catholic refugees, disfrocked monks, thieves, outlaws, vagabonds, had poured across the Channel, and, under the decent cloak of sufferers for religion, were dispersed among the castles of the Irish. French and Scottish agents had followed, with plans for a French invasion, for the restoration of Gerald Fitz- gerald, for the fortification of the Skerries, and the maintenance there in permanence of a French fleet.1
1 Irish MSS. Edward VI. vols. i. and ii. State Paper Office. A- mong other French emissaries came John de Monluc, Bishop of Valence, accompanied by young James Mel- ville, then a boy of fourteen. The editor of Melville's manuscript mis- printed the date of the visit, repre- senting it as having taken place in 1545 ; the real date is 1547-8. Melville represents Edward as being on the English throne, and the Bishop's arrival is spoken of in the State Correspondence. In spite of scandal, I must borrow a page from the story.
' John de Monluc, Bishop of
Orleans, was sent ambassador from France to the queen-mother of Scot- land, sister of the Duke of Guise ; and when the said ambassador was to return to France, it pleased the queen -mother to send me with him. But the said Bishop went first to Ireland, commanded thereto by the King his master'sletter, to know more particularly the motion and like- lihood of the offer made by 0 'Neil, O'Donnell, O'Docbart, and O'Car- roll, willing to shake off the yoke of England, and become subject to the King of France. We shipped for Ireland in the month of January. "We were storm sted by the way at
EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OP SOMERSET.
To repress the insurgents who were in the field, to prevent the spread of conspiracy, to maintain the au- thority of the Government, Bellingham had no more
a little isle for seventeen days ; and after great danger of the ship and our lives, we entered Loch Foyle in Ireland, upon Shrove Tuesday. Ere we landed we sent one George Paris, who had been sent to Scot- land by the great O'Neil and his associates, who landed at the house of a gentleman who had married O'Dochart's daughter, dwelling at the side of a lake ; who came to our ship and welcomed us, and conveyed us to his house, where we rested that night. The next morning O'Dochart came and conveyed us to his house, which was a great dark tower, where we had cold cheer, as herring and biscuit, for it was Lent. There finding two English grey friars who had fled out of England, the said friars perceiving the Bishop to look very kindly to O'Dochart's daughter, who fled from him con- tinually, they brought with them a woman who spoke English to be with him ; which harlot being kept quietly in his chamber, found a little glass within a case standing in a window, for the coffers were all wet with the sea waves that fell into the ship during the storm. She, believing it had been ordained to be eaten because it had an odoriferous smell, therefore she licked it clean out, which put the Bishop in such a rage, fhat he cried out for im- patience, discovering his harlotry
and his choler in such a sort as the friars fled and the woman followed. But the Irishmen and his own serv- ants did laugh at the matter ; for it was a vial of the most precious balm that grew in Egypt, which Solyman, the Great Turk, had given in a present to the said Bishop after he had been two years ambassador for the King of France in Turkey, and was esteemed Avorth 2000 crowns. In the time that we remained at O'Dochart's house, his young daughter, who fled from the Bishop, came and sought me wherever I was, and brought a priest with her who could speak English ; and offered, if I would marry her, to go with me wherever I pleased. I gave her thanks, but told her I was but young, and had no estate, and was bound for France.
' Now the ambassador met in a secret part with O'Neil and his associates, and heard their offers and overtures. And the Patriarch of Ireland did meet him there, who was a Scotchman born, and was blind of both his eyes, and yet had been divers times at Rome by post. He did great honour to the ambassador, and conveyed him to see St Patrick's purgatory, which is like an old coal- pit which has taken fire, by reason of the smoke that came out of the hole,' &c. — Memoirs of Sir James Melville, p. 15.
76 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH [011.28.
than 900 English men-at-arms, and 500 liglit Irish horse ; and it is enough to say for him, that with this small force he accomplished his task. The State Paper Office contains many of his letters, notes, and loose memoranda. The handwriting and the spelling are alike frightful ; but the meaning, when at last arrived at, conveys an impression of resolute strength, unequalled in any other despatches of the time ; and the respect becomes intelligible with which his name was ever mentioned even by the Irish themselves.
For two years he governed. In that time he cut roads through forests, and made bogs passable. Castles rose as if by magic in the dangerous districts. The harbours were cleared, the outlaws banished, the chiefs not driven by cruelty, but drawn with a hand which they could not resist, into peace. O'Connor and O'More, two of the most troublesome, were caught, tried for treason, and their lands taken from them. But when Bellmgham had made them feel that he was stronger than they, he restored O'Connor to liberty and his estates. The laws which interfered with the marriages of English and Irish, and forbade the inheritance of half-breeds, were relaxed or abolished ; while mere rob- bery, as distinct from political conspiracy, was inexorably punished. A party of high-born marauders, who had committed an outrage in the Pale, took refuge in Thomond. O'Brien applied for their pardon, and O'Brien was one of the strongest of the Irish nobles.
Bellingham answered him thus :
'Your assured friend warns you, if you list so to
1548.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 77
take it. Of this one thing I will assure you, that those that will most entice you to take other men's causes in hand, will be the first that shall leave you if ye have need. As heretofore I have declared unto you, whatsoever he be that shall, with manifest invasion, enter, burn, and destroy the King's people, I will no more suffer it than to have my heart torn out of my body. When the King's subjects commit such offences, they are traitors and rebels, and so I will take them and use them. My Lord, this privilege I challenge, on the King my master's duty, that what of gentleness I require touching the King's affairs, it be taken and weighed as a command- ment.' 1
He advised that the offenders should be sent in upon the instant, and to advice so given it was prudent to submit.
Lord Ormond had died, leaving his heir a minor in England. St Leger, or some one about the council who took the Irish view of things, thought the presence of a chief of a clan indispensable for their good behaviour, and sent him over. Bellingham protested. It would have been better, he said, to have kept him where he was, and brought him up with English habits. ( Au- thority, it was thought, would not take place without him. I pray God,' continued Bellingham, ' rather these eyes of mine should be shut up than it should be proved true ; or that during the time of my deputation, I should not make a horse-boy sent from me to do as much as
1 Bellinghara to O'Brien ; Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. i. State Paper Office.
78 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
any should do that brought not good authority with him, how great soever they were in the land. I will not say it shall be the first day ; but in small time, God willing, it shall be done with ease/ *
There were few arrests; no hangings, except of thieves or murderers, no forays or terrible examples — only the resolutely expressed will of a man who intended to be obeyed, and whom men found it wiser to obey than to provoke. ' There was never deputy in the realm/ wrote an Irish gentleman to the Protector, ' that went the right way as he doth, both for the setting forth of God's word and his honour, and the honour of the King's Majesty to his Grace's commodity and the weal of his subjects.' 2 One special point was noted of him : a friend of Cecil's, reporting afterwards on the state of the country, said — ' For the short time Mr Bellingham had the charge here he did exceeding much good, as all men report. He was a perfect good justicer, and departed hence with clean hands.' 3 With clean hands — the one man in public employment of whom perhaps such words could be used. His successes, so far as they can be seen, were chiefly due to the woodman, the roadmaker, and the mason. His universal, system was to make the country passable, to build stout fortresses, and to place in them garrisons on whom he could depend ; and, this done, everything was done. The castle at Athlone
1 Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. i. State Paper Office.
2 Richard Brasier to the Protector : Irish MSS. Ibid.
3 Wood to Cecil : Irish MSS. Ibid.
1548.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 79
overawed the line of the Shannon ; Sir Andrew Brereton was set down at Lecale with a colony of settlers within view of the Earl of Tyrone ; another stronghold was built in Roscoinmon, another at Cork ; soldiers of Bell- ingham's own metal were placed in command, and that was enough.
The Irish Council, unused to the presence of such a man, were troubled with him, especially as he went his own way, careless of traditions, and not always re- spectful to objectors. Chancellor Allen, who had seen other deputies fall into misfortune through neglect of his advice, failed to understand that, while he had a right to guide those who were less wise than himself, his business was to obey Sir Edward Bellingham ; still less could Allen comprehend why Sir Edward, when he ob- truded his opinion, should ' vilipend him/
' My Lord Deputy,' he said, ' is the best man of war that ever I saw in Ireland, having since his coming hither done more service to the King than was done — " after the repressing of the Geraldines — in all the King's father's lifetime, notwithstanding all his charges/ ' Nevertheless/ the Chancellor complained, ' it is as well to have no council. He doth all himself. They be but a shadow, as a corpse without life or spirit. He doth all himself, and no man dare say the contrary, except sometimes little I, and that seldom. Nay, he saith at times that the King hath not so great an enemy in Ire- land as the council is ; and if they were hanged, it were a good turn. Sometimes, when he committeth a man
8o REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [en. 28.
in anger to ward, lie will say, ' Content thyself, for I do no worse to thee than I will do to the best of the coun- cil if he displease me.' ' 1
Yet Allen had a true eye for merit ; he had seen others in Belliiigham's place filling their own coffers — making parties among the Irish, and lending them- selves to the worst vices of the country. But Belling- ham was pure. The Chancellor admitted that he could see but one fault in him — that he sought ' to rule alone.'2
In the change of religion — since a change there was to be — the deputy proceeded with the same firmness ; and although wilder task was never imposed on any man than the introduction of Protestantism with a high hand among the Irish, even here he was not wholly unsuccessful. Fitzwilliam, a priest of St Patrick's, and a personal friend of the deputy, said mass there after it was prohibited. 'Mr Fitzwilliam/ he wrote, ' where I am informed that you have gone about to in- fringe the King's Majesty's injunctions, being moved of charity, I require you to omit so to do, and by au- thority I command you, as a thing that may not be suffered, you incite nor stir no such schism amongst the King's faithful and Christian subjects ; for, if you do, as by likelihood you are incited to do it, thinking, through friendship, it shall be overpassed in your behalf, trust me, as they say commonly, it shall not go with you/3
* Allen to the Council in London : Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. i. State Paper Office.
2 Ibid. 3 Ibidt
1548.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE UF SOMERSET. 81
Sir Edward was obeyed, being a man to whom disobedi- ence was difficult ; only it seems he gave no encourage- ment to the preachers. It was enough if the literal injunctions of the home Government were observed, without consigning the pulpits to voluble rhetoricians who turned their congregations into swarms of exasper- ated hornets.1
1 St Leger, at the end of 1549, informed the council ' that there had been but one sermon made in the country for three years, and that by the Bishop of Meath.'— J/S. Ibid. — That one experiment was enough to deter Bellingham from encouraging a second. The Bishop, after the first venture had been made, wrote a piteous account of the pro- spects of Protestantism, and of his own prospects, if he persisted.
'After most hearty commenda- tion, in like manner I thank you for your letter, and where by the same ye wished me to be defended from ill tongues — res est potius optabilis quam speranda. Ye have not heard such rumours as is here all the country over against me, as my friends doth shew me. One gentle- woman, unto whom I did christen a man child which beareth my name, came in great council to a friend of mine, desiring how she might find means to change her child's name. And he asked her why ? and she said, because I would not have him bear the name of an heretic. A gentleman dwelling nigh unto me for- bade his wife, which would have sent her child to be confirmed by me, so
VOL. V.
to do, saying, his child should not be confirmed by him that denied the sacrament of the altar. A friend of mine rehearsing at the market that I would preach the next Sunday, divers answered they would not come thereat, lest they should learn to be heretics. One of the lawyers declared to a multitude that it was great pity that I was not burned, for if I preach- ed heresy, so was I worthy therefore ; and if I preached right, yet was I worthy, for that I kept the truth from knowledge. This gentleman loveth no sodden meat, nor can skill but only of roasting. One of our judges said to myself that, it should be proved in my face that I preached against learning. A beneficed man of mine own promotion came unto me weeping, and desired that he might declare his mind unto me without my displeasure. I said, I was well content. My Lord, said he, before ye went last to Dublin, ye were the best beloved man in your diocese that ever came into it, and now ye are the worst beloved that ever came here. I asked wherefore. Why, said he, for ye have taken open part with the heretics, and preached against the sacrament ot I
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH.
Thus, after he had been in Ireland a year and a half, Walter Cowley, the Clerk of the Crown, was able to congratulate Bellingham on having doubled 'the King's possessions, power, obedience, and subjects in the realm, in respect as it was at his arrival.' 'The King having a force in each quarter of the country, will they or nill they/ Cowley said, ' the people must obey ; ' and if only ' they could now be also put from idleness/ 'if they could be compelled to inhabit and fall to husbandry, to put away their assemblies in harness, and take de- light in wealth and quiet, Ireland in a little time would be as obedient and quiet as Wales/
Unhappily for Ireland, perhaps fortunately for his own reputation, Sir Edward Bellingham, in the height of his success, was called away, it would seem by illness. In the summer of 1549 his name disappears from among the State Papers. In the autumn he was dead. The effect was immediate. The chiefs felt the rein drop loose upon their necks ; French agents were again busy; and in the interregnum which fol- lowed, the Irish Council found themselves less able to do without their master than their master had been able
1549-
the altar, and deny saints, and will make us worse than Jews. If the county wist how, they would eat you. He besought me to take heed of my- self, for he feared more than he durst tell me. He said, Ye have more curses than ye have hairs in your head ; and I advise you, for Christ's sake, not to preach as I hear ye will do. Hereby ye may
perceive what case I am in, but put all to God. And now, as mine especial friend, and a man to whom my heart beareth earnest affection, I beseech you give me your advice, not writing your name for chance.— The Biahop of Meath to Sir Edward Bellingham : Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. i. State Paper Office.
I549-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. §3
to dispense with them. Allen having with great diffi- culty induced the Earl of Desmond to come to him, learnt that the country was in full relapse into disorder. ' The rough handling of the late deputy/ so Desmond said, had placed the chiefs ' in despair ' of being able to continue their old habits. The natural hatred to the dominion of an alien race, the peril of religion, the promises of assistance from France and Scotland, with the opportunity created by the disorders in England, had led to a general combination through the whole island.1
The garrisons in the castles fell into loose habits when the master's eye was off them. January. Their wages had fallen into arrear, and they became mutinous and profligate. There was ' neither service nor communion within any of the walls, and there were as many women, it was said, as there were men/2 Even such of the Irish as professed to be loyal began to be
1 ' I asked the Earl what should be the cause of so great a combina- tion of the wild Irish, and how long since the same had commenced. Whereunto he said the same con- spiracy was concluded amongst them above a year past, only in the dread of the late deputy, which, with his rough handling of them, put them in such despair as they all conspired to j oin against him. To some others of council which I heard not he added the matter of religion. But, for my part, beside these causes, I judge they will the rather take the
opportunity to execute their malice, hearing not only of the continuance of the outward wars and loss of our forts, and specially of the late civil displeasures in England, but also hope and comfort and aid of the Scots, promised, as it is said, by the blind bishop that came from Scot- land out of Rome.' — Sir John Allen to his brother; January, 1550: Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. ii. State Paper Office.
* St Leger to the Council, September, 1550: MS. Ibid.
84 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28,
* haughty and strange.' A ' huge army ' of French was expected to land in the spring of 1550 ; and, unless the home Government could make peace with France, their rule in Ireland was once more likely to be near its end. But the peace, as has been related, was made. The intrigues ceased, the Irish had no longer hopes from abroad, and Bellingham had done his work so effectually, that without help they durst not stir.
In August, St Leger, the peace-maker, was August. .
restored to his place, and a new chapter in the
administration of the country was about to commence. Ireland had long been a drain upon the English finances. The stream was now to flow the other way, and, with an enchanter's wand waving over the mint, it was to become an abundant fountain of revenue. The Irish standard had been always lower than the English. When the Eng- lish silver was eleven ounces fine to one of alloy, the Irish had been eight ounces fine to four of alloy. The mines in Wicklow and Arklow having been brought again into working in the late reign, Henry VIII. had hoped that with the silver raised out of them, and with a mint upon the spot,, the Irish Government might at least pay their own expenses. But the plan had not vet come into operation ; the Irish money had latterly been coined in England ; and in the depreciation in the last three years of the reign, the Irish standard had followed the English, the harp-groats, like the latest issues in England, being half pure and half alloy.1 On
1 State Papers, vol. iii. p. 534.
1550.] EXECUTION' OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 85
the conclusion of the peace with France, the experiment was to be tried on a grander scale.
By a resolution of the English council, on the 8th of July, 1550, it was determined that a mint should be forthwith established in Ireland, and that it should be let out to farm for twelve months on the following conditions :-—
1. That the King should be at no manner of charge, great or small.
2. That the King should have thirteen shillings and fourpence clear out of every pound weight that should be coined.
3. That the bullion to be coined should be pro- vided from other countries, and not from England or Ireland.
4. That by this means the sum of 24,ooo/. at the least should be advanced to the King's Majesty within twelve months.
5. That the King should appoint a master of assays and a controller.1
An indenture was drawn on the 9th of August, between the council and Martin Perry, granting to Perry the management of the establishment on these terms ; the money to be made was to be four ounces fine with eight of alloy. The pound weight of silver, if coined at a pure standard, yielded forty-eight shillings ; with two-thirds of alloy, therefore, it would produce one hundred and forty-four ; 2 and if the King
1 Privy Council Register. MS. I Ruding, describing the indenture
2 See RUDING, vol. ii. p. 105. I and the proportions of alloy, says
86
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
was to make twenty-four thousand pounds by receiving thirteen shillings and fourpence on every seven pounds four shillings that were issued, three hundred thousand pounds' worth of base coin would be let out over the Irish people in a single year.
Sir Edward Bellingham had shown the Irish one aspect of English administratipn. The home Govern- ment were preparing to show them another. The seed was sown, the harvest would be certain, and not distant. It would not, however, be gathered in by Sir Anthony St Leger, whose footing in the now swollen waters was almost instantly lost. The Lords of the Council, more anxious for the purity of the gospel than of the currency, charged St Leger especially to keep pace with the movements in England. Yainly he protested that ' he would sooner be sent to Spain/ They told him that he must go to Ireland, there to follow his vocation of making rough things smooth.
He went, and proceeded at once to follow his old course of attempting to rule the Irish by pleasing them. Among his first acts he permitted high mass to be said at Christ's Church, in Dublin, and was himself present at the service.1 ' To make a face of conformity he put
that the pound weight was to he made into a hundred and forty-four groats ; in which statement, it seems, he must have mistaken the word. The pound weight of pure silver would produce a hundred and forty- four pure groats ; hut the two pounds of alloy, which he admits
Avere added to it, must have produced twice as many more.
1 Sir Anthony, upon his arrival, went to the chief church of this nation, and there, after the old sort, offered to the altar of stone, to the great comfort of his too many like Papists and the discouragement of
1550.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 87
out proclamations ' for the use of the Prayer-book ; but the Prayer-book was not used, and the disobedience was not noticed. The Archbishop of Dublin expostulated St Leger put him. off with a ' Gro to, go to, your matters of religion will mar all ; ' and placed in his hands ' a little book to read/ which he found ' so poisoned as he had never seen to maintain the mass, with transub- stantiation and other naughtiness/ 1
Bellingham's captains, too, troubled the new deputy with acting out their old instructions. Sir Andrew Brereton, one of the best of them, had been a thorn in the side of the Earl of Tyrone. No Bishop of Monluc, or other doubtful ecclesiastic, could land in Ulster but what Brereton had his eye on him ; no French emissary could leave Tyrone's castle but what Brereton would attempt to waylay him and relieve him of his despatches ; and he had succeeded in intercepting one letter in which the Earl invited a French invasion,2 and undertook especially to betray Brereton and destroy the Lecale colony.3
the professors of the gospel. — The Archbishop of Dublin to the English Council: Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. iii. State Paper Office.
i Ibid.
3 ' Tyrone desired the French King to come with his power, and if he would so prepare to do, to help him to drive out the Jewish English- men out of Ireland, who were such as did nothing to the country but cumber the same and live upon the
flesh that was in it, neither observ- ing fast-days nor regarding the solemn devotion of the blessed mass or other ceremony of the Church, the French King should find him, the Earl, ready to help him with his men and all the friends he could make.' — Complaints of Sir Andrew Brereton : Irish MSS. vol. iii. State Paper Office. 3 Ibid.
88 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
When the expectations from France came September.
to nothing, the Earl, unable to endure longer
so insulting a surveillance, laid a claim to Brereton's lands, and sent a troop of kernes to drive his cattle. The English commander, waiting till they had com- menced work, set upon them, and cut half of them to pieces, two brothers of Tyrone being among the slain.
St Leger's system could not prosper with a Brereton in command of troops. The Irish lords, who appre ciated the merits of a deputy who allowed them their own way, waited on him at Dublin with congratulations on his appointment, and Tyrone took the opportunity of pressing his complaints. Brereton being called on for explanations, drew out a statement of the Earl's mis- doings. He came to Dublin, and being told before the Irish Council that he was accused by Tyrone of murder, * he said he would make answer to no traitor, threw his book upon the board, and desired that the same might be openly read/ The council — they shall relate their own behaviour — ' considering the same Earl to be a frail man, and not yet all of the perfectest subject, and think- ing, should he know the talk of the same Mr Brereton, having of his friends and servants standing by — for it was in the open council-house — it might be a means to cause him and others of his sort and small knowledge to revolt from their duties and refuse to come to councils ' — recommended moderation. It was better to answer Tyrone's complaint meekly. 'Such, handling of wild men had done much harm in Ireland.' ' Thev would
1550.] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 89
read the book, and do therein as should stand with their duties.'
Presently the Earl, foaming with indignation, ap- peared in person. ' He took the name of traitor very unkindly/ and demanded justice ; and the end of it was that Brereton was reprimanded and deprived of his rank; the council apologized for his indiscretion ; and a young St Leger of more convenient humour was sent to govern the northern colony.1
The humouring an Irish chief at the expense of an honest man might have been forgiven; but St Leger was less successful than before in keeping down the ex- penditure, and the home Government, trusting to the supplies from the mint, sent no remittances. His ap- plications for money were in consequence vexatiously frequent. ' Religion' did not prosper with him; and the reviving uncertainty of the relations between Eng- land and France, in the winter of 1550-51, made the presence of a stronger hand desirable. Lord Cobham was first thought of as a fit person. On second thoughts, however, it was determined not immediately to super- sede St Leger. Sir James Crofts was sent over with troops and ships under his separate command, and brought instructions to survey the southern harbours, and, wherever possible, to fortify them. Crofts arrived in March, 1551. In April he went, as he was directed, into Munster, and with him went a certain John Wood,
1 The Deputy and Co -ncil to Cecil : Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. ii. State Paper Office.
90 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
who sent an account of the journey to Sir William Cecil, with maps and plans.
I55I. 'In this voyage/ said Wood, ' I have seen,
4Pril- amongst others, two goodly havens at Cork and Kinsale, as by the plots thereof shall presently ap- pear unto you, and also a large and fruitful country of itself; but the most thereof uninhabited, and the land wasted by evil dissensions, that it is pity to behold: which disorder hath continued of a long time by want of justice, insomuch that the most part of the gentle- men, yea, I might say all, be thieves or maintainers of thieves, which thing themselves will not let to confess, as I have presently heard ; and have no other way to excuse their faults but that lack of justice forceth them to keep such people as may resist their neighbours, an4 revenge wrong with wrong, without which they are not able to live. Thus the poor be continually overrun, bereft of their lives, and spoiled of their goods ; and no marvel, for neither is God's law nor the King's knowi} nor obeyed. The father is at war with the son, the son with the father, brother with brother, and so forth. Wedlock is not had in any price ; whoredom is counted as no offence ; and so throughout the realm in effect vice hath the upper hand, and virtue is nothing at all regarded. The noblemen — at the least sundry of them — hang or pardon at their pleasure, whether it be upon a privilege granted unto them, or upon an usurped power, I know not ; but, undoubtedly, it is needful to be re- formed. There is no cause why these people should be out of order more than others. They have shape and
I55I-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 91
understanding, and are meet to be framed to as good purpose as any other the King's subjects, if the like order were taken and executed as in England and other commonwealths/1
Such was Ireland in 1551. But English order was not for the moment likely to improve it. In the early summer St Leger was finally recalled. Sir James Crofts was appointed his successor, and entered office when the industry of Martin Perry was about to produce its fruits.
In July the rise of prices commenced. Crofts, sur- rounded by theorists, who assured him that the remedy for this and all other inconveniences was abundance of money, at first was simply perplexed. By November the truth was so far breaking upon him, that he protested against a continuance of the de- basement, and entreated that the standard might be re- stored. The mischief had only commenced ; yet even then he represented that the soldiers could no longer live upon their wages. The countrymen so suspected the money, that they would not take it upon any terms. The fortifications in the south were at a stand- still ; the workmen demanded to be paid in silver, not in silvered brass. ' The town of Dublin and the whole English army would be destroyed for want of victuals if a remedy were not provided/2
The remedy would be to cry down the money to its true value, as had been done at home, and to issue no
1 Wood to Cecil : Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. ii. 2 Crofts to the English Council, November i, 1551: Irish MSS. vol. iii.
92 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
more of it — the last thing which the home Government intended. The Irish mint was to indemnify them for the loss of the sluices which they had been forced to close in England. They replied to Crofts' remonstrances, therefore, with a letter of advice.
' The beginnings of all things in which we are to prosper/ wrote Northumberland or one of his satellites, ' must have their foundation upon God ; and, therefore, principally, the Christian religion must, as far forth as may, be planted and restored, the favourers and pro- moters thereof esteemed and cherished, and the hinderers dismayed/ This was the first point to which Crofts was to attend. Next he was to see that the laws of the realm should be better obeyed ; and especially that ' the King's revenue ' should be more diligently looked to, his rents be properly collected, his woods and forests attended to, and the accounts of his bailiffs duly audited. The money was a secondary question ; the reformation of the coin was impossible, and the calling down ob- jectionable. The deputy might consult the principal people in the country about it ; and in the mean time there were the jewels and plate in the churches. He might take those ; and if he could not pay the soldiers, he might send them away.1
Sir James Crofts was well inclined to the Reform- ation, and under Mary almost lost his life for it. Yet, to answer the clamours of defrauded tradesmen and labourers, and soldiers too justly mutinous, with a text
The English Council to Sir James Crofts ; Irish MSS. vol. iii.
I55I-J EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 93
or a homily, was a task for which he had no disposition. He was * a man not learned/ he replied ; and they had divines for such purposes.1 ' The matter of the currency, in his simple opinion, was so apparent, it needed not to be consulted upon ; as a proof of which he stated that to keep the army from starving, he had been driven, as the council at home had been driven, to purveying. ' We have forced the people for the time/ he said, ' to take seven shillings for that measure of corn which they sell for a mark, and twelve shillings for the beef which they sell for fifty-three shillings and four-pence. These things cannot be borne without grudge, neither is it possible it should continue/
In obedience to his orders, however, the l*$2. deputy invited representatives of the iiidus- ai iai-v> trious classes in Ireland to Dublin, to discuss the first principles of commercial economy.
' I sent/ he reported after the meeting, ' for inhabit- ants of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Drog- heda, to know the causes of the dearth of corn and cattle, and how the same might be remedied. I declared unto them how the merchants were content to sell iron, salt, coal, and other necessaries, if they might buy wine and corn as they were wont to do. And thereof grew a con- fusion in argument, that when the merchant should need for his house not past two or three bushels of corn, he could not upon so small an exchange live ; and likewise the farmer that should have need of salts, shoes, cloth,
Crofts to Cecil : Irish MSS. Ibid.
94 ItEIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 28.
iron, hops, and such others, could not make so many divisions of his grain, neither should he at all times need that which the merchants of necessity must sell. So it was that money must serve for the common ex- change/
But why, the question then rose, must money be only of gold and silver ? why not of leather or of brass ? Was it for the ' sovereign virtue ' of the precious metals P was it for their cleanliness in handling ? Plain only it was that when the coin was pure, all men sought for it ; when it was corrupt, all men detested it. It might have been thought ' that, when the King's stamp was on the coin, it should be received of every man as it was pro- claimed/ But experience showed that it was not so ; and experience showed further, that good and bad money, though stamped alike, could not exist together ; the bad consumed the good. One of the party then ob- served keenly, ' that among merchants, when cloth, silk, and other wares are sold, the owners do set on their marks, and upon proof made of the goodness of the wares and the making, with the true weight and mea- sure, it Cometh to pass that after such credit won there needeth no more but shew the mark, and sell with the best ; and if the makers of such wares do after make them worse, their trade is lost, insomuch as if after they would reform the same fault, it will ask time before credit be won again.7
The Government was the merchant, the coin was the ware, the King's head was the mark. Prices had risen with bad money. Whether it was better that
1SS2-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 93
money should be scarce or plenty the meeting would not venture to say, only it must be pure. ' By the whole consent of the world gold and silver had gotten the estimation above other metals as meetest to make money of, and that estimation could not be altered by one little corner of the world, though it had risen but upon a fantastical opinion, when indeed it was grounded upon reason, according to the gifts that nature had wrought in those metals/
The meeting concluded, therefore, that if the cur- rency could not honestly be restored, they preferred the least of two evils, and desired that it should be im- mediately called down to its market valuation.1
The opinion of the country had been taken, as the English council recommended, and the result was be- fore them ; but either it was conveyed in too abstract a language, or the mint had not yet yielded the full sum which they intended to take from it. They waited for an increase of suffering, and prices continued to rise and rise.
' The measure of corn that was wont to be at two or three shillings/ and when Crofts landed in March, 1551, was 'at six shillings and eightpence/ was sold in March, 1552, for 'thirty shillings.' 'A cow that had been worth six shillings and eight- pence sold for forty shillings ; six herrings for a groat ; a cow-hide for ten or twelve shillings ; a tonne of Gas-
March.
1 Memoranda of the Irish Council. — Sir James Crofts to the Duke of Northumberland, Decem-
ber, 1551 : Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. iii. State Paper Office.
96
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 28
con wine for twelve pounds, of Spanish wine for twenty- four pounds.' l The Irish beyond the Pale suffered the least. ' Every lord caused his people to keep their victuals within the country,' and the Irishman proper had little use for money — ' he cared only for his belly, and that not delicately.'2 In Dublin, Meath, and Kil- dare schools were shut up ; servants were turned away, from the cost of maintaining them ; artisans and trades- men would take no more apprentices : at last the mar- kets were closed. Those who before had bought little at high prices could now buy nothing at any price ; and fever followed in the rear of famine. 'All sorts of people,' Crofts passionately expostulated, ' cry for re- dress at my hands.' The actual cause of their misery they did not know ; ' and no marvel,' ' when the wisest were blinded ; ' but they understood that it came from England and from English rule ; ' and now,' Crofts said, ' they do collect all the enormities that have grown in so many years, so that there is among them such hatred, such disquietures of mind, such wretchedness upon the poor men and artificers, that all the crafts must decay, and towns turn to ruin, and all things either be in common, or each live by others' spoil ; and thereof must needs follow slaughter, famine, and all kinds of misery/3
1 Before the depreciation of the currency in England Gascon wine was sold for 4?. 135. qd. a tun ; Spanish wine for 'jl. 8s. — 34 and 35 Henry VIII. cap. 7.
2 Crofts to Cecil: Irish MSS. vol. iv.
3 Crofts to Cecil, March 14: Ibid.
I552-] EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET. 97
The people had been tried far, yet still it was not enough. The reply which the home Government now vouchsafed was a cargo of German Protestants, whom they sent over to work the silver mines in "Wicklow. When a sufficient mass of bullion had been raised, the complaints of the Irish might be considered. The Germans, the distracted deputy reported in return, were idle vagabonds, not worth their keep ; the currency would run foul till the day of judgment if he was to wait till it was purified through labour of theirs ; and then the council said that they were sorry, and would hope and would see about things, but the King's Go- vernment must be carried on, and money they had none. But the wail of the injured people rose at last in tones
too piteous to be neglected : and in June,
June. Northumberland made up his mind that he
could persist no longer.
Three thousand pounds' weight of bullion were sent from the Tower to Dublin, with orders to Perry to call down the coin, buy it in at the reduced valuation, and make a new issue at the old standard ; l while, to turn
1 Such I endeavour in charity to believe to be the meaning of a vaguely-expressed entry in the Privy Council Register. Edward, however, in his Journal, with the date of June 10, 1552, says: —
'Whereas it was agreed that
there should be a pay now made to
Ireland of 5000^., and then the
money to be cried down ; it was ap-
VOL. v.
pointed that 3000 Ibs. weight which I had in the Tower should be carried thither and coined at 3 denar fine, and that incontinent, the coin should be cried down.' The question rises what Edward meant by 3 denar fine. Was it three- pence in the shilling, or 3 oz. fine to 9 oz. of alloy ? or was it three- pence in the groat? a coin more 7
kEIGN OF EDWA&D Ttt£ SIXTH.
[CH.
the current of Irish feeling, the council passed a reso- lution to restore Gerald Fitzgerald, the hero of Celtic ro- mance, to his estates and country.
^onest than Ireland had seen for a century. Experience of the general proceedings of the Government in
such matters would lead one to choose the worst interpretation.
CHAPTER XXIX.
AMIDST the wreck of ancient institutions, the misery of the people, and the moral and social anarchy by which the nation was disintegrated, thoughtful persons in England could not fail by this time to be asking themselves what they had gained by the Reformation.
A national reformation, if the name is more than a mockery, implies the transfer of power, power spiritual, power political, from the ignoble to the noble, from the incapable to the capable, from the ignorant to the wise. It implies a recovered perception in all classes, from highest to lowest, of the infinite excellence of right, the infinite hatefulness of wrong.
The movement commenced by Henry VIII., judged by its present results, had brought the country at last into the hands of mere adventurers. The people had exchanged a superstition which, in its grossest abuses, prescribed some shadow of respect for obedience, for a superstition which merged obedience in speculative be- lief; and under that baneful influence, not only the
roo REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
higher virtues of self-sacrifice, but the commonest duties of probity and morality, were disappearing. Private life was infected with impurity to which the licentious- ness of the Catholic clergy appeared like innocence. The Government was corrupt, the courts of law were venal. The trading classes cared only to grow rich. The mul- titude were mutinous from oppression. Among the good who remained unpolluted, the best were still to be found on the Reforming side. Lever, Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, held on unflinching to their convictions, al- though with hearts aching and intellects perplexed; but their influence was slight and their numbers small ; and Protestants who were worthy of the name which they bore were fewer far, in these their days of pros- perity, than when the bishops were hunting them out for the stake. The better order of commonplace men, who had a conscience, but no especial depth of insight — who had small sense of spiritual things, but a strong perception of human rascality — looked on in a stern and growing indignation, and, judging the tree by its fruits, waited their opportunity for reaction.
' Alas, poor child,' said a Hampshire gentleman, of Edward, ' unknown it is to him what Acts are made now-a-days ; when he comes of age he will see another rule and hang up an hundred heretic knaves.' John Bale replied to ' the frantic Papist ' with interested in- dignation ; he wrote a pamphlet with a dedication to Northumberland, whom he compared to Moses,1 and
1 ' Considering in your noble religious zeal in God's cause which Grace the same mighty, fervent, and | I have diligently marked in Moses,
I552-]
NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY.
101
earned a bishopric for his reward.1 But the words ex- pressed a deep and general feeling ; and, had the com- ing of age taken place, might not impossibly have proved true. Edward showed no symptoms of wavering in re- ligion ; but he was gaining an insight beyond his years into the diseases of the realm, which threatened danger to those who had abused his childhood. He had followed and Rioted down the successive tamperings with the cur- rency. He was aware of his debts, and of the scandal of them ; and we have seen him seeking political inform- ation without the knowledge of the council. He under- stood the necessity of economizing the expenditure, of scrutinizing the administration of the revenues, and of punishing fraud.2 He could actively interfere but little, but the little was in the right direction. The excessive table allowances for the household were reduced. Irre- gular claims for fees, which had grown up in the mi- nority, were disallowed ; the wardrobe charges were cut down ; the garrisons of the forts and the Irish army were diminished, according to a schedule which Edward himself had the reputation of devising.3 Further, he
the servant of God.' — STRYPE, vol. iv. p. 39.
1 Ossory in Ireland.
2 See especially a remarkable Discourse on the Reformation of Abuses, printed by Burnet, and a draft of provisions which Edward in- tended for insertion in his will. — STRYPE, vol. iv. p. 120. If Edward really wrote or dictated those two papers, the 'Miracle of Nature'
was no exaggerated description of him. I am bound to add, howevei-, that his Essays and Exercises, a volume of which remains in MS. in the British Museum, show nothing beyond the ordinary ability of a clever boy.
3 Device for the payment of the King's Debts : STRYPE'S Memorials, vol. iii. p. 594. Compare EDWARD'S Journal, 1552.
loa REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
began to inquire into the daily transactions of the coun- cil. He required notice beforehand of the business with which the council was to be occupied, and an account was given in to him each Saturday of the proceedings of the week : while in a rough draft of his will which he dictated to Sir William Petre in the year which pre- ceded his death, he showed the silent thought with which he had marked the events of his boyhood. Slfould his successor, like himself, be a minor, his executors, unlike his father's, should meddle with no wars unless the country was invaded. They should alter no part of ' religion ; ' they should observe his ' device ' for the payment of his debts, and use all means for their early settlement ; and there should be no return of extrava- gance in the household.1 More remarkable is an im- perfect fragment on the condition of England.
Following, boylike, the Platonic analogy between the body of the individual and the body politic, Edward saw in all men the members of a common organization, where each was to work, and each ought to be contented with the moderate gratification of his own desires. The country required an order of gentlemen ; but gentlemen should not have so much as they had in France, where the peasantry was of no value. In a well-ordered com- monwealth no one should have more than the proportion of the general stock would bear. In the body no mem- ber had too much or too little ; in the commonwealth every man should have enough for healthy support, not
1 STRYPE, vol. iv. p. 120.
1552.] NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 103
enough for indulgence. Again, as every member of the body was obliged ' to work and take pains/ so there should be no unit in the commonwealth which was not 'laboursome in his vocation/ 'The gentleman should do service in his country, the serving-man should wait diligently on his master, the artisan should work at his trade, the husbandman at his tillage, the merchant in passing the tempests ; ' the vagabond should be banished as ' the superfluous humour of the body/ ' the spittle and filth which is put out by the strength of nature/
Looking at England, however, as England was, the young King saw * all things out of order/ ' Farming gentlemen and clerking knights/ neglecting their duties as overseers of the people, ' were exercising the gain of living.' ' They would have their twenty miles square of their own land or of their own farms/ Artificers and clothiers no longer worked honestly ; the neces- saries of life had risen in price, and the labourers had raised their wages, ' whereby to recompense the loss of things they bought/ The country swarmed with vaga- bonds ; and those who broke the laws escaped punish- ment by bribery or through foolish pity. The lawyers, and even the judges, were corrupt. Peace and order were violated by religious dissensions and universal neglect of the law. Offices of trust were bought and sold; benefices impropriated, tillage- ground turned to pasture, ' not considering the sustaining of men/ The poor were robbed by the enclosures ; and extravagance in dress and idle luxury of living were eating like ulcers into the State. These were the vices of the age : nor
104 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
were they likely, as Edward thought, to yield in ai^ way to the most correct formula of justification. The 1 medicines to cure these sores ' were to be looked for in good education, good laws, and 'just execution of the laws without respect of persons, in the example of rulers, the punishment of misdoers, and the encouragement of the good/ Corrupt magistrates should be deposed, see- ing that those who were themselves guilty would not enforce the laws against their own faults ; and all gentlemen and noblemen should be compelled to reside on their estates, and fulfil the duties of their place.1
A king who at fifteen could sketch the work which was before him so distinctly, would in a few years have demanded a sharp account of the stewardship of the Duke of Northumberland. Unfortunately for the country, those who would have assisted him in commencing his intended improvements, Lord Derby, Lord Oxford, Lord Huntingdon, Lord Sussex, or Lord Pa get, were far away in the country, sitting gloomily inactive till a change of times. Ridley was working manfully, as we have seen, in restoring the London hospitals ; bui Cranmer, after the destruction of Somerset, shrunk from confronting Northumberland ; and, the Liturgy being completed, he was now spending his strength in the pursuit of objects which were either unattainable or would have been mischievous if attained. In the spring of 1552 he was endeavouring to take away the reproach of Protestantism by bringing the Reformed Churches
Discourse on the Reformation of Abuses : BURNET'S Collectanea.
1552.] NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 105
to an agreement. Edward offered his kingdom as an asylum for a Protestant synod, which might meet at Oxford or Cambridge ; and the Archbishop wrote to Calvin and Melancthon, entreating their support. But oil and water would combine before Zuinglian and Lutheran would acquiesce in common formulas. Pro- testants, as Calvin assured him, hated each other far too heartily.1 In. another direction his exertions were equally unprofitable ; and he was acting here under Calvin's advice.
The interference of the Church officials in the pri- vate concerns of the people had been among the chief provoking causes of the original revolt under Henry. The laity had flung off the yoke of the clergy. The ministers of the new order, mistaking the character of the change, imagined that the privileges and powers of the Catholic priesthood would be transferred to them- selves. As teachers of ' the truth/ they were the ex- ponents, in their own eyes, of the divine law, and they demanded the right to punish sin by spiritual censures — spiritual censures enforced by secular penalties.
Mankind, notwithstanding their frailties, are theo- retically loyal to goodness ; and, could there have been any security that the clergy would have confined their prosecutions to acts of immorality, that desire might perhaps have to some extent been indulged. But to the Church of Calvin, as well as to the Church of Rome, the darkest breach of the moral law was venial in com-
Correspondence between Cranmer, C&lvin, and Melancthon : Epis-
io6
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[CH. 29.
par i son with errors of opinion; and the consequence which England had to expect from a restoration of clerical authority might be seen in the language of one who was loudest in the demand for it. John Knox, the shrewdest and one of the noblest of the Reformers, did not conceal his opinion that Gardiner, Bonner, and Cuthbert Tunstal might have been justly put to death for nonconformity.1 But Parliament had not refused absolutely to entertain the question. The Lords rejected, as we have seen; a scheme which would simply replace the bishops in the position which they had forfeited ; but the old mixed commission of thirty-two had been re-established for the revision of the canon law ; and in March, 1552, the commissioners would have made some progress, it was said, had not Ridley, and Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, who had succeeded Lord Rich as Chan- cellor, ' stood in the way with their worldly policy/2 The thirty- two were afterwards reduced to eight, and in the following November a fresh commission was ap- pointed, consisting of Cranmer, Goodrich, Coxe, and Peter Martyr, with four lawyers and civilians. The
1 ' God's justice,' says Knox, in his Admonition to the Faithful in England, ' is not wont to cut off wicked men till their iniquity is so manifest that their very flatterers cannot excuse it. If Stephen Gar- diner, Cuthbert Tunstal, and butcher- ly Bonner, false bishops of Win- chester, Durham, and London, had, for their false doctrines and traitor- ous acts, suffered death when'they
justly deserved the same, then would Papists have alleged that they were men reformable,' &c. In the Con- stitution of the Church of Scotland, which was drawn under Knox's in- fluence, to say mass, or to hear it, was made a capital crime — under tho authority of the text, ' The idolater shall die the death.'
2 Micronius to Bullinger : Epis-
1552.] NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 107
work was allowed to devolve on the Archbishop, who, with the assistance of Foxe the Martyrologist, produced the still-born volume,1 in which, as I have already men- tioned, he claimed the continued privilege of sending obstinate heretics to the stake ; and which remains to show to posterity the inability of the wisest of the clergy to comprehend their altered position. The King was already more clear-sighted than the Archbishop of Canterbury. He admitted the desirableness of disci- pline ; 'so/ however, ' that those that should be execu- tors of that discipline were men of tried honesty, wis- dom, and judgment.' ' But because/ he said, ' those bishops who should execute it, some for Papistry, some for ignorance, some for age, some for their ill names, some for all those causes, were men unable to execute disci- pline, it was, therefore, a thing unmeet for such men/2 Meanwhile, amidst discussions on the remedies of evils, the evils themselves for the most part continued. Discipline could not be restored. The King's abilities did not anticipate his majority ; the revenues were still misapplied, the debts of the Crown still unpaid. Officials indeed in the interests of Northumberland were per- mitted to indemnify themselves for their services. Bishop Ponet, for instance, composed a catechism, which was ordered for general use, and was allowed a f mono- poly of the printing.'3 But ordinary persons, servants,
1 The Reformatio Legum.
2 Discourse on the Reformation of Abuses : BURNET. 3 Northumberland to Cecil : MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xv. State Paper Office,
io8
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 29
artisans, tradesmen in public employment, ' fed upon the chameleon's dish/ and still cried in vain for their wages — it might be from prison.1 Prices of provisions would not abate. Vainly the Duke of Northumberland repri- manded the Lord Mayor in the Guildhall — vainly but- chers' carts were seized, and the meat was forfeited — vainly the dealers were threatened with the loss of their freedom and expulsion from the towns and cities ; 2 the distrust and hatred of the administration were too strong for menace.
The churches, the lead having been torn from the roofs, crumbled into ruins. Parishes were still left with- out incumbents, or still provided with curates who were incapable or useless. ' A thousand pulpits in England were covered with dust/ In some, four sermons had
1 The state of the ordnance de- partment was hut a specimen of the state of all the departments. On the 3rd of August, 1552, the Master of the Ordnance wrote to Cecil : —
' These be to beseech you for God's sake, charity's sake, yea, at this my contemplation, to help the miseries that be in the office of the ordnance for lack of money, as it is high time, being daily sundry and many poor men crying and calling for the same, to my no little grief; amongst the which is one named Charles Wolmar, gunpowder maker, now in very pitiful case, who is presently in the Counter, for that the rent of the house he dwelleth in is unpaid for a year and a half, which amounteth to 13 pounds and
odd money, which cometh by reason there hath been no money paid in this office a long time. The King's Majesty is charged with the rent thereof, being put there by the King's appointment, both for the making of gunpo.wder, when there is money to set him a work, and also to look to certain things of his Highness's there under his charge. I heartily pray you, seeing that the said poor man, as is great pity, is nevertheless troubled for this the King's Majesty's care, to move my Lords of the Council in that behalf. Sir, I pray you that I may have an answer hereof.' — MS. Domestic, Ed- ward VI. vol. xiv. Staio Puper Office.
2 STKYPE'S Memorials.
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NOR THUMBERLA ND'S CGNSP1RA C Y.
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not been heard since the Preaching Friars were sup- pressed. ' If/ said Bernard Gilpin before the Court, ' if such a monster as Darvel Gatheren, the idol of Wales, could have set his hand to a bill to let the patron take the greater part of the profits, he might have had a benefice.'1 In October, 1552, there was a menace of rebellion.2 In December, the Government was threat- ened with some further unknown but imminent danger, which called out from Northumberland the most seem- ing admirable sentiments, which he knew so well how to affect, and could, perhaps, persuade himself that he felt.3 In March, sp general was the disaffection, that
1 STKYPE'S Memorials.
2 Northumberland to Cecil : MS. Domestic, vol. xiv. Edward VI. State Paper Office.
3 He may have the benefit of his words so far as it will extend- He ' instantly and earnestly re- quired the Lords of the Council to be vigilant for the preventing of these treasons so far as in them was possible to be foreseen ;' ' that there- by,' he said, ' we may to our master and the world discharge ourselves like honest men, which, if we do not, having the warning that we have which cometh more of the goodness of God than of our search or care, the shame, the blame, the dishonour, the lack and reproach should, and may justly, be laid upon us to the world's end. The old saying which ever among wise men hath been holden for true, soemeth by our proceedings to be had either iu derision or in small
memory, being comprehended in these words — mora trahit periculum — beseeching your Lordships, for th-e love of God and the love which we ought to have to our master and country, let us be careful, as be- cometh men of honour, truth, and honesty to be. For we be called in the time of trial and trouble ; and therefore let us show ourselves to be as we ought to be ; that is, to be ready, not only to spend our goods, but our lands and lives, for our master and our country, and to de- spise the flattering of ourselves with heaping riches upon riches, house upon house, building upon building, and all through the infection of singvlare commodum. And let us not only ourselves beware and fly from it as the greatest pestilence in the commonwealth, let us also be of that fortitude and courage that we be not blinded and abused by those that be infected with these infirmi-
iid REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. (CH. ±g.
martial law was proclaimed in many parts of the country.1
The periodic sore of bankruptcy was again running. The revenue still clung to the hands by which it was collected. Fines, confiscations, church plate, church lands, mint plunder, vanished like fairy gold. The lan- guid eiforts of the council to extricate themselves availed only to show how helpless was their embarrassment. In August, 1552, a bill fell due in Antwerp for 56,oob/. Sir Thomas Gresham had been in the Low Countries in July ; and as there was no money to meet the bill, he brought back with him a proposal for a further post- ponement on the usual terms ; with a condition to which also the home Government was accustomed, that certain wares, fustians and diamonds, should be purchased of the lenders. Such transactions, however disguised, could have but one meaning : the bankers sold their jewels at their own prices ; the English Government had to dispose of them for such prices as they would fetch in the market.
Northumberland was absent on the Scottish Border, and the council, freed from his authority, refused to submit to the imposition. They instructed Gresham to return to Antwerp and to say that the King would pay as soon as he could, but the times were troublesome, and he had other employment for his money : the bankers must be reasonable, and wait.
The trader sympathized with his order. Gresham
ties.' — Northumberland to the I VI. vol. xv. State Paper Office. Council : MS. Domestic, Edward | l STRYPE'S Memorials.
15S2-] NORTHUMBERLAND 'S CONSPIRACY.
ill
pledged his own credit for payment, and he wrote earnestly to Northumberland, through whom bargains of this kind could be best conducted, to save the country from shame. It was ' neither honourable nor profitable/ he said, to put off money-lenders with a high hand. The credit of England would ' fall as low as the credit of the Emperor/ who was at that moment 'offering 16 per cent, for money, and could not obtain it.' ' The King's father, who first began to take up money upon interest, did use to take his fee penny in jewels, coppery gunpowder, or fustian, and wares had been taken ever since, when the King had made any prolongation/ So long as the loans could not be repaid the system must be continued. Thus much, however, Gresham under- took to do. Lead was fetching a high price in Antwerp. If the export of lead from England was forbidden, the price would rise still higher, while at home it would fall. The Government might take possession of the trade and make its own profits ; while he would himself remain on the Continent, and would watch the exchanges, and if he could be supplied with i aoo£ a week he would clear the Crown of its foreign debts in two years.1
Northumberland listened to the advice upon the lead trade. He stopped the exports, and in two months learnt to his sorrow that ' princes' affairs in the Govern- ment of realms and merchants' trades were of two natures.'2 The City of London extricated the Crown
1 Gresham to Northumberland : STRYPE'S Memorials, vol. iv.
2 ' I pray you, and most heartily
require you, to have in remembrance the restraint lately taken for the stay of lead through the realm, that
112
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
from its embarrassments by an advance of 40,000^. The bills were renewed, but only with a slight increase. In August, the entire debts at Antwerp were io8,ooo/. On the 3rd of October, after the renewal, they were something under m,ooo/. ; while the home debts 'cer- tainly known to be due' were, on the same 3rd of October, 1 25,ooo/.1 The loan from the City of London partially satisfied the foreign creditors, partially it was applied for the payment of wages, and other obligations at home. The home debts by November were reduced to iO9,ooo/.2 At last, therefore, there was an attempt to do something, though the some- thing was but small.
But these petty difficulties were not absolutely the results of carelessness and fraud. In this autumn of 1552, England narrowly escaped being again drawn into the European whirlpool.
The Peace of Passau left Charles at war with France ; and by the revised treaty of 1543, as has been often
it may be substantially considered ; for I put you out of doubt the clamour and exclamation grow great, and may breed more dangers than can now be seen. I have, since my being in the council chamber, heard of that matter, which maketh me sorry that ever it was my hap to be a meddler in it ; but shall teach me to beware of the vayne of a dry spring \vhile I live ; for princes' affairs specially touching the govern- ment of realms and merchants' trades are of two natures ; therefore, though they be full of devices with
appearance of profit, yet must they be weighted with other consequences ; as in this case as much requisite as any matter that was in use a great while, for such reasons as this day were rehearsed, as knoweth the Lord.' — Northumberland to Cecil, November, 1552 : MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xiv. State Paper Office.
1 Note in Cecil's hand : MS Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xiv. State Paper Office.
~ Second Note in Cecil's hand : Ibid
I552-]
NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY.
September.
said, England was bound to assist the Emperor if the Low Countries or the Rhine provinces were invaded. A French army had entered Luxembourg in July ; and Charles, whose misfortunes had rendered him less scru- pulous in connecting himself with heretics, applied through his ambassador for the stipulated support. The abandonment of Henry VIII. in the late war might have exonerated Edward from compliance. The treaty had been renewed since the Peace of Crepy ; but Charles had left England, notwithstanding, to work its way out of its difficulties alone j1 in the place of send- ing help, he had himself assumed an attitude of hostility. But either Northumberland was uncertain of his prospects and projects at home, and desired to conciliate the Emperor and Mary, or he was doubtful of the intentions of France, or he was possessed by the traditionary belief that the safety of England de- pended on the maintenance of the balance of power. The Emperor, without money and without friends, was contending with difficulty against an alliance between the Turks and the French. Ugly misunder- standings had sprung up between the Courts of Lon- don and Paris. The French had avenged their sup-
1 Chancellor Granvelle's defence of the Peace of Crepy was probably unknown in England, or it would have spared the council all difficulty. 1 De dire,' lie wrote to the Emperor, 'que le Roy d'Angleterre par la dicte paix pourra se malcontenter et pretender que votre Majeste a con- trevenu a traicte — il y a, Sire, uue
VOL. V.
maxime en matieres d'estat comme en toutes choses, qu'il faut regarder plus a la realite des choses que se traictent, en y conjoignant ce qu'est possible et faysable, selon Dieu et raison, que de advanturer et hazarder pour crainte de scrupules non fon- dez.' — Granvelle to Charles V. : Papier s d'Jttat, vol. iii. p. 27. 8
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 29.
posed wrongs in the usual way, by seizing English merchant ships ; and Charles's request for assistance came at the moment when the council were besieged with the complaints of the owners.1 From the uncertain conduct of the council, it would seem that either there were conflicting opinions which balanced each other, or that one and all were perplexed and irresolute. The ambassador was first answered evasively. He was next told that the demand should be taken into consideration. Then suddenly, on the siid of Septem- ber, the council made up their minds definitely to de- clare war against France.2 But the resolution was taken only to be abandoned immediately, and the ambassador was informed that the King could not, in his present
1 'It is an old saying that we should not laugh at our neighbour when his house is on fire. I do every day hear more and more of the cruel dealings of the French against the subjects and merchants of this realm, in such lamentable sort that a number almost is ready to be desperate : wherein the honour of the prince, his council, and realm, is vehemently touched.' — Northum- berland to Cecil, September, 1552: MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xiv. State Paper Office.
2 * Which things considered, we have more regarded our faith in our religion, our old amity and alliance with our good brother the Emperor, and the antient natural friendship that hath, in all times and adversi- ties, continued betwixt the two no-
ble houses of England and Bur- gundy, than other worldly perils and lacks that might, in appearance of reason, move us to be quiet and sit still ; and be content to declare the French King's countries and sub- jects common enemies to us and our good brother the Emperor— no wise doubting but our said good brother will naturally, like a brother, con- sider this our well-tried constancy and natural love towards him. And herein you shall declare to our said good brother, that our desire is to have his advice for our best means of entry to this demonstration.' — Minute of Instructions to Sir R. Morryson, September 2, 1552 : MS. Germany, Edward VI. bundle 15, State Paper Office.
'552.J
NOR THUMB ERLAN&S CONSPIRA C Y.
embarrassments, hold himself bound by his father's treaties. Again in a few days the scale wavered. Sir Thomas Stukeley, a west-country gentleman, and a de- pendent of Somerset, had escaped abroad on the arrest of his master, and now returned with a story by which he hoped to purchase his pardon. Being believed to be a disaffected subject, he had been admitted, as he said, into the French counsels, and he was able to affirm as a certainty that Calais was about to be attacked. The King of France himself had spoken to him of the weak points in the defences, had pointed out the very plan of assault, by which, six years later, Calais was actually taken. Although, however, Henry said, ' he would in short space recover Calais, yet to adventure the same was in vain, otherwise than to seek the whole realm/ The Scots, therefore, were to enter Northumberland ; he himself would land with troops at Falmouth, while the Duke of Guise would land at Dartmouth, which he knew to be undefended. That done 'he intended to proclaim and restore the mass/ Stukeley told him that ' he would be twice or thrice fought withal/ Henry said that ' he esteemed that but a peasant's fight ; ' at all events, he would fortify both Falmouth and Dart- mouth, and hold them in gage for Calais.1
The French were confident in themselves, in their fortunes, in the especial graces which attended the con- secration of their sovereign.2 Neither promises nor
1 Stukeley's Deposition : MS. France, Edward VI. bundle 10, State Paper Office.
2 The Cardinal of Lorraine
showed Sir William Pickering the Holy Ampulla [St Ampull, Pick- ering calls it, like St Cross or St Sepulchre,] ' wherewith the King
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 29.
alliances would stand in their way when opportunity of aggrandizement should offer itself. If either France or the Empire became dominant in Europe, England would equally find an enemy in either ; and if Stukeley's story was true, the Empire must be supported.
Again, therefore, the question of peace or war was anxiously discussed, and, according to the official habit Df the time, the arguments on either side were drawn Out in form. Should the King join the Emperor? it was asked. For the affirmative it was urged that he was bound by treaty. The Emperor might be ruined, or would lose Burgundy, and in that case England would lose Calais ; the French were bringing the Turks into Christendom, and again some redress must be obtained for the English merchants ; the attitude of France was suspicious and menacing, and ' enter into war alone the King might not well ; ' finally, the Em- peror might make peace with France exasperated by desertion, and the Catholic powers might unite against For the negative; the exchequer was
England.1
of France was sacred, which he said was sent from Heaven above a thousand years ago, and since by miracle preserved ; through whose virtue also the King healed les es- crouelles.' — Pickering to the Council: MS. Ibid.
1 While the preservation of the holy ointment assured France of the continued favour of Heaven, the French preachers informed their congregations, on analogous grounds, that England had been forsaken.
' No wonder,' said a Jacobin monk in a sermon at Angiers, ' that the King of England has broken faith with France, seeing that he had broken 'faith with God ; disant qu'il estoit heretique et mescliaut, et que le peuple de France debvroit bien louer Dieu et luy rendre graces, et que nostre roy avoit tournu sa robe et estoit ennemy des Franjoys. Depuys continuant sa meschante affection, il a diet en publique que notre Roy d'Angleterre estoit infi-
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empty : should the Emperor die, as was not unlikely, England would be left again to fight the battle alone. The German Protestants would be offended, and France, after all, might not have the intentions which were attributed to her. It might be possible so to help the Emperor as to induce the Protestant princes to unite also ; to make the Turks the ground of quarrel, and to declare France an enemy of Christendom.' A war on such terms would bo inexpensive, and England would be strengthened by taking part in a general league. On the other hand, such a league could not be formed either rapidly or secretly ; and if the attempt should be made, and fail, France would be inexpiably offended.
The ultimate resolution was to reply with a general assurance of sympathy ; to offer active assistance against the Turks, and so to feel the way towards a larger com- bination. The Lutheran powers, having secured their own liberties, were known to be looking suspiciously on the French movements. If the Emperor would consent to act with them, England might then go further. Meantime she would recruit her finances, and prepare for all contingencies.1
Charles was unable to quarrel with so meagre an answer. He had deserved no better ; nor could Eng-
dele, ce qu'il disoit estre notoire par ce que le don de faire miracles luy estoit ostee ; disant que ses prede- cesseurs Roys d'Angleterre avoient de cousturae de guerir du raal caduc, mais que ceste vertu luy avoit este ostee, et ii'en guerissoit, plus a cause de son infidelite.' — MS.
France, Edward VI. bundle 10, State Paper Office.
1 EDWARD'S Journal, Septem- ber, 1552. — Discussion on the War with France, with the Instructions to Sir Richard Morryson : Cotton. MSS. Galba, 12.
ti8 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [en. 29.
land afford more. He was at the moment on the Rhine, just recovering from a severe attack of gout, and col- lecting an army to wrest Metz from the Duke of Guise. Fortune at that time seemed again turning in his favour. The French invading force had been compelled to retreat out of Lorraine, decimated by fever, Guise himself re- maining with a few picked troops. De Roulx, the Im- perialist general in Flanders, had carried fire and sword to the banks of the Somme, and penetrated France to within fifty miles of Paris, sacking houses, and burning towns, villages, and farms. A company of English volunteers from the Calais Pale had joined him in an attack, which all but succeeded, upon Ambletue ; while Albert of Brandenburg, who had quarrelled with Maurice, and was now in the Emperor's camp, had taken the Duke of Aumale in a skirmish.
Accounts, by competent persons, of interviews with Charles Y. are always interesting. "When Sir Richard Morryson waited upon him with the reply of the Eng- lish Government to his request for assistance, ' the Em- peror/ he said, * was at a bare table, without carpet or anything else upon it, saving his cloke, his brush, his spectacles, and his picktooth.' His lower lip had broken out during his illness, and he kept ' a green leaf ' upon it, which, adding to his ' accustomed softness in speak- ing,' 'made his words hard to be understood/ He listened to the message kindly, but coldly, * thinking, as Morryson might perceive, to have heard somewhat of joining force against another enemy of his' beside the Turk : but he spoke warmly of England ; he talked of
1552.] NORTHUMBERLAND^ S CONSPIRACY. i\g
Henry VIII., and of the regard which they had ever entertained for each other ; and it seemed as if he was speaking sincerely. f But he hath a face/ said Morryson, ' imwont to discover any hid affection of his heart, as any face that ever I met with in all my life. White colours, which, in changing themselves, are wont in others to bring a man word how his errand is liked, have no place in his countenance. His eyes only do betray as much as can be picked out of him. He maketh me often think of Solomon's saying, Heaven is high, the earth is deep, a King's heart is unsearchable. There is in him almost nothing that speaks besides his tongue.'1
Meantime the French King assured Sir
October. William Pickering that in Stukeley's story
there was no word of truth. He had never thought of attacking England since the conclusion of the peace, far less had he spoken of it. How these foreign difficulties might turn out was quite uncertain. Nevertheless, for domestic purposes or for war purposes, one thing was steadily necessary, i. e., money. Northumberland, fol- lowing the steps of his father, who filled the treasury of Henry VII., and brought his own head to the block, set himself to the work with heart and goodwill. In the autumn and winter of 1552-3, no less than nine com- missions were appointed with this one object ; four of which were to go again over the often-trodden ground, and glean the last spoils which could be gathered from the churches. In the business of plunder the rapacity
Morryson to the Council : TYTLER, vol. ii.
rao REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29
of the Crown officials had been distanced hitherto by private peculation. The halls of country-houses were hung with altar-cloths ; tables and beds were quilted with copes ; the knights and squires drank their claret out of chalices, and watered their horses in marble coffins. Pious clergy, gentlemen, or churchwardens had in many places secreted plate, images, or candlesticks, which force might bring to light. Bells, rich in silver, still hung silent in remote church- towers, or were buried in the vaults. Organs still pealed through the aisles in notes unsuited to a regenerate worship, and damask napkins, rich robes, consecrated banners, pious offerings of men of another faith, remained in the chests in the vestries. All these were valuable, and might be secured, and the Protestants could be persuaded into applause at the spoiling of the house of Baal. Ridley in London lent his hand. On the 4th of September the organ at St Paul's was ordered into silence preparatory to removal. On the 25th of October ' was the plucking down of all the altars and chapels in Paul's church, with all the tombs, at the commandment of the Bishop, and all the goodly stone- work that stood behind the high altar.' l The monument of John of Gaunt himself would have gone down, had not the council stepped in to save it. Vestments, copes, plate, even the coin in the poor-boxes, were taken from the churches in the city.2 Some few peals of bells were spared for a time, but only under
1 Grey friars' Chronicle.
2 It is to be said for Ilidley that he begged and obtained the linen sur- plices, &c., for the use of the hospitals.
1552.] NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 121
condition of silence. A sweep as complete cleared the parish churches throughout the country. There was one special commission for bells, vestments, and orna- ments ; two for plate and jewels ; a fourth to search private houses for church property, and, should any such be found, to make a further profit by the fine of the
offenders. A commission, again, was to ex-
0 November.
amine into the rents of the Crown estates ^
another to sell chantry lands. The accounts of the dis- position of all estates which had fallen to the Crown by confiscation or Act of Parliament since the suppression of the monasteries were to be produced and examined. The armorial bearings of families residing south of the Trent were to be investigated by the College of Heralds, and illegal quarterings to be paid for by fine or forfeit. Lastly, Northumberland himself, assisted by others on whose discretion he could rely, undertook to examine the accounts of the treasurer and receiver of the Court of Augmentations and the Court of Exchequer ; of the collectors of firstfruits and of the officers of the Duchy of Lancaster ; and, finally, in one frightful sweep, to call on every one who had received money in behalf of the Crown since the year 1532 to produce his books and submit them to an audit. Paymasters, purveyors, vic- tuallers, engineers, architects, every one to whom money had been paid from the treasury for the army and navy, for the household, or for any other purpose, were in- cluded under the same schedule. If the account-books of twenty years of confusion, during the latter portion of which almost all public persons, from the council
ill
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[CM.
downwards, had vied with each other in the race of rapacity, were not forthcoming and in order, they were to be proceeded against without mercy.
The sale of chantry lands was expected to yield 40,000^. ; the surrendered lands of the bishopric of Worcester would produce 5ooo/. more ; the church plate and linen 20,000^. ; the confiscated estates of the late fraudulent Master of the Rolls, and of Sir Thomas Arundel, who had been executed as an accomplice in Somerset's conspiracy, with a fine inflicted on Lord Paget for the same cause, were estimated at 25,ooo/., ' or thereabouts ; ' from 90,000^. to ioo,ooo/. might be expected from the remaining commissions,1 could those commissions be enforced. But setting aside the injustice of calling suddenly for the accounts of twenty years, when the disorders had been so universal and the example of the ruling powers so flagrantly bad, the conduct of Northumberland and Northumberland's friends could bear inspection as little as any man's. Another large sum of 40,000^. might be looked for from the sale of the estates of the See of Durham, which was about to be suppressed ; but these estates Northumber- land designed for himself, and obtained a grant of them ; and as he now really intended to pay off the Crown debts 7 — as, in fact, he was supplying, and intended to continue to supply, the 1 2Ool. weekly for which Gresham
1 Further Calculations of the King's Debts and of the Means of paying them : MS. Domestic, Ed- ward VI. vol. xiv.
2 From a report presented in the first year of Queen Mary, it appeared that in the last year of Edward he cleared off 60,000^.
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December.
had applied for that purpose, he was obliged to look to other resources. A Parliament had become a necessity, unwelcome but inevitable. A Par- liament must meet. The blame of the public embar- rassment could be cast upon Somerset ; and in a letter to the council the Duke explained the arguments on which he intended to apply for a subsidy.1 As the subsidy, however, could not be collected till after the next harvest, the meeting, he at first thought, might be postponed till the following Michaelmas.2
Circumstances, or the influence of others, or the ne- cessity of pacifying the people, forbade the anticipated delay. The writs were sent out in January, i$$$. and as Parliament would not grant money Januai7-
1 ' There is none other remedy/ he said, 'to bring his Majesty out of the great debts wherein, for one great part, he was left by his High- ness's father, and augmented by the wilful government of the late Duke of Somerset, who took upon him the Protectorship and government of his own authority. His High- ness, by the prudence of his father, left in peace with all princes, sud- denly by that man's unskilful Pro- tectorship, was plunged in wars, whereby his expenses were increased unto the point of six or seven score thousand pounds a year over and above the charges for the keeping of Boulogne. These things being now so onerous and weighty to the King's Majesty, and having all this while been put off by the best means we have been able to
devise, although but slender shifts, the same is grown to such an ex- tremity, as without it speedily bo holpen by your wise heads, both dishonour and peril may follow; and seeing there is none other hon- ourable means to reduce these evils, I think there be no man that bear- eth his obedient duty to his sovereign lord and country but must conform himself to think this way [of a Par- liament] most honourable. The sale of lands ye have proved ; the seek- ing of every man's doings in office ye mind to try ; and yet you per- ceive all this cannot help to salve the sore that hath been so long suf- fered to fester for lack of looking unto.' — Northumberland to the Council; MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xv. 2 Ibid,
I24 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
without inquiry, and inquiry could only be faced before interested or otherwise favourable judges, the best secur- ity was to fill the Lower House with men who could be depended upon. It has been maintained or assumed, by some writers, that the election of members of Parliament under the Tudor princes had but the form of freedom ; that the constituencies were treated with no more respect than if they had been deans and chapters of cathedrals, who, though permitted to pray to Heaven to be guided in the selection of their bishop, must nevertheless re- ceive that guidance through the nomination of the Crown. The account of the election of 1552-3 will enable us to form a more discriminating judgment. Northumberland's House of Commons was, in fact, chosen, like the bishops, by a conge d'elire; it was a 1 convention of notables/ such as Northumberland was pleased to direct to be elected ; but such a mode of elec- tion is expressly stated to have been introduced on this occasion, and if freshly introduced, did not exist before.1 How the voting was conducted does not appear ; and It is plain that the constituencies possessed no recognized means of enforcing their own choice; but it is plain, also, that the experiment of nomination was tried
1 On the i6th of August, 1553, I senter le paiieracnt selon quele Dt
Simon Renard, the Flemish Am- bassador, writing to Charles V. of the Parliament about to be called by Mary, consulted him in Mary's name, ' si le diet parlement se doit faire general, ou y appellir particu- liers et notables du pays par rcpre-
de Northumberland V a introduict.' — Despatches of Renard, copied from the Archives at Brussels : MS. Rolls House. Charles advised Mary to trust the people as completely as
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as tlie general rule of an election for the first time. A nomination Parliament, however, was on this oc- casion actually assembled. Either a circular1 was ad-
A first draft of the circular is in the British Museum : Lansdowne MSS. 3.
'Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. Forasmuch as we have, for divers good considerations, caused a summonition of a Parlia- ment to be made, as we doubt not ye understand the same, by our writs sent in that behalf to you, we have thought it meet, for the furtherance of sr°.h causes as are to be pro- pounded in the same Parliament for the commonweal of our realm, that in the election of such persons as shall be sent to our Parliament, either from oar counties as knights of the shire, or from our cities and boroughs, there be good regard had that the choice be made of men of gravity and knowledge in their own counties and towns, fit for their un- derstanding and qualities to be in such a great council. And, there- fore, since some part of the proceed- ing herein shall rest in you by virtue of your office, we do, for the great desire we have that this our Parlia- ment may be assembled with person- ages out of every county of wisdom and experience, at this present re- commend two gentlemen of the same county, being well furnished with all good qualities, to be knights of that
shire, that is to say, and ,
to whom we would ye should signify this our meaning, to the intent they
may prepare themselves to enter into this office, being for the weal of their country ; and likewise our plea- sure is that ye shall, at or before the day of the election, communicate this our purpose to the gentlemen and such other our subjects of the same, being freeholders of that county, as shall seem requisite, so as they may both see our consideration and care for the weal of the same shire, and our good memory of those two per- sonages whom we have named unto you.'
Transversely written on the same page, in the handwriting of North- umberland's secretary, is a second form, more general.
' 1 will and command you that ye shall give notice, as well to the freeholders of your county as to the citizens or burgesses of any city or borough which shall have any of our writs for the election of citizens or burgesses, that they shall choose and appoint, as nigh as they possibly may, men of knowledge and ex- perience within their counties, cities, or boroughs, so as, by the assembly of such, we may, by God's goodness, provide for the redress of the lacks in our commonwealth more effectually than hitherto hath been.
' And yet, nevertheless, our pleasure is, that when our privy council, or any of them, with their instructions in our behalf, shall re-
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[CH. 29.
dressed to the sheriffs of counties or mayors of towns, simply naming the persons who were to be chosen, or the electors were instructed to accept their directions from some member of the privy council. In some in- stances the orders of the Crown were sent direct to the candidate himself,1 and the language in which the com- munications were conveyed implied the most entire as- surance .on the part of the Government that the dispo- sition of the seats was under their control.
But for especial interference Northumberland's po- sition especially called. The writs with the letters and
circulars were sent out on the I9th of January.
On the 1 4th, Northumberland held in his hands a document which avowedly caused him uneasi- ness. The threatened inquiry into the distribution of the Church lands under Henry VIII. had not, perhaps, been pursued ; but ' a book ' had been drawn, ' of the charges of the present King and of his debts/ to the production of which, without considerable modifications, the Duke felt that he could not consent. This particu-
Jan. 14.
commend men of learning and wisdom, in such cases their direction be regarded and followed.'
1 ' Ye shall understand that his Majesty is right desirous to have the Parliament now coming to be as- sembled of the chiefest men of wisdom and good counsel for the better consideration of things for the commonwealth of this realm ; and, therefore, amongst divers others, hath willed us to signify unto you this his pleasure, to have you
one of the Commons House, which thing we also require you to foresee, that either for the county where ye abide ye be chosen knight, or else otherwise to have some place in the House like as all others of your de- gree be appointed. And herein, if cither his Majesty or we knew where to recommend you, according to your own desires, we would not fail but provide the same.' — The Council to Sir P. Hoby, January 19 : Har- Iciati MtiS. 523.
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lar bdok I have been unable to discover ; but it con- tained, among other things, an account of the various grants professing to have been made by Edward to his ministers, or, in truer language, appropriated by these ministers to their own use during Edward's reign. On the 1 4th of January the Duke had the report in his hands ; he sent it to the Marquis of Northampton, with side-notes and reflections, the occasion and meaning of which he expressed very frankly in a letter which has fortunately survived.
' The causes/ he said, ' why I have scribbled the book so much, is that I am of opinion that we need not to be so ceremonious as to imagine the objections of every froward person, but rather to burden their minds and hearts with the King's Majesty's extreme debts and necessities, grown and risen by such occasion and means as can be denied by no man ; and that we need not to seem to make account to the Commons of his Majesty's liberality and bounti fulness in augmenting of his nobles, or his benevolence shewed to any his good servants, lest you might thereby make them wanton and give them occasion to take hold of your own arguments. But as it shall become no subject to argue the matter so far, so, if any should be so far out of reason, the matter will always answer itself with honour and reason to their confuting and shame.'1
Although the ' scribbled ' document has disappeared, the substance of it remains in a separate table of reports,
1 Northumberland to the Lord Chamberlain : MS. Domestic, Edward VI. voL xvi.
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which were submitted, eventually, to a subsequent Par- liament,1 and it explains the Duke's anxiety.
The total value of the lands which had passed from the Crown, in the reign of Edward VI., by gift, sale, or exchange, had been something over a million and a half.2 Four hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds had professedly been paid into the treasury as purchase- money. The lands exchanged were worth 350,0007. The value of the lands given away was 730,000^. Of these given lands, estates to the extent of iaoo/. a year, worth perhaps, 25,000^, went to endowments of schools and hospitals ; 3600^. a year was reserved to the Crown upon the rents of the rest ; and 9000^. had been paid in money to the Crown by the recipients of the royal bounty. On the exchanged land there was a reserva- tion also of 1900^. a year.
After liberal deductions on these and all other im- aginable grounds, after reasonable allowances for grants legitimately made as a reward for services, there will remain, on a computation most favourable to the coun- cil, estates worth half a million — in the modern cur- rency about five millions — which the ministers of the Minority with their friends had appropriated — I sup- pose I must not say stolen — and divided among them- selves. In the different lists the names of the council
1 MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xix.
2 The annual proceeds of the land sold were 21,304^. 14*. $d. ; the money paid for them, 43 5, 2 7 jl. 12s. id The average value, therefore,
was a fraction over twenty years' purchase. The annual proceeds of the lands given were36,746/. 15*. 8d. wliich, on the same calculation, would give something over 730,000^
1553-J NORTHUMBERLAND'1 S CONSPIRACY. t2$
appear nowhere as purchasers. They exchanged occa- sionally, being nearest to the fountain, and having the privilege of the first draught: but, in general, when any minister of the Crown is mentioned, it is as an object merely of unmixed liberality. The literal entries are an imperfect guide, since it appeared, in the in- quiries which followed the deposition of Somerset from the Protectorate, that conveyances had been made out in other names, to cover the extent of the appropria- tions. From the report as it stands the Lord Paget and Sir William Petre would seem, to have made the smallest use of their opportunities; Lord Pembroke to have made the best.1
With the danger of these revelations impending, Northumberland must have doubtless felt the meeting of Parliament an anxious occasion, notwithstanding his care of the elections. The session opened on the ist of March ; and, to neutralize opposition, he had attempted to gain over, by a promise of long- coveted concessions, the support of the old- established guilds and corporations of the city of London.
The sixteenth century had seen the shipwreck of more than one time-honoured institution. The foreign trade from the port of London had been carried on from the time of the Norman sovereigns, down to a recent
1 MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xix. The summary at the close of the report is made up to the death of Edward, who is there described as the late King. The report itself is VOL. v.
stated to have been drawn up for Parliament, and was probably, there- fore, presented in the first year of Mary.
130 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29
period, under the jurisdiction of a close body of mo- nopolists, representatives of the various guilds and companies, entitled the Fellowship of the London Mer- chants. An organization which arises spontaneously has in its origin right upon its side. It springs into being as the answer to an acknowledged want which, in some degree, more satisfactory or less, it contrives to meet. It may be believed that so long as the desire to do right among them was stronger than the desire to grow rich, a close corporation conducted the trade of the country with more inherent equity, and with greater honour to the English name, than would have resulted from general competition. But exclusive privileges had ended, as usual, in the abuse of those privileges. In the twelfth year of Henry VII. the Merchant Ad- venturers, or unattached traders, petitioned for the right which belonged to them as freeborn Englishmen of carrying their goods into foreign countries, and selling them as they pleased, on their own terms. ' The Fel- /owship of London Merchants/ they said, ( for their own singular lucre, contrary to every Englishman's liberty/ had made an ordinance among themselves that no Eng- lishman should buy or sell in the markets of the Low Countries without paying a fine to the Fellowship ; and the fine had been gradually raised, till at last a demand of forty pounds was made upon every young merchant who was entering life before he could be permitted to trade.
The petition of the Adventurers was heard by Parliament. The conduct of the corporation was held
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to be * contrary to all law, reason, charity, right, and conscience/ Their jurisdiction was closed, and the foreign trade was declared free.1
In the first half of the century the old-established London houses had suffered from the competition ; and they took advantage of the necessities of an embar- rassed Government to make an effort to recover their privileges.
The reputation of English goods had unquestionably suffered in the foreign markets ; and the fraudulent manufactures, which were in reality the natural growth of an age of infidelity, they represented as the effect of a disorganized intrusion of unauthorized persons into ' the feat and mystery ' of merchandise.
The fall of the exchange, notoriously due to the debasement of the currency, they attributed with equal injustice to the same cause ; and Northumberland, to gain the support of so strong a body, and too happy to rest on others the consequences of his own misdoings, undertook, if possible, to gratify them.2
. ' 12 Henry VII. cap. 6. 2 "When the House of Commons petitioned Henry VIII. against the abuses of the spiritual courts, the bishops replied to the special charges of misconduct with a defence of the principle on which their authority was founded. It is amusing to find Sir Thomas Gresham addressing Northumberland with precisely similar arguments. All that was urged, either by prelate or merchant, was most excellent, provided only
that the wisdom and honesty of the jurisdiction which they defended was equal to its claims and profes- sions. ' The exchange,' wrote Gres- ham, ' is one of the chiefest points in the commonweal that your Grace and the King's Majesty's Council hath to look unto ; for, as the ex- change riseth, so all the commodi- ties in England falleth ; and as the exchange falleth, so all the commo- dities in England riseth ; as, also, if the exchange riseth it will be the
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An Act was prepared in compliance with the request of Sir Thomas Gresham, to limit the number of the Ad-
right occasion that all our gold and silver shall remain within our realm. And, to be plain with your Grace, you shall never be able to bring this to pass except you take away one of the greatest occasions of the let and stay thereof, that there shall be no more made free of this company of Merchant Adventurers from this day forward. For verily they have been and are one of the chiefest occasions of the falling of the exchange ; as also, for lack of experience they have brought the commodities of our realm clean out of reputation, as also the merchants of the same, which times past hath been most in estimation of all the merchants of the world. In the few years since the Act was made for the new Hanse the merchants and our commodities hath fallen in decay, and like to fall daily more and more, except the matter be prevented in time. For, as your Grace doth right well know, where there is no order kept, all things at length falleth to confusion. So, an it please your Grace, how it is possible that either a minstrel player, or a shoemaker, or any crafty man, or any other that hath not been brought up in the science, to have the present understanding of the feat of the Merchant Adventurers; to the which science I myself was bound prentice eight years, to come by the experience and knowledge that I have ; nevertheless, I need not have
been prentice, for that I was free by my father's copy. Albeit my father, Sir Richard Gresham, being a wise man, knew, although I was free by his copy, it was to no purpose except I was bound prentice to the same. So that by this it may appear to your Grace that these men that be made free by this new Hanse, for lack of knowledge, hath been and is one of the chiefest occasions of the fall of the exchange, as also hath brought our commodities out of reputation.
* As a further example to your Grace, it is not passing twenty or thirty years ago since we had for every twenty shillings sterling thir- ty-two shillings Flemish; and the notable number that hath from time to time run in headlong into the feat of merchandise, and so entered into credit, when they had overshot themselves and had bound themselves with more than their substance would bear, then, for saving of their names, were fain to run upon the exchange and rechange ; and the merchants, knowing that they had need thereof, would not from time to time deliver their money, but at their prices. So that in these few years the plenty of these new merchants, for lack of ex- perience, substance, and credit, hath been only the occasion that the ex- change fell from thirty-two shillings to 26s. 8c?., which was done afore any fall of money passed in England.
1553-1 NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 133
venturers, and to interfere with and hamper their trade
' To make an end of this matter, it may please you to understand till that the King's Majesty and you, with the rest of his Most Honourable Council, have wholly set an order in the premises, that you shall never be able to bring the commodities of this realm to such purpose as hereto- fore hath "been ; for plenty of mer- chants without experience is the ut- termostly destruction of any realm that hath the like commodities that we have to transport, which must be kept in reputation by merchants, or else in process of time things will grow to small estimation.
' Also there is another matter which is most convenient to be looked unto in time. And this is to make a general stay that there may be no retailer occupy the feat of Merchant Adventurers, but only to keep him, and to live upon his retail ; and likewise the Merchant Adventurer to occupy his feat only, and to touch no retail, for divers considerations of damage, as doth daily ensue thereof ; and, for an ex- ample, the retailer comes over with the commodities of our realm, which, if a cannot sell them at his price, then a falls to bartering of them for silks and such like merchandise, and careth not to win by his cloth, for that a is sure to win by the retail of his silks. Now, the Merchant Ad- venturer that occupyeth no retail cometh over with our commodities to have his gains and his living thereby; and for that the retailer
doth sell the self commodities better cheap than he is able to afford them, a doth not only take away the living of the Merchant Adventurer, but in process of time the few numbers of forty or fifty retailers in London will eat out all the merchants within our realm.'
Gresham seemed unconscious of the practical commentary which he was making upon his doctrine that only men who understood their busi- ness should be allowed to trade. His complaint against the retailers was merely that they were more skilful than their competitors.
' For your Grace's better in- struction in the matter,' he con- tinued, ' it may please you to under- stand that this last March there was one Rowland Haywood and Richard Foulkes, both retailers, as also this last year they both came in by the Hanse ; which parties sold here in barter 1500 cloths of the best sort in England and took half silks for them; and the said cloths so sold here was offered by the party that bought them to sell in this town for four pounds better cheap than any Merchant Adventurer was able to afford them ; which is a matter in the commonweal to be looked upon. In consideration whereof, the mer- chants here with one assent have made an Act to take effect at Mid- summer next coming, with a proviso so far forth as the King's Majesty and his Most Honourable Council be agreeable to the same, that the
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with restrictions and disqualifications.1 Having thus conciliated at least one powerful party, the Duke, on the 6th of March, introduced his Subsidy Bill in the House of Commons.2 The preamble was drawn by himself or under his immediate direction. It repeated, as the occasion for the required grant, the words of his own letter ; and the exhaustion of the exchequer was attributed exclusively to the recklessness of the Duke of Somerset, and the wars into which he had plunged the country. To relieve the country of the debt which had been thus increased, two fifteenths and tenths were demanded of the laity, to be paid in two years ; with an income-tax of five per cent, on the rents of their lands for an equal period. The clergy were required to give ten per cent, for three years on their benefices or other promotions.3 The debates are lost. It is known only that the bill was long argued, notwithstanding North- amberland's precaution, and was carried with difficulty.4 Carried it was at last ; but the House of Commons was far from complaisant. The retrospective examination of the public accounts had been abandoned, or if not the examination, yet the prosecution of defaulters. A measure, however, was introduced for an annual audit
retailer shall occupy only his retail, and the Merchant Adventurer his feat accordingly, to be at their liberty betwixt this and then to take to one of them which they shall seem most to their profit, which in my poor opinion seems to me a thing most reasonable.' — Grcsham to the Duke of Northumberland : Flanders
MSS. Edward VI. State Paper Office.
1 Note for an Act be prepared for the Parliament : MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. xvi. Ibid.
2 Commons Journals, 7 Edward VI.
3 7 Edward VI. 12, 13.
4 BURNET.
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of the books of all collectors and receivers, with precau- tions to prevent peculation for the future ; and so jea- lously was the wording of the Act examined and sifted, that it was twice drawn and redrawn before it was finally passed.1
A creditable bill had been designed for the protec- tion of the poor tenants of small cottages ' against the severing of land from houses ; ' and another to prevent the bishops and cathedral chapters from granting long leases on the Church lands, to be renewed upon fines. Both these measures were, unfortunately, dropped, as leading up to inconvenient questions. Again, to pacify the clergy after the late spoliations, a measure was brought forward that ' no person not a deacon should hold ecclesiastical promotions/ The Lords passed it, but the Commons declined. The country gentlemen refused to unclose their grasp upon the impropriated benefices, and the bill was lost upon the third read- ing.
A defeat on this last point Northumberland perhaps endured with patience. It was of more consequence to him that he was compelled to disappoint Sir Thomas Gresham and the merchants of the city. The bill which had been prepared in their favour was never introduced. A bill to repeal the Act of Henry VII. was carried in
1 It is remarkable that in an official list of measures intended to be introduced during the session there is no mention of this Act. It was probably forced upon the Go-
vernment by the debates on the subsidy. — Compare 7 Edward VI. cap. i, with the Preparatory List : MS. Domestic, Edward V[. vol xvi. State Paper Office.
I36 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH, [CH. 29.
the Upper House, but the Commons were again obstinate, and the monopoly could not be restored.1
Nor was it only in Parliament that the Duke en- countered awkward opposition.
John Knox, who since his dismissal from France had held a commission as a preacher in Durham and Northumberland, was looked upon as a desirable person to be promoted to a bishopric. The See of Rochester was vacated in the autumn of 1552 by the translation of Ponet to Winchester, and the Duke thought of nominating Knox to it ; partly, he said, ' as a whetstone to quicken the Archbishop of Canterbury, whereof he had need/ and partly — a more singular reason — to put an end to Knox's ministrations in the north, where he had habitually disobeyed the Act of Uniformity, and had not cared to conceal his objections to the Prayer- book.2 Northumberland communicated his intentions in a personal interview, and was not gratified at the manner in which the intimation was received. Under no temptation would Knox have accepted an office which he believed to be antichristian ; but with his hard grey eyes he looked through and through into the heart of the second Moses of John Bale, and he could not tell, he said, whether he were not ' a dissembler in religion/3 In fact, he thought he could tell ; and, not contented with refusing to take a favour at his hands, he held it to be his duty to make known his opinions to
1 Lords' Journals, Commons' Journals, 7 Edward VI. 2 Northumberland to Cecil, October 28, 1552 : TYTLEB, vol. ii. 3 Northumberland to Cecil, December 7, 1552 : TYTLEB, vol. ii.
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the world. Preaching before the Court in the spring, while Parliament was sitting, in the presence of the King, Northumberland, and the council, he asked how it was that the most godly princes had officers and chief councillors the most ungodly, enemies to religion, and traitors to their princes ; and quoting the characters of Ahithophel, Shebnah, and Judas, he fastened the first with a transparent allusion on Northumberland ; the second he gave to Paulet, Marquis of Winchester. Judas was present also, though he pointed less certainly to the person whom he regarded as the counterpart of the treacherous apostle.1 He vituperated from the
1 ' Who, I pray you, ruled the roast in the Court all this time by stout courage and proudness of sto- mach ? who, I pray you, ruled all by counsel and wit ? Shall I name the man ? I will write no more plainly than my tongue spake even to the face of such as of whom I meant. I recited the histories of Ahithophel, Shebnah, and Judas ; of whom the two former had high offices and promotions, with great authority, under Da-id and Hezekiah, and Judas was purse-bearer unto Christ Jesus.' 'Was David, said I, and Hezekiah abused by crafty council- lors and dissembling hypocrites ? What wonder is it that a young and innocent king be deceived by crafty, covetous, wicked, and ungodly coun- cillors? I am greatly afraid that Ahithophel is councillor, that Judas bears the purse, and that Shebnah is scribe, controller, and treasurer.'
And yet Knox afterwards accused himself for want of boldness. 'I did speak of men's faults,' he says, ' so that all men might know whom I meant; but, alas! this day my conscience accuseth me that I spake not as my duty was to have done — • for I ought to have said to the wicked man expressly by his name, thou shalt die the death. Jeremiah the prophet, Elijah, Elisha, Micah, Amos, Daniel, Christ Jesus himself, and after him his apostles, expressly warned the bloodthirsty tyrants and dissembling hypocrites of their dan- ger. Why withheld we the salt? I accuse none but myself. The blind love that I did bear to this my wicked carcase was the chief cause why I was not fervent and faithful enough. I had no will to provoke the hatred of men against me. So touched I the vices of men in the presence of the greatest that they
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pulpit the vices of the Court, and the worldliness of the faction who were misgoverning the country. Since discipline could not he restored, he, and those who felt with him the enormity of the times, established by their own authority this second form of excommunication.1
Northumberland, who had witnessed the fall of the old clergy, had no intention of enduring the insolence of the new. At the end of March Cranmer produced in the House of Lords his reformed code of canon law. Northumberland rose, and, turning fiercely on the Arch- bishop, bade him attend to the duties of his office. The clergy were going beyond their province, presuming in their sermons to touch the doings of their superiors. ' You bishops/ he said, ' look to it at your peril. Take heed that the like happen not again, or you and your preachers shall suffer for it together/ The Archbishop ventured a mild protest. He had heard no complaints of the preachers, he said ; they might have spoken of vices and abuses ; he did not know. ' There were vices
might see themselves to be offend- ers ; hut yet, nevertheless, I would not he seen to proclaim manifest war against the manifest wicked; whereof unfeignedly I ask God mer- cy.'— Admonition to the Faithful in England.
1 Knox was not always just. He afterwards accused the Marquis of "Winchester of having been the first contriver of the conspiracy to set aside Mary ; whereas, he was among the most consistent opponents of that conspiracy. He charged Gar-
diner with having advised the Span- ish marriage, although there was nothing which Gardiner so much dreaded. Nevertheless, the power of passing censures on the conduct of public men, in the name of right and wrong, is one which, in some form or other, has existed, and ought to exist, in every well-ordered com- munity. The most effective and the least objectionable instrument of such criticism is the public press as it is conducted at the present day in this country.
1 553-1 NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 139
enough/ Northumberland answered violently, l no doubt of that ; ' ' the fruits of the Gospel in this life were suf- ficiently meagre.' 1 Assailed in the pulpit, thwarted in the Commons, hated by the people, the haughty minis- ter found his temper failing him, and the smooth exte- rior less easy to maintain. ' Those about me/ he com- plained to Cecil, ' are so slack as I can evil bear it ; indeed, of late, but for my duty to the State, my heart could scarce endure the manner of it.' 2 He had secured the subsidy ; the continued sitting of a Parliament was inconvenient when his own nominees had opposed him ; on the last of March, within a month of the meeting, it was dissolved.
It is a question on which much depends, yet one which, nevertheless, there is little chance of adequately answering, whether the fortunes of Northumberland were not now bringing him to a point where he must either rise higher or fall utterly, irrespective of the life or death of the young King. The enthusiastic corre- spondents of Bullinger assured him that Edward re- garded the Duke as a father, and Edward by his con- duct at the close of his life proved that his own confidence was not yet shaken ; but the power of English ministers rarely survived intense un- popularity. By the accidents of the revolution, by 4 stout courage and proudness of stomach/ by dexterity, perhaps by crime, Northumberland was become almost
1 Scheyfne to Charles V. : MS. Rolls House, transcribed from the Brussels Archives.
2 Northumberland to Cecil : Lansdowne MSS. 3.
140
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
absolute — absolute as the able man can always make himself in times of disorder, if he is untroubled with moral scruples, when his competitors for power are as unprincipled as himself, and only his inferiors in capa- city. But, as it was only a temporary convulsion which placed a person of so poor a type of character at the head of the Government, so Northumberland was de- tested while he was obeyed. Those who, like Cecil, were treated by him with apparent cordiality, those whom he had addressed as his friends, whom he seemed to intrust with his most secret thoughts, felt his influ- ence like a nightmare.1 The growing discernment, the earnest interest in public affairs, and the consciousness of the disorganization of the State, which Edward ex- hibited more and more as he grew older, would have sooner or later brought forward other ministers ; in two years he would be of age, when inquiry could not have been avoided ; and Northumberland's influence would scarcely have survived the revelations which Arundel, whom he had imprisoned, Paget, whom he had stripped of his estates and expelled from the Order of the Garter,2 with the friends of Somerset, would have brought to
1 Northumberland's Correspond- ence with Cecil in the State Paper Office flows over with confidence, public spirit, and zeal for religion, with all those studied graces of ex- pression, which charmed and deceived the eager Protestants. Yet, on his release from the Court, when Edward was dead, and the spell was broken, entered in his Journal ' 7
Julii libertatem adeptus sum morte regis, ex misero aulico factus liber et mei juris.' — Life of Burghley, by NARES.
2 ' Chiefly,' says Edward, in his Journal, ' because he was no gentle- man born neither by the father's nor the mother's side.' Revolutionary Governments are not generally so scrupulous about high birth.
*$53-l NORTHUMBERLAND S CONSPIRACY. 141
light when opportunity permitted. His unpopularity in the country was a present fact, which every day be- came more embarrassing ; and he had no friends except among the incapable or the dreamers. Wolsey, Crom- well, Somerset, had fallen successively from the same height to which Northumberland had climbed ; and the Nemesis which haunts political supremacy irregularly obtained, would not have failed to overtake one whose administration had been scandalous to the empire, whose errors had arisen, not from generous weakness, not from large purposes too unscrupulously followed, but from a littleness of mind rarely combined with ta- lents and with courage so considerable as those with which the Duke must be credited. His overthrow could not but at times have seemed likely to him, unless he could by some means rest his power on a harder foundation ; and therefore it was that, as Sir Richard Morryson said, he never moved forward directly upon any subject without looking to the possible consequences to himself. He had played a double game with the Emperor. After risking the peace of the kingdom on the question of Mary's mass, he had contrived that in private she should not further be interfered with. He affected extreme Protestant opinions to keep his place with the Reformers. He was Imperialist, he was French, he had an anchor thrown out in all quarters from which a wind might blow. However events might turn, he had done something, or he had affected something, which would provide him a resource should he be driven to shift his colours.
142 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
But this uncertain attitude could not be maintained for ever. A crisis came which compelled him to choose his course.
Edward with varying health had arrived at the age fatal to the male Tudors, the age at which Prince Arthur had died, at which his brother the Duke of Richmond had died. The cough to which he was always subject had increased in the late winter. He dissolved Parlia- ment in person, but immediately after he was removed to Greenwich in a state of marked debility, and by the end of April the gravest alarms were entertained for his life. Philosophers, who believe that great events are enveloped in great causes, that the future is evolved out of the present by laws unerring as those which regulate the processes of nature, can see in the grandest of individual men but instruments which might easily have been dispensed with ; and in the cracking of the thread of a human soul but a melting raindrop, or a leaf fluttering from a bough. Centuries, it may be, take their complexion from these large influences ; and broad laws of progress may shape the moulds for the casting of eras ; but the living Englishman of the sixteenth century would have seen in these closet speculations but the shadow of a dream compared with the interests which depended on the result of the illness of a boy who was not yet sixteen. The eyes of Eng- land, of the Emperor, of the Pope, of the King of France, of all the civilized world, were turned with almost equal agitation to the sick-bed at Greenwich.
The reverses of France in the autumn of 1552 had
1552.] NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 143
produced a return of civility to England. Stukeley's stories, as we have seen, were denied or explained away. The complaints of the merchants were disposed of peace- ably by commissioners, and the efforts and the anxieties of the Court of Paris were directed wholly towards Metz, where Charles in person, with the Duke of Alva and 45,000 men, had sat down to wrench his conquest from the Duke of Guise. A winter siege was an enterprise at which the Emperor in his better days would have hesitated ; but since the flight from Innspruck he had been observed to be unequal to himself ; and illness and
bad fortune had made him obstinate. On the
JNovember. 24th of November the siege was opened. The
Spaniards pushed their trenches towards the walls ; the French pushed trenches forwards from the walls to meet them ; and the works were so close, that besiegers and besieged were in shot of each other's hand-guns/ The batteries played incessantly on the city, and breaches were opened ; but fresh walls rose behind the ruins ; midnight sallies carried off the Imperial guns ; fever and dysentery wasted the Imperial troops. In December there came a frost harder than any living man remem- bered, and the gout came back to Charles, so violently, that Morryson ' supposed the Emperor should not much longer need any ambassador ; there were few that could better digest Fortune's foul play than he ; yet good- nature might be provoked too far/1 The Spaniards might shiver to death in their tents, but Metz could not
Morryson to Cecil, MS. Germany, bundle 15, State Paper Office.
I553. January.
144 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
be taken ; and Charles was carried back to Luxemburg, as lie believed, to die.
As soon as the failure was known in Eng- Northumberland, either thinking the opportunity a good one to increase his own influence, or to recover for the country its weight in the councils of Europe, offered to mediate. Sir William Pickering was instructed to make overtures for a peace at Paris. Sir Andrew Dudley, the Duke's brother, was sent to Luxem- burg.1
1 Dudley and Morryson were ad- mitted into the Emperor's bed-room. ' We found there,' wrote the latter, 1 the Prince of Piedmont, the Duke of Alva, the Bishop of Arras, Don Diego, M. de Vaux, the Count of Egmont, with all those of his chamber, it being better furnished with hangings than ever I found it before. Mr Dudley, after reverence done to him at our entry, being al- most come to his Majesty, did press to kiss his hand ; but he, putting his hand to his cap, not being able, as it should seem, to put it so high as to take it off, would not suffer him to kiss it. Mr Dudley declared his in- structions. The Emperor took them in very thankful part; and not being able to speak loud, and Mr Dudley, by reason of his extreme cold, not being able to hear him, did with signs will me to mark. Whereupon the Emperor, somewhat perceiving the .matter, I said that Mr Dudley was so stuffed and stopped in his head, that he could not well hear
unless his Majesty did speak louder, nor I well understand, unless it would please his Majesty to speak Italian. Whereupon, being willing- er to speak Italian than able to speak louder, he said to me in Italian — I thank my good brother the King for his friendly sending and for his noble and princely offers, and for my part will leave nothing undone that may by any means either maintain or in- crease the amity. I, for my part, will at all times bear the King my good brother the affection of a father, and not fail him when my friendship may do him profit. It is much to his honour, and no small praise to him, that he, so young, hath this zeal and this care for the quietness and concord of Christen- dom, and such a desire to see it con- served from the Turk's tyranny.
' And where my good brother doth offer his travail with the spend- ing of his treasure for the atoning of the French King and me, I do give him my hearty thanks for it.
1553-] NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 145
The Emperor was in extremity of sickness ; so ill that Morryson, who accompanied Dudley to his bed- room, said that he had often seen him suffering, but * never so nigh gone, never so dead in the face, his hand never so lean and pale and wan/ * His eyes, that were wont to be full of life when all the rest had yielded to sickness, were now heavy and dull, as nigh death in their looks/ ' as ever ' Morryson ' saw any/ The cun- ning Arras, the iron Alva, the chivalrous Egmont, were standing mournfully at the bed-side. The Prince of Savoy forced a smile as the ambassadors entered, but talked like ( a man amazed/ l
Charles roused himself with an effort. He spoke with extreme difficulty, but with courtesy and clearness. He thanked the English Government for their kindness, which he said he would ever remember. But as for the peace, he did not begin the war, and he could not with honour be the first to propose terms on which to end it. His ' enemy ' must speak first ; and as he spoke of his enemy his fiery nature kindled up, and the faint voice sounded out clear and stern.
. The same spirit was shown at Paris. Henry, too, was ready for peace ; he would accept the advances of the Emperor, but he would not commence ; and for the
Marry, as I did not begin the wars, so I cannot with, mine honour make any answer to this my good brother's request till I understand what mine enemy would do.
' And here, though in very deed his Majesty was hoarse at the begin-
ning, yet, when he came to name his enemy, he spake so loud as Mr Dudley might hear easily what he said.' — Morryson to the Council : MS. Germany, Edward VI. State Paper Office. 1 Ibid.
VOL. V. 10
146
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 29.
first few weeks of the year, while the season caused a compulsory armistice, the arbitration could not advance over the first preliminaries.
Yet, if peace there was to be, both parties appeared anxious to arrive at it through the mediation of Eng- land. A nuncio came in February from Home, with an offer of the Pope's services, but he could not obtain admission into the Emperor's presence.1 The King of France assured Pickering that, so far as he was con- cerned, he desired nothing better than to place himself in English hands. Yet Pickering, who was a shrewd, clear-sighted man, at the close of a long and smooth interview, came to a conclusion ' that England would do well to trust neither of those princes.' They would regard no promise, no duty, no obligation, which might interfere with 'their own convenience.'2 He might have added that England also was only consulting her convenience ; but, from the correspondence of the three Courts, there appear to have been in each of them, as usual, separate parties with separate policies whose views crossed and intercepted one another. On the 2nd of April, the Bishop of Norwich and Sir Philip Hoby went to Brussels, whither Charles had
March.
1 ' And because it will not be,' said Morryson, ' he is in such a chafe that there are few here that can get leave from him to eat eggs this Lent. If men were as wise as he is stub- born, they might perhaps drive him to be the suitor, and to pray them to take his licenses, not only to eat
eggs, but to eat eggs' sons and daughters, if they come in their way.' — Morryson to the Council : MS. Germany, Edward VI. State Paper Office.
2 Pickering to the Council : MS. France, bundle 10, State Paper Office.
I553-]
NOR THUMB ERLAN&S CONSPIRA C Y.
»47
removed, to repeat the proposals which had been made through Dudley.1 Morryson was recalled, but his re- call was immediately countermanded; and in May, Northumberland was corresponding with him on the feasibility of the league which had been spoken of be- fore between England, the Empire, and the German States against France.2 At the same time he was as- suring Boisdaulphin, the French ambassador in Eng- land, ' that he would never bear arms unless in the service of his own sovereign, or of his Most Christian Majesty.3 And again, simultaneously, an agent of the English Government in the Netherlands was privately betraying the secrets, so far as he knew them, of Nortb uniberland's party to Charles.4
It is at once useless and unnecessary to trace th* complicated involutions of a general distrust. It i» clear only that so long as they were at war, both France and the Empire desired really the support of England. The Emperor was exhausted.5
1 Their commission was signed somewhat singularly by all the Council except Northumberland. — MS. Germany, Edward VI. State Paper Office. 2 MS. Ibid.
3 Boisdaulphin to the King of France : Ambassades de Noailles, vol. ii.
4 MS. Germany, Edward VI. State Paper Office.
5 Sir Philip Hoby sent a second sad picture of Charles's condition to Cecil. ' The Prince here is very feeble and weak of body, and every day decayeth more and more in the
same. So doth his credit in like manner decay, both in Germany, Italy, and all other places — nothing beloved, but disobeyed in a manner of all. Also out of soldiers' estima- tion. Yea, and his proceedings in every place go very ill forward. So as it seeineth unto me good fortune hath forsaken him, and he is like every day faster and faster to diminish in love, estimation, and power, than presently he doth in strength of body, all be so earnestly bent against him so far as I can perceive.' — Hoby to Cecil : Burleigh Papers, vol. i.
148 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [OH. 29.
France had its eye on Calais, but was in no condition, as yet, to strike for it. Northumberland, professing to be an impartial friend to both, was making secret and separate overtures to each, unknown to the other. Tip to the time that Edward's illness showed a likelihood of terminating fatally, the Duke was uncertain in which direction it would be most for the advantage of Eng- land to incline the balance, while his own interests had no special bias either way. And again, aware of the disposition of the man with whom they had to deal, both Charles and Henry felt the necessity of watching the Duke ; under the ostensible pretext of meeting the English offer of mediation, the ablest of their diplo- matists were despatched to London to intrigue, to watch events, to obtain information by fair means, by foul means, by any means.
Simon Kenard, the minister of the Emperor, had been governor of a district in Franche Comte. Un- known, as yet, to European fame, Renard was known to Sir Philip Hoby, who, writing to Cecil of the proba- bility of Edward's death, and of the influence which he might exercise over Mary, should Mary succeed, ex- claimed, ' If England should be ruled by such a coun- cillor, woe, woe to England, for then it would come to ruin and destruction, and them that favour God's Word would be in worse case than those that were in the time of Sodom and Gomorrah.'1 Antoine dc Noailles, one of three distinguished brothers, of old and noble family
1 Hoby to Cecil : Burkigh Papers, vol. i.
1553-1 NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 149
had served with, honour in the wars of Francis I. He was present at the defeat of the Emperor in Provence in 1536. Succeeding d'Annebault, as admiral of the French fleet, it was he who despatched Villegaignon to Scotland with the ships which brought Mary Stuart into France ; and he was governor of Bordeaux at the time when he was chosen by the King for the delicate mission to England. Noailles reached London in the middle of May. Renard not till six weeks later. From the de- spatches of these two, and before their arrival, from those of Scheyfne and Boisdaulphin, the ambassadors in ordinary, is to be gathered so much as can be ascer- tained of the secret history of the attempt of North- umberland to alter the succession to the Crown.
No sooner was Edward known to have been removed to Greenwich in consequence of illness, than his death was instinctively anticipated. Only once, after his ar- rival there, he was seen in the garden ; after that he was confined entirely to his room. By the end of April he was spitting blood, his disorder presenting the same symptoms which had preceded the death of his brother the Duke of Richmond, and the country was felt to be on the eve of a new reign. Yast as, at such a prospect, the excitement must have been, the accession of Mary, should the King die, was looked forward to as a matter of course. The long agitation of the subject, the anx- ieties and the scandals which the uncertainty had oc- casioned in the last reign, and the deliberate settlement of the Crown by Act of Parliament as well as by her father's will, in Mary's favour, had familiarized the
150 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29
minds of all men with the name of the Princess as their fature sovereign, should Edward leave no children. The question had been mooted, had been discussed, had been decided ; and on grounds of public safety there was no disposition to raise further doubt on a subject of so much magnitude. Although a queen was a novelty in the constitution, the people would rather submit to a queen, and to a queen of ambiguous legitimacy, than risk the chance of another War of the Roses
Personally Mary was popular. She had lived in re- tirement, and her objections to the later developments of the Reformation were well known ; but on this point she had the support of a powerful party. The sufferings of her mother, and the religious persecution which she had herself undergone, had secured her the affection of the people, which as yet she had done nothing to forfeit. A return to communion with the See of Rome was un- thought of. Mary herself was not supposed to desire what, in common with the rest of the country, she had renounced under her father. A return to the constitu- tion of religion as her father left it, was probably the wish of three quarters of the English nation. The or- thodox Catholics were outraged by the imprisonment of the bishops, and the establishment by law of opinions which they execrated as heresy. The moderate English party had no sympathy with a tyranny which had thrust the views of foreign Reformers by force upon the people. Even the citizens of London, where Protestantism had the strongest hold, had been exasperated by the offens- ive combination of sacrilege and spoliation with a pe-
'553-1 NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 151
dantry which could not bear the sound of the church- bells, and regarded an organ as impious. The clergy at the moment when the King's illness became serious were being subjected to a compulsory subscription to the Forty- two Articles, under pain of ejection from their benefices ; while the universal corruption of public func- tionaries, the sufferings of the poor, the ruin of the cur- rency, and the embarrassment of the finances, reflected double discredit on the opinions of which these were considered the results. It was assumed that Mary was English, that she would govern only through an English Parliament and with English ministers. The tyrannv of Rome had not been broken that it might be followed by a more intolerable tyranny of Protestantism.
Northumberland bowed outwardly to the general feeling. He supplied the Princess, who was then at Hunsdon in Hertfordshire, with regular bulletins of the King's health ; and he restored to her the arms and quarterings which she had borne as heir-presumptive before the divorce of her mother.1 Yet it was observed that he was collecting money with unusual eagerness. There were rumours of disagreement at the council- board. It was said that Lord Pembroke had desired to leave London, and had been forcibly compelled to remain ; 2 and at the end of April a marriage was announced as about to take place between Lord Gruilford Dudley, the Duke's fourth son, a boy of seven- teen, and Lady Jane Grey.3 Whatever may have been
1 Scheyfne to the Emperor : Scheyfne's Despatches : MS. Rolls House. Transcript from the Brussels Archives. 2 Scheyfne. 3 Ibid.
152 RETGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [en. 29.
his internal speculations, however, Northumberland had go far given no hints of intending a change to the privy council. Mary's friends among the Lords were in constant communication with Scheyfne, and through Scheyfne with the Princess. Not a word was spoken, not a move of importance was made, but the ambassador had instant notice. In fact, Northumberland himself was still hesitating. Three times in the month of May his instructions to Sir Richard Morry- son were altered. At the beginning there was to be a league between England, the Empire, and the Ger- mans. A few days later Morryson was told to go no further with it.1 On the 24th he was informed doubt- fully that he might feel his way towards it with the Em- peror again. Had the Duke intended merely to throw the Emperor off his guard, vacillation would have been unnatural and out of place. Deliberate hypocrisy can- not afford to be inconsistent.
It is needless to credit Northumberland with anxiety for the public interest. He must first have endeavoured to satisfy himself of the effects which Mary's accession would produce upon his own fortunes. Could he have hoped to retain his present authority, ambition for his family would not have tempted him into an effort to set her aside ; and he may have believed that his underhand manoeuvring had given him a hold -on the Princess's gratitude. But he must soon have convinced himself that any such expectation would be disappointed. On
Instructions to Sir Richard Morryson. Cotton. MSS. Galba, 13.
1553-1 NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 153
the day that Mary set her foot upon the throne the gates of the Tower would open ; Norfolk and Gardiner would return to the council, and the conservative lords to the Court. The lips of those that he had oppressed would be opened. Somerset's murder would rise in judg- ment against him. He knew too well ' the dead men's bones and all uncleanness ' which lay concealed behind the fair surface of his godly professions. Was there, then, any hope that the succession could be changed ? The fanatics dreaded Mary as much as Northumberland dreaded her. However moderate might be her policy, the best which they could look for would be toleration. They would lose their supremacy, and the privilege of forcing their opinions upon others. The Duke might rely, therefore, on them and on their leaders among the bishops. But the ultra-faction was numerically small \ and unless he could strengthen his hands with more in- fluential support, his chances were nothing. It was possible for him, however, to work upon many of the laity with the phantom of reaction, which, under the mildest form, had its terrors for those to whom, by grant or purchase, the estates of the Church had fallen. It was possible to work upon the superstition of the King, who had been made bitter against his sister by the col- lision into which he had been forced with her. The weak Duke of Suffolk could be led away by the prospect of a crown for his daughter ; and there were others among the new-made lords whose influence, if not for- tune, depended on the continuance in power of the re- volutionary party. Above all Northumberland had
154 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
possession of the situation. He had the organized military force of the kingdom at his disposal, which was at this time considerable. The fleet, the arsenals, the fortresses, the treasury were all in his hands ; and he might count with certainty on the support of France, which would be only too happy to prevent the Crown of England from falling to so close a connection of the Emperor.
These considerations (and there were others, perhaps, which we do not know) might have seemed to the most calculating statesman to offer a reasonable chance of success. A desperate man, with ruin staring him in the face if he left events to take their course — with power for himself and the kingdom for his family if he tried fortune and found her favourable — would have thrown the hazard with far lighter grounds of hope. The Duke waited, however? before he moved — before, probably, he took his own final resolution — till it became quite cer- tain that Edward could not recover.
The prospect of Mary becoming Queen was naturally raising the spirits of the Imperialists. Boisdaulphin, with Noailles, who had just arrived, was correspondingly anxious ; Scheyfne, they saw, was ' not asleep ; ' and on the 4th of May they pressed for a private in- terview with the Duke. They had been long anxious, they said, to be admitted to the King's pre- sence. They had been answered that his illness made it impossible for him to receive them ; but in the mean time the longer they were kept from the Court, the. more significant of the approaching attitude of England their
I553-]
NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY.
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absence would appear. They suggested that, if they could not see the King, the world might be made to suppose that they had seen him. A plan was arranged.
The next day they were invited to dine at
. . May 5.
Greenwich, and as they were rising from the
table, Northampton brought a message into the room that Edward was expecting them. They followed into a private apartment ; and while the Court believed that they were by the sick-bed, they were joined by North- umberland and others of the council, who entered at large with them on the great question of the moment. The Duke declared that he was wholly French ; and as the conversation went forward, he at last asked them what they would do, were they in his (the Duke's) position. Noailles, cautious of what he committed to paper, informed his master that he did not fail to sug- gest what would be most to the advantage of France.1
The same day, Edward being reported worse, and his attendants requiring further advice, the family phy- sician of Northumberland was called in, with a professor of medicine from Oxford ; to these a woman was after- wards added, who professed to be in possession of some mysterious specific ; and before they were admitted to the sick-room they were sworn, in the presence of Northum- berland, Northampton, and Suffolk, to reveal to no one the
1 ' II est venu jusques a nous domander ce que nous ferions si nous ostions en sa place, a quoi nous n'uvons obmis, sire, de luy respondre et proposer tout ce que nous avons
peu juger tendre au bien faveur et advantage de vos affaires.' — Bois- daulpbm and Noailles to tbe King of France : Ambassades, vol. ii. pp. 6,7.
I56
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 29.
King's condition.1 The guard at the Tower was doubled, and a rumour spread in London that Elizabeth had been sent for to be married to Lord Warwick, whose wife was to be divorced to make room for her. A few days later Scheyfne reported that something (he knew not what) was going forward. Five hundred men had been quietly introduced into Windsor Castle by Northampton. He had been privately informed that the same nobleman, with Suffolk and two or three others, was going down into Hertfordshire, to form a cordon silently round Hunsdon, to take possession of Mary's person, when the signal should be given them from London. With evident alarm, he added that Pembroke was one of the conspirators,2 which, 011 the 25th of May, re- ceived a further and a strange confirmation. On that day London was startled with three extraor- dinary marriages — extraordinary, and, considering the King's illness, and the rank of the ladies con- cerned, in the highest degree indecent. Lady Cathe- rine Dudley was married to Lord Hastings. The two elder daughters of the Duke of Suffolk, prin- cesses of the blood, and possible heirs of the crown, were disposed of together; Lady Jane Grey to Lord Guilford Dudley ; and Lady Catherine to Pembroke's son, Lord Herbert. There had been an alarm lest Mary or Elizabeth might make some objectionable alliance with a foreigner. Care was taken that there should be
May 25.
1 Scheyfne.
2 Northumberland said after- wards that Pembroke was the first
originator of the plot. This is not likely; but the evidence does not warrant a certain conclusion.
*553-] NORTHUMBERLAND S CONSPIRACY. i$J
no such fear on account of those who were next to them in the order of succession. That some project was con- cealed behind these precipitate unions, and that the Duke had secured a powerful supporter in the Earl of Pembroke, was no longer doubted.
Yet what the project was continued a
May 30.
mystery. On the 3oth Scheyfne wrote again that the King was sinking slowly but surely. His head and legs were swelling, and he could only sleep with the assistance of opiates ; he might perhaps live two months, but that was the longest ; while an at- tempt, it was now certain, would be made to exclude Mary from the throne. Religion would be one pretext, and others could be made or found. France would assist — bribed, so Scheyfne had been told, by the pro- mise of Ireland. Elizabeth could be got rid of, or mar- ried to Warwick, or Northumberland would take her, and seize the crown for himself.1
Through the first days of June the am- bassador's reports acquired more and more consistency. As each step was taken he had instant and accurate information. There had been a difficulty in arranging the plans for the seizure of Mary. The Lords, who were to have been her captors, had either disagreed among themselves, or their fidelity was doubt- ful. Northumberland and his friends were buying up or securing all the arms in London ; ships in the river were preparing for sea. The plan was now to wait for
1 Scheyfne to Charles V., May 30 : Rolls House MSS.
158 REJGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. |CH. 29.
the King's death, and then at once to seize the noblemen who were expected to take Mary's side. Mary herself was to be invited to the Tower to receive the Crown, and then to be secured. The Duke was keeping up an appearance of studied respect towards her. He flattered himself that his secret had been kept, and that she would fall without difficulty into the snare. The Tower gates safely locked behind her, the ports were to be closed, and the evangelical preachers were to inform the people from the pulpits that, being illegitimate, she was incapable of sovereignty ; that religion would be in danger ; that the holders of Church property would be deprived of their estates; that the Papal jurisdiction would be restored ; and that, on constitutional grounds, England could not be ruled over by a woman. Eliza- beth's person would be secured with Mary's, but she would be treated with more respect, since the Duke might find it necessary to make use of her.
So stood the plot as it was communicated to Scheyfne in the first week in June. But, although Northumberland was confident of success, he was assured privately that the opposition would be more considerable than was anticipated. Mary was as generally popular as the Duke was detested ; all the peers but a few, He- formers as well as Catholics, would take her side ; they might appear to be swimming with the stream, but they would strike clear from it when the time came for action. The supposed secrecy was a delusion. The conspiracy was in every one's mouth, and the people were furious. The Duke was accused of having sold the country to
'553-] NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 159
France; but the King of France, men said, should never set foot in England. The jealousy with which Edward was guarded only stimulated suspicion. Some said that he was already dead, others that the Duke had poisoned him ; to which the Protestants had their answering accusation that his sister Mary had ' over- looked ' him ; that his illness became mortal from the day when she was last in his presence.1
In other times the popular discontent would have expressed itself in a violent form; but London was overawed by the ' gendarmerie/ who could have ex- tinguished in blood any merely popular tumult. The council had not been formally consulted, and no opinions on either side had been officially expressed: yet none of those who were suspected of being unfavourable to the Duke felt their lives secure; Cecil, walking with a friend in Greenwich Park, whispered his own mis- givings ; for himself, he said, he would be no party to treason, and he had resigned his office of secretary ; but he went about ever after armed, in dread, he avowed, of assassination; he secreted his money and papers and prepared to fly.2
Meantime Northumberland had made important progress ; he had persuaded Edward. Edward had consented by a strained imitation of the precedent of Henry VIII. to name his successor by letters patent, or by will ; and the council and the Lords could thus be forced into an appearance of acquiescence which they
1 Scheyfne to Charles V., May 30: Rolls Home MSS. 2 Alford to Cecil : TYTLEB, vol. ii.
i6o
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[OH. 29.
would find it difficult to refuse to the entreaties of a dying prince. When Edward's mind was first set working upon the subject, the extremity of his danger was concealed from him, and Scheyfne was informed rightly, that one of the points pressed upon his con- sideration was the objection to a female sovereign. The plot was altogether precipitate and inconsistent : the Duke had resolved on nothing beyond setting Mary aside. Some time in the beginning of June Edward wrote with his own hand what he called ' his device for the succession/ *
For lack of issue mak of my body to tho ioouo malo coming of tho ioouo fomalo, ao I have after de* olftrod i to the Lady Frances's 2 heirs males, for lauk e£- if she have any such issue before my death : to the Lady Janets- and her heirs males. To the Lady Catherine's heirs males. To the Lady Mary's heirs males. To the heirs males of the daughters which she [_i. e. the Duchess of Suffolk] shall have hereafter. Then to the Lady Margaret's heir's males.3 For lack of such issue, to the heirs males of the Lady Jane's
1 It was altered by him in the interval between the first draft and his death, and the omissions and in- sertions mark the progress of the design. The reader will observe that the words which have a pen- stroke through them were in the original device, and were subse- quently crossed out. The words in italics were insertions ; but, like the original, were written by Edward
himself. I transcribe from the care- ful copy printed for the Camden So- ciety by Mr John Gough Nichols. — Queen Jane and Queen Mary, Ap- pendix.
2 Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, daughter of Mary, sister of Henry VIII. and Charles Brandon.
3 Margaret Clifford, daughter of Eleanour, Countess of Cumberland.
«553-]
NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY.
161
daughters. To the heirs males of the Lady Catherine's daughters ; and so forth, till you come to the Lady Margaret's daughter^ heirs males/ l
The ' device ' tells its own story ; a female sovereign was not contemplated, nor was Edward, when he drew it, aware of the near approach of his death. He evi- dently expected to live till one or both of the recent marriages had proved fruitful ; he considered the possi- bility of his having children of his own ; and the male offspring of his cousins was preferred to his own daughters, should daughters be born to him. But such an arrangement would not have answered Northumber- land's intention. The King was now made to feel that he was dying. * The Lady Jane's heirs males ' were
1 The remaining clauses refer to the Government during the Regency, should Edward die before the heir should be of age.
'If, after my death, the heir male be entered into 18 years old, then he to have the whole rule and governance thereof.
4 But if he be under 18, then his mother to be governess till he enters 1 8 years old: but to do nothing without the advice and agreement of 6 parcel of a council to be appointed by my last will to the number of 20.
' If the mother die before the heir enter into 18, the realm to be governed by the council, provided that after he be 14 years all great matters of importance be opened to him.
VOL. v.
there were none heirs male, then th& Lady Frances to be s-overness Re-
cent. For lack of her. then her
eldest daughters- and for lack of
them, the Ladv Margaret to be governess after, as is aforesaid, till
some heir male be born, and then the mother of that child to be
governess.
'And if during the rule of the governess there die four of the coun-
cil, then shall she by her letters call an assembly of the council within
one month following-, and choose four more, wherein she shall hage? voices : but after her death, thn rfi
the heir come to T/I years ol
then he bv their advice shall rhonse
them."
n
1 62 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
converted, by erasure and an insertion, into ' the Lady Jane and her heirs male.' Her mother, Lady Frances, was but thirty-seven years old and might still bear a son. This contingency was anticipated by a provision that the son, to succeed, must be born while Edward was alive. Thus altered, the weak, incoherent, im- practicable arrangement was submitted to the Lords as the King's desire.
The reception of it was not favourable. The Mar- quis of "Winchester, Lord Bedford, Sir Thomas Cheyne, Lord Shrewsbury, and Lord Arundel made the obvious objections that the power of bequeathing the crown had been granted exceptionally to Henry YIIL, for peculiar reasons ; that the disposition which had been made by Henry had been confirmed by statute ; and that it was grotesque to suppose that a prince under age, and un- authorized, could set aside an Act of Parliament at his own pleasure : 1 the French, too, whatever present face they might please to wear, would be as little satisfied as the Emperor ; if the late King's daughter were to be set aside in favour of another queen, they would, sooner or later, insist on the prior claims of Mary Stuart. The resistance was so decided that, on the i5th of June, it was believed that Northumberland would be driven after all to take possession of Elizabeth and try his for- tune thus.2
But the indispensable consent of Elizabeth herself, perhaps, could not be obtained ; or else among the many
Scheyfne : MS. 2 Scheyfne to the Em] erov :
1 5 53-1 NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 163
difficulties of a hazardous enterprise those attending the substitution of Jane Grey were the least. Northumber- land could not retreat ; the King was eager, and force could compensate for illegality. The lives of the oppo- sition were in Northumberland's power ; and they hesitated, or they could not on the instant resolve on the course which they should pursue. A promise was made to them that Parliament should be called imme- diately, and that any steps which might be taken, should be subject to parliamentary revision.1 They bent, therefore, before the immediate danger, and waited till they could have the support of the country in taking further measures.
The question of legality was referred to the judges.
On the nth of June Chief Justice Montague re- ceived a letter, bearing the council' s signatures, requir- ing him to present himself at Greenwich the following day with Sir Thomas Bromley, Sir John Baker, and the Attorney- and Solicitor- General. The learned body
were admitted into the King's apartment, and
. June 12.
the King, in the last stage of exhaustion, in- formed them that during his illness he had reflected on the condition and prospects of the country ; the Lady Mary might marry a stranger ; the laws and liberties of England might be sacrificed, and religion might be changed ; he desired, therefore, that the succession might be altered. The scheme, in the corrected form, was read aloud in the room, and Edward required the
Scheyfne to the Emperor : MS.
164
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 29.
judges to draw out letters patent embodying .his direc- tions.
The judges listened, and declared unanimously that the King demanded an impossibility. Letters patent would have no force against an Act of Parliament. But Edward would hear of no objections. He would have the letters patent drawn, and drawn immediately. The judges retired, requesting time.
The two next days the council were in close session, the clerks and secretaries being excluded. Noailles, since the Queen of Scots had been named as a difficulty, had been admitted no further into confidence, and could learn nothing of what was going forward ; only on all sides there were notes of preparation ; the equipment of the fleet was hastened ; a body of troops were re- viewed in the Isle of Dogs, and forty pieces of cannon were shipped for Guisnes and Calais ; at last an order appeared commanding all peers and great men in Eng- land to repair at once to London.1
Meanwhile the judges were studying the Act of Succession, and had discovered, beyond all doubt, that, if they obeyed the King, they would lay themselves open to prosecution as traitors.2 They returned to Greenwich, and repeated to the council their inability to comply. Northumberland was absent when they entered ; but, hearing of their arrival and of their
June 15.
1 Noailles to the King of France : Ambassades, vol. ii. p. 34.
2 The tenth section of the Act declares that any person going about
to undo the Act or interfere with the succession as therein ordered, should be guilty of high treason.
1S53-]
NOR THUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRA C Y.
165
answer, 'he came into the council chamber, being in great rage and fury, trembling for anger ; and amongst, his outrageous talk he called Sir Edward Montague traitor, and said that he would fight in his shirt with any man in the quarrel.'1 He was so savage, that the judges thought he would strike them, if they remained
in the room. They escaped in haste ; but the
June 1 6. next day they were again sent for. They
were introduced in the midst of dead silence. ' The Lords looked on them with earnest countenance, as though they had not known them/2 Not a word was spoken till they were called to the King's bed-side.
Edward, dying as he was, ' with sharp words and angry countenance, asked where were the letters patent? Why had they not been drawn ? ' Montague said that they would be useless without an Act of Parliament, and when Edward answered that he would call a Par- liament, the Chief Justice begged that the question might be deferred till the meeting. But Edward would not hear of delay. The ratification might follow ; for the present, he chose to be obeyed. A voice at Monta- gue's back exclaimed, if the judges still refused, they were traitors. No lips were opened to support them ; partly, perhaps, because the King's death-bed was not a fit place for an altercation ; partly because opposition at that time might have led to instant bloodshed.3
1 Montague's Narrative : printed in FULLER'S Church History.
2 Ibid.
8 Noailles thought that at this
time the Duke had gained over his opponents. On the lyth June, he says, he found the council in better spirits than he had seen them
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [OH. 29.
Bromley was timid, Baker would go with Sir Edward, and Sir Edward was 'an old man without comfort/ They reflected that they could not be committing trea- son by obeying the King as long as the King was alive ; and they satisfied their consciences by resolving to med- dle no further after he was gone. They demanded for their greater security special instructions in writing, and a pardon if their consent should prove to have been a crime. This being granted, they complied. The re- maining judges, who were next called in, agreed to the same terms, Sir James Hales, a Protestant, alone hold- ing out to the last. The Solicitor- General Gosnold re- sisted long. ' How the Duke and the Earl of Shrews- bury handled him/ says Montague, 'he can tell himself/ 1 Gosnold, too, yielded at last, and the letters patent were drawn out, engrossed, and passed under the Great Seal. The King's sisters were declared incapable of succeed- ing to the Crown, as being both of them illegitimate With a strange inconsequence of reasoning, it was added that, even had their birth been pure, being but of half-
since his arrival. Their own ex- planation was that the King's health had improved. Noailles believed, however, that their satisfaction ' provenoit plus du contentement en quoy les milords se trouvent pom- s'estre resolus tous en une opinion, ou pour y parvenir ont tenu beau- coup de journees, estant resserrez et ne se pouvant accorder pour raison de ce que le milord tresorier et au- cungs aultres estoient de contrarie
volunte a celle du Due de Northum- berland, lequel les avoit depuis unis et faict condescendre a la sienne.' — NOAILLES, vol. ii. p. 40. Scheyf- ne on the contrary, was assured, and believed, that the compliance was throughout assumed.
1 It were curious to know — Shrewsbury had been active in op- position to the Duke, and, after Ed- ward's death, was among the first to declare against him.
'553-1
NOR THUMBERLAN&S CONSPIRA CY.
167
blood to the King, they would not be his heirs ; * and, further, they might compromise the country by unde- sirable marriages. The succession was therefore dis- posed in the altered order which Edward had prescribed; and the document being prepared, it remained only that Northumberland should compel every one whose rank or influence made him formidable, to commit himself to the substitution by his signature.
On the 2 ist of June he collected at Green- wich the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, twenty- two peers, eight eldest sons of peers, ministers, secretaries of State, judges, officers of the household. Of all whose support would be useful, of all whose opposition had to be dreaded, Lord William Howard and Lord Derby alone were absent, and Lord Derby was represented by his son. The rest came to- gether at the Duke's bidding, and, willingly or unwill- ingly, gave their names to his design.2
June 21.
1 'As also for that the said Lady Mary and Lady Elizabeth be unto us but of the half-blood, and, therefore, by the antient laws, statutes, and customs of this realm, be not inheritable unto us, although they vvere legitimate, as they be not indeed.'— Letters Patent for the Limitation of the Crown : Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 93.
? I transcribe Mr Nichols's excellent analysis of the signa- tures ; —
Great officers of State and Peers :
The Archbishop of Canterbury ;
Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, Lord Chancellor ; Marquis of Winchester, Lord Treasurer ; Duke of Northum- berland, Grand Master of the House- hold ; Earl of Bedford, Lord Privy Seal ; Duke of Suifolk ; Marquis of Northampton ; Earls of Arundel, Oxford, "Westmoreland, Shrewsbury, Worcester, Huntingdon, and Pem- broke ; Lord Clinton, Lord Darcy ; the Bishop of London ; Lords Abergavenny, Cobham, Greyde Wil- ton, Windsor, Bray, Went worth, Rich, Willoughby, and Paget.
Eldest Sons of Peers : Lords, Waiwick, son of the Duke
1 68
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[CH. 29.
They signed without order ; ardent Protestants side by side with the attached friends of Mary ; city mer- chants intermixed with privy councillors; and some names appear in so singular a connection, that it is hazardous to suggest the principle which guided the
of Northumberland, Fitzwalters, of ihe Earl of Sussex, Talbot, of the Earl of Shrewsbury, St John of Basing, of the Marquis of Win- chester, Russell, of the Earl of Bed- ford, Fitzwarren, of the Earl of Bath, Gerald Fitzgerald, heir of the earl- dom of Kildare, Strange, son of Lord Derby, Lord Thomas Grey, brother of the Duke of Suffolk.
Officers of the Household : Sir R. Cheyiie, Treasurer and Warden of the Cinq Ports, com- monly called Lord Warden; Sir William Cavendish, Treasurer for the Chamber ; Sir Richard Cotton, Controller; Sir John Gates, Vice- Chamberlain.
Secretaries of State : Sir William Petre, Sir William Cecil, Sir John Cheke.
Judges ;
Sir Roger Cholmeley, Chief Justice of the King's Bench; Sir Edward Montague, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; Henry Brad- shaw, Chief Baron of the Ex- chequer ; Sir John Baker, Chancel- lor of the Exchequer ; Sir Humfrey Brown, Justice of the Common Pleas; Sir William Portraau, Justice
of the King's Bench; Sir Robert Bowes, Master of the Rolls.
The King's Sergeant : James Dyer.
The Solicitor General : John Gosnold.
Privy Councillors : Sir John Mason, Sir Ralph Sadler, Sir Richard Sackville, Sir Edward North, Sir Anthony St Leger, Sir Richard Southwell.
Knights of the Privy Chamber .
Sir Thomas Wroth, Sir Henry
Sydney, Sir Maurice Berkeley, Sir
Nicholas Throgmorton, Sir Richard
Blount, Sir Henry Gage.
[The Lord Mayor : Sir George Barnes.
Aldermen: Sir John Gresham, Sir Andrew Judd, Sir Richard Dobbs, Sir Augustine Hinde, Sir John Lambard, Sir Thomas Offley.
Sheriff of Middlesex : Sir Wil- liam Garrard.
Sheriffs of Kent and Surrey : Sir Anthony Brown, Sir Robert Southwell.
Six Merchants of the Staple; Six Merchants Adventurers.]
The mayor and the citizens did not sign till the 8th of July.
NOR THUMBERLAN&S CONSPIRA C Y.
169
arrangement.1 The judges, when they produced the document, again protested that it was worthless, and they must have signed as a form ; Cecil, after long re- fusal, wrote his name at last at the King's desire ; but insisting, as he did it, that he signed only as a witness. Many, perhaps, like Montague, saved their consciences with an intention of resisting afterwards when the King should have died. Some signed, it can hardly be doubted, with a deliberate intention of deceiving and betraying the Duke of Northumberland. Winchester, Bedford, and Cheyne continued their opposition, not- withstanding their apparent compliance ; and were in- sisting in council, two days after, on the necessity of maintaining the original Act of Succession.2
Cranmer, though he headed the list, was the last who subscribed on the list of June. The Archbishop, who had been on bad terms with the Duke since Somerset's death, was among the latest to be informed of his project. He, of all men, had most to fear from the accession of the daughter of Queen Catherine ; but Northumberland knew his disposition too well to seek his confidence or expect his support ; 3 he had been in- formed only as soon as his outward concurrence became necessary. On learning the Duke's intentions, he went
1 Lord Paget, for instance, is separated from the peers, and ap- pears between Sir Anthony St Leger and Sir Thomas Wroth.
2 Scheyfne to Charles V., June
23-
3 'The Duke never opened his
mouth to me to move me ; nor his heart was not such towards me, seeking long time my destruction, that he wonld ever trust me in such a matter, or think that I would be persuaded by him.' — Cranmer to Mary : STIIYPE'S Life of Cranmer.
170 REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
at once to Edward, and in the presence of Lord North- ampton, remonstrated with him. Finding the King obstinate, he requested a private audience, which the Duke was too prudent to permit. He then endeavoured to move the council. Northumberland told him that the judges had acquiesced, and that it was not for him to interfere with the King's pleasure ; * yet he continued to hold off, and, finding his remonstrances useless, he absented himself from Greenwich on the day of the signature. But the Archbishop's name could not be dis- pensed with. He was sent for, and came in only after the rest had signed. He said that he had sworn to maintain the will of Henry VIII. If he signed the letters patent, he was perjured. The Duke and his friends replied that they had sworn as well as he, and if he had a conscience, so had they. He did not judge their consciences, he said, but he must act for himself by his own. He would not sign till he had again seen his master ; and he was taken to the King's room.
Edward there assured him that the change of the succession had the sanction of the judges ; neither him- self nor his subjects could be bound by his father's will ; he had a right to act for the good of the commonwealth by his own judgment.' The Archbishop had not been present at Montague's protest, and knew nothing of it- He desired to see the judges himself; and the judges having satisfied their own consciences that treason was not treason while the King lived, now told him that he
1 STBYPE'S Life of Cranmer. - Ibid.
I553-]
NOR THUMtiERLAN&S CONSPIRA C Y.
171
might sign, if lie wished it, without breach of the law. He returned, still hesitating, to the King's bed-side. Edward told him he hoped that he would not stand out alone, ' and be more repugnant to his will than all the rest of the council ; ' and at this last appeal the Arch- bishop yielded. Others signed with mental reservations, of which, in their subsequent defence of themselves, they made the most. Cranmer made no reservations, and pretended to none. When called to account by Mary, he said frankly that, when he signed at last, ' he did it unfeignedly and without dissimulation.'1
The letters patent were thus completed ; but the Duke still felt himself insecure, and those who might be suspected of equivocating were compelled to bind them- selves with a second chain. An engagement was at- tached to the scheme as drawn by the King, by which all the council, except Lord Arundel, promised that they would maintain the succession as it was there determined, ' to the uttermost of their power,' and ' never at any time during their lives would swerve from it.'2
The last precautions were thus taken, and the con- spirators had then to sit still till the King's death, which was now every day expected. Since the nth of June
' STUYPE'S Life of Cranmer.
- Qtieen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 90. — Montague subscribed to this, with Baker and the Attorney- and Solicitor-General, although they had assured the council to the last that the letters patent were value- less, and had, as they said, resolved
to move no step, after the King's death, to carry them into effect. I suppose that the bond was devised to catch those who might have signed with reservations, and the judges having given their names once, could not help themselves.
17*
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
.CH. 29.
he had eaten nothing; on the J4th he was thought at one time to be gone. The care of him was now ex- clusively committed to the nameless woman, who, when the physicians despaired, had professed a belief that she could effect a cure.1 But his disorder evidently grew worse, and assumed anomalous forms ; it was said to be an affection of the lungs ; but symptoms appeared which could have been occasioned by no disorder of the lungs. Eruptions came out over his skin ; his hair fell off, and then his nails, and afterwards the joints of his toes and fingers ; 2 and rumour said that Northumberland, having made his arrangements, could not afford to wait, and was hastening the natural arrival of death with poison.3 While these events were in progress, Mary, whom the Duke believed to be ignorant of all that had passed,
VI.
1 HAYWAKD'S Life of Edward Scheyfne.
2 SCHEYFNE.
s The suspicion that Edward was poisoned was shared both by Catholic and Protestant. Machyn, a contem- porary citizen of London, says that no one doubted it. — Diary, p. 35. Burcher, writing to Bullinger, says : 1 That wretch, the Duke of North- umberland, has committed an enor- mous crime. Our excellent King was taken off by poison ; his nails and hair fell off,' &c. Renard, on the 6th of August, informed Charles V. that, by Mary's order, Edward's body had been examined, and it was found ' que les artoix des piedz luy estoients tumbez et qu'il a este em- poissonne.' — Renard's Despatches •
MS. Rolls House. The symptom^ certainly, do not resemble those of any known disorder. On the other hand, when a life came to an end on which much depended, there was always a suspicion of poison ; and although Northumberland was not a man to have hesitated, had the ac- celeration of the death been import- ant to him ha would have gained no advantage from it in the least com- mensurate with the crime. The probable truth was perhaps this : that the woman to whose exclusive care the King was culpably com- mitted, administered mineral medi- cines in over- doses, and that Edward was in fact poisoned, though not by deliberate malice.
'553-1 NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 173
found means, though she was narrowly watched, to com- municate with Scheyfne, and desired him to let the Emperor know her situation, and ask his advice. On the 23rd of June, a rising was expected in London.1 The Protestant clergy, who were the only persons that heartily exerted themselves in the conspiracy, gave out in their pulpits that the King was dying, and that re- ligion would be in danger from Mary. The people listened so ominously, that the guards at the gates were doubled. The Duke of Norfolk, Gardiner, and the other prisoners in the Tower, who had been allowed to walk on the leads and in the gardens, were confined to their rooms ; Lord Dacres, who was leaving London, was detained, and other suspected persons were arrested ;
and on the 24th of June Scheyfne was told that
June 24. the Duke found his embarrassments so great,
that he was giving up the game. Three quarters of the country were determined to support Mary, and her friends on the council sent a message through Scheyfne to the Emperor, to say that the slightest demonstration, on his part, in his cousin's favour, would suffice to in- sure her accession.2
In his extremity Northumberland was obliged again to appeal to France. It was now whispered at Paris that, should Mary become Queen, Charles had already destined her for Philip of Spain ; and the union of England and Spain, under a common sovereign, was a danger which every French statesman felt himself called
1 NOAILLES.
2 Scheyfne to Charles V. : MS. Rolls House.
174 REIGN OP EDWARD THE SIXTH. [CH. 29.
upon to make an effort to prevent. In the last June 27. . .
week in June, therefore, iresn communications
passed between the King of France and the conspirators ; promises were given of help, at which the Duke re- covered heart ; he demanded a loan from the city, and when there was hesitation, he threatened that the voluntary loan should be a forced one. Troops were raised in all directions ; the forts in Essex were dis- mantled of cannon to furnish the fleet ; .and by the ist of July twenty sail were ready armed and manned at Greenwich to intercept any descent which might be at- tempted from Flanders : Scheyfne comforted himself with ascertaining that the crews had been pressed, and were not to be depended on ; but the preparations in London threatened to crush resistance in the capital.
On the 4th of July the King was believed to be dead. A wan face had been seen at a window of the palace at Greenwich ; Edward had been lifted out of bed, and carried to the casement, that the people might assure themselves with their own eyes that he was living. But the suspicion was only deepened ; the spectators believed that they had seen a corpse.1 Scheyfne was by this time informed minutely of the circumstances of the letters patent. Parliament was to meet in Sep- tember, and Parliament he was assured would replace the Princess Mary in her rights ; but the danger was that in the mean time she would be made away with. She had been warned by some secret friend to move
1 SCHEYFNE.
I553-J NORTHUMBERLAND'S CONSPIRACY. 175
further from London, if possible, to Framlmgham Castle, in Norfolk, where she would find friends.1
On the first Sunday in the month it was observed that the preacher at Paul's Cross ' did neither pray for the Lady Mary's Grace, nor the Lady Elizabeth's.'2 On the Friday following the French ambassador de- tected an unusual movement ; he had been promised an audience, but a message was brought to put him off. There was no longer any king in England. On the evening of Thursday, the 6th of July, the anniversary, as pious Catholics did not fail to observe, of the exe- cution of Sir Thomas More, the last male child of th| Tudor race had ceased to suffer.
1 Scheyfne to the Emperor, July 4. 2 Grey Friars' Chronicle.
CHAPTER XXX.
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
THE death of Edward VI. was ushered iii with signs and wonders, as if heaven and earth were in labour with revolution. The hail lay upon the grass in the London gardens as red as blood. At Middleton Stony in Oxfordshire, anxious lips reported that a child had been born with one body, two heads, four feet and hands.1 About the time when the letters patent were signed there came a storm such as no living Englishman remembered. The summer evening grew black as night. Cataracts of water flooded the houses in the city and turned the streets into rivers ; trees were torn up by the roots and whirled through the air, and a more awful omen — the forked lightning — struck down the steeple of the church where the heretic service had been read for the first time.2
The King died a little before nine o'clock on Thurs-
1 Gtey Friars' Chronicle : MA- Edward F7., printed at Venice,
1558. A copy of this rare book is
2 BAOARDO'S History of the Re- volution in England on the Death of
in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
I553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 177
day evening. His death was made a secret ; but in the same hour a courier was galloping through the twilight to Hunsdon to bid Mary mount and fly. Her plans had been for some days prepared. She had been directed to remain quiet, but to hold herself ready to be up and away at a moment's warning. The lords who were to close her in would not be at their posts, and for a few hours the roads would be open. The Howards were looking for her in Norfolk ; and thither she was to ride at her best speed, proclaiming her accession as she went along, and sending out her letters calling loyal English- men to rise in her defence.
So Mary's secret friends had instructed her to act, as her one chance. Mary, who, like all the Tudors, was most herself in the moments of greatest danger, followed a counsel boldly which agreed with her own opinion ; and when Lord Robert Dudley came in the morning with a company of horse to look for her, she was far away. Relays of horses along the road, and such other precautions as could be taken without exciting suspicion, had doubtless not been overlooked.
Far different advice had been sent to her by the new ambassadors of the Emperor. Scheyfne, who under- stood England and English habits, and who was san- guine of her success, had agreed to a course which had probably been arranged in concert with him ; but on the 6th, the day of Edward's death, Renard and M. de Courieres, arrived from Brussels. To Renard, accus- tomed to countries where governments were everything and peoples nothing, for a single woman to proclaim
VOL. V. 12
I78
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30
herself Queen in the face of those who had the armed force of the kingdom in their hands, appeared like mad- ness. Little confidence could be placed in her supposed friends, since they had wanted resolution to refuse their signatures to the instrument of her deposition. The Emperor could not move ; although he might wish well to her cause, the alliance of England was of vital im- portance to him, and he would not compromise himself with the faction whose success, notwithstanding Scheyf- ne's assurance, he looked upon as certain. Henard, therefore, lost not a moment in entreating the Princess not to venture upon a course from which he anticipated inevitable ruin. If the nobility or the people desired to have her for Queen, they would make her Queen. There was no need for her to stir.1 The remonstrance
1 Avant nostre arrivee elle mist en deliberation avec aulcungs de ses plus confidens ce qu'elle debvroit faire, advenant la dicte morte ; la quelle treuva, que incontinant la dicte morte decouverte, elle se deb- voit publier royne par lettres et escriptz, et qu'en ce faisant, elle conciteroit plusieurs a se declairer pour la maintenir telle, (et aussy que y a quelque observance par de 90, que celuy ou celle qui est appele a la couronne se doit incontinent tel declairer et publier) pour la haine qu'ilz portent audict due, le tenant tiran et indigne ; s'estant absolu- ment resolue qu'elle debvoit suyvre ceste conclusion et conseil, aultre- ment elle tomberoit en danger de sa personne plus grand qu'elle n'est et perdroit 1'espoir de parvenir a la
couronne. La quelle conclusion avons treuve estrange, difficile, et dangereuse, pour les raisons soub- zcriptes : pour aultant que toutes les forces du pays sont es mains dudict due : que la dicte dame n'a espoir de contraires forces ny d' as- sistance pour donner pied a ceulx qu' ilz adherer luy vouldroient ; que se publiaht royne, le roy et royne de- signes par le diet testament (encores qu'il soit mal) prendroient fonde- ment, de 1'invahir par la force et que n'y aura rnoieu d'y resister si vostre majeste ne s'en empesche; ce que avons pese pour les grands affaires et empeschemens qu'elle a contre les Fran9oys et en divers lieux, que ne semble convenir que 1'on concite en ceste saison les Angloys contre vos- tre Majest6 et ses pays.
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agreed fully with the opinion of Charles himself, who replied to Renard's account of his conduct with com- plete approval of it.1 The Emperor's power was no longer equal to an attitude of menace; he had been taught, by the repeated blunders of Reginald Pole, to distrust accounts of popular English sentiment ; and he disbelieved entirely in the ability of Mary and her friends to cope with a conspiracy so broadly contrived, and supported by the countenance of France.2 But Mary was probably gone from Hunsdon before advice arrived, to which she had been lost if she had listened. She had ridden night and day without a halt for a hun- dred miles to Keninghall, a castle of the Howards on the Waveney river. There, in safe hands, she would
Comme n'avons peu communi- quer verbalement avec elle, 1'avons advertie desdicts difficultes. . . . Que si la noblesse ses adherens, ou le peuple la desiroit et maintenoit pour royne, il le pourroit demon- strer par 1' effect ; que la question estoit grande mesme entre barbares et gens de telle condition que les Angloys. . . . luy touchant ces difficultez pour le respect de sa per- sonne et pour suyvre la fin de la dicte instruction qu'est de non trou- bler le royaulme au desadvantaige de vostre Majeste. — The Ambassa- dors in England to the Emperor : Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Gran- velle, vol. iv. pp. 19, 20.
1 Nous avons veu par vos lectres Padvertissement qu'avez donne soubz main a Madame la princesse nostre
cousino, affin qu'elle ne se laisse for- compter par ceulx qui luy persuadent qu'elle se haste de se declairer pour royne, que nous a semble trcs bien pour les raisons et considerations touschez en vosdictes lectres. — The Emperor to the Ambassadors : Ibid, pp. 24, 25.
2 Ne se pouvoient faire grand fondement sur la faveur et affection que aulcuns particuliers et le peuple peuvent porter a nostredicte cousine, ne fust que y en y eust plus grant nombre ou des principaulx, n'estant cela souffisant pour contreminer la negociation si fondle et de si longue main que le diet due de Northum- berland a empris avec 1' assistance que doubtez de France. — Ibid. pp. 25, 26.
i8o
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
July 8.
try the effect of an appeal to her country. If the nation was mute, she would then escape to the Low Countries.1
In London, during Friday and Saturday, the death of Edward was known and unknown. Every one talked of it as certain. Yet the Duke still spoke of him as living, and public business was carried on in his name. On the 8th the mayor and aldermen were sent for to Greenwich to sign the letters patent. From them the truth could not be concealed, but they were sworn to secrecy before they were allowed to leave the palace. The conspirators desired to have Mary under safe custody in the Tower before the mystery was published to the world, and another difficulty was not yet got over.
The novelty of a female sovereign, and the supposed constitutional objection to it, were points in favour of the alteration which Northumberland was unwilling to relinquish. The ' device* had been changed in favour of Lady Jane ; but Lady Jane was not to reign alone : Northumberland intended to hold the reins tight- grasped in his own hands, to keep the power in his own family, and to urge the sex of Mary as among the prominent occasions of her incapacity.2 England was still to
1 BAOARDO.
2 In the explanation given on the following Tuesday to the Em- peror's ambassadors, Madame Marie was said — ' N'estre capable dudict royaultne pour le divorce faict entre le feu Eoy Henry et la Royne Katherine ; se referant aux causes aians nieu ledict divorce ; et inesme
n'estre suffisante pour V administra- tion cTicelluy comme estant femme, et pour la religion. — Papier 's d' Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, p. 28. Noailles was instructed to inform the King of France of the good affection of ' the new King ' (' le nouveaulx Roy '). He had notice of the ap- proaching coronation of ' the King ; '
'553-1
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
181
have a king, and that king was to be Guilford Dudley. Jane Grey, eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, was nearly of the same age with Edward. Edward had been unhealthily precocious ; the activity of his mind had been a symptom, or a cause, of the weakness of his body. Jane Grey's accomplishments were as extensive as Edward's ; she had acquired a degree of learning rare in matured men, which she could use gracefully, and could permit to be seen by others without vanity or consci- ousness. Her character had developed with their talents. At fifteen she was learning Hebrew and could write Greek ; at sixteen she corresponded with Bullinger in Latin at least equal to his own ; but the matter of he? letters is more striking than the language, and speaks more for her than the most elaborate panegyrics of admiring courtiers. She has left a portrait of herself drawn by her own hand; a portrait of piety, purity, and free, noble innocence, uncoloured, even to a fault, with the emotional weaknesses of humanity.1 While the effects of the Reformation in England had been chiefly visible in the outward dominion of scoundrels and in the eclipse of the hereditary virtues of the national character, Lady Jane Grey had lived to show that the defect was not in the Reformed faith, but in the absence of all faith, — that the graces of a St Eliza- beth could be rivalled by the pupil of Cranmer and
and in the first communication of Edward's death to Hoby and Mor- ryson in the Netherlands, a ' king,' and not a ' queen/ was described as
on the throne in his place.
1 Letters of Lady Jane Grey to Bullinger : Epistola TIGUBINA, pp. 3-7-
1 82 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY, [CH. 30.
llidley. The Catholic saint had no excellence of which Jane Grey was without the promise; the distinction was in the freedom of the Protestant from the hysterical ambition for an unearthly nature, and in the presence, through a more intelligent creed, of a vigorous and practical understanding.
When married to Guilford Dudley, Lady Jane had entreated that, being herself so young, and her husband scarcely older, she might continue to reside with her mother.1 Lady Northumberland had consented; and the new-made bride remained at home till a rumour went abroad that Edward was on the point of death, when she was told that she must remove to her father- in-law's house, till ' God should call the King to his mercy ; ' her presence would then be required at the Tower, the King having appointed her to be the heir to the Crown.
This was the first hint which she had received of the fortune which was in store for her. She believed it to be a jest, and took no notice of the order to change her residence, till the Duchess of Northumberland came herself to fetch her. A violent scene ensued with Lady Suffolk. At last the Duchess brought in Guilford Dudley, who commanded Lady Jane, on her allegiance as a wife, to return with him ; and, ' not choosing to be disobedient to her husband/ she consented. The Duchess carried her off, and kept her for three or four days a prisoner. Afterwards she was taken to a house of the
1 Baoardo— 'who tells the story as it was told by Lady Jane herself to Abbot Feckenham.
I553-]
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
183
Duke's at Chelsea, where she remained till
July 9.
Sunday, the 9th of July, when a message was brought that she was wanted immediately at Sion House, to receive an order from the King.
She went alone. There was no one at the palace when she arrived ; but immediately after Northumber- land came, attended by Pembroke, Northampton, Hunt- ingdon, and Arundel. The Earl of Pembroke, as he approached, knelt to kiss her hand. Lady Northum- berland and Lady Northampton entered, and the Duke, as President of the Council, rose to speak.
' The King/ he said, ' was no more. A godly life had been followed, as a consolation to their sorrows, by a godly end, and in leaving the world he had not for- gotten his duty to his subjects. His Majesty had prayed on his death-bed that Almighty God would protect the realm from false opinions, and especially from his un- worthy sister ; he had reflected that both the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth had been cut off by Act of Par- liament from the succession as illegitimate ; l the Lady Mary had been disobedient to her father ; she had been again disobedient to her brother ; she was a capital and principal enemy of God's word ; and both she and her sister were bastards born ; King Henry did not intend that the crown should be worn by either of them ; King Edward, therefore, had, before his death, bequeathed it
1 La delta maesta haveva ben considerate un atto di Parliamento nel quale fu gia deliberate che qualunque volesse riconoscere Maria
overo Elizabetba sorelle per lieredi della corona fusse tenuto traditore. — BAOARDO.
R&IGN OF
MARY.
CCH. 30.
to his cousin the Lady Jane ; and, should the Lady Jane die without children, to her younger sister ; and he had entreated the council, for their honours' sake and for the sake of the realm, to see that his will was observed/
Northumberland, as he concluded, dropt on his knees ; the four lords knelt with him, and, doing hom- age to the Lady Jane as Queen, they swore that they would keep their faith or lose their lives in her defence.
Lady Jane shook, covered her face with her hands, and fell fainting to the ground. Her first simple grief was for Edward's death ; she felt it as the loss of a dearly loved brother. The weight of her own fortune was still more agitating ; when she came to herself, she cried that it could not be ; the crown was not for her, she could not bear it — she was not fit for it. Then, knowing nothing of the falsehoods which Northumber- land had told her, she clasped her hands, and, in a re- vulsion of feeling, she prayed God that if the great place to which she was called was indeed justly hers, He would give her grace to govern for his service and for the welfare of his people.1
So passed Sunday, the 9th of July, at Sion House. In London, the hope of first securing Mary being dis- appointed, the King's death had been publicly ac- knowledged ; circulars were sent out to the sheriifs, mayors, and magistrates in the usual style, announcing
1 Mr John Gough Nichols, the accomplished editor of so many of the best publications of the Camden Society, throws a doubt on. the au-
thenticity of this scene, being unable to find contemporary authority foi it. It comes to us, through Baoardo, from Lady Jane herself.
1553-]
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
the accession of Queen Jane, and the troops were sworn man by man to the new sovereign. Sir William Petre and Sir John Cheke waited on the Emperor's ambassador to express a hope that the alteration in the succession would not affect the good understanding between the Courts of England and Flanders. The preachers were set to work to pacify the citizens; and, if Scheyfne is to be believed, a blood cement was designed to strengthen the new throne ; and Gardiner, the Duke of Norfolk, and Lord Courtenay,1 were directed to prepare for death in three days.2 But Northumberland would scarcely have risked an act of gratuitous tyranny. Norfolk, being under attainder, might have been put to death without violation of the forms of law, by warrant from the Crown ; but Gardiner was uncondemned, and Courtenay had never been accused of crime.
The next day, Monday, the loth of July, the royal barges came down the Thames from Richmond ; and at three o'clock in the afternoon Lady Jane landed at the broad staircase at the Tower, as Queen, in undesired splendour. A few scattered groups of spectators stood to watch the arrival; but it ap- peared, from their silence, that they had been brought together chiefly by curiosity. As the gates closed, the her aids- at- arms, with a company of the archers of the
July 10.
1 Edward Lord Courtenay was son of the executed Marquis of Exeter and great-grandson of Ed- ward IV. He was thrown into the Tower with his father when a little boy, and in that confinement, in
fifteen years, he had grown to man- hood. Of him and his fortunes all that need be said will unfold itself.
2 Scheyfne to Charles V., July 10 : MS. Molls House.
186 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
guard, rode into the city, and at the cross in Cheapside, Paul's Cross, and Fleet-street they proclaimed ' that the Lady Mary was unlawfully begotten, and that the Lady Jane Grey was Queen/ The ill-humour of Lon- don was no secret, and some demonstration had been looked for in Mary's favour ; ! but here, again, there was only silence. The heralds cried 'God save the Queen ! ' The archers waved their caps and cheered, but the crowd looked on impassively. One youth only, Gilbert Potter, whose name for those few days passed into Fame's trumpet, ventured to exclaim, ' The Lady Mary has the better title.' Gilbert's master, one ' Mnian Sanders/ denounced the boy to the guard, and he was seized. Yet a misfortune, thought to be provi- dential, in a few hours befell Ninian Sanders. Going home to his house down the river, in the July evening, he was overturned and drowned as he was shooting London Bridge in his wherry ; the boatmen, who were the instruments of Providence, escaped.
Nor did the party in the Tower rest their first night there with perfect satisfaction. In the evening mes- sengers came in from the eastern counties with news of the Lady Mary, and with letters from herself. She had written to Renard and Scheyfne to tell them that she was in good hands, and for the moment was safe. She had proclaimed herself Queen. She had sent addresses to the peers, commanding them on their allegiance to come to her ; and she begged the ambassadors to tell
1 XOAILLES.
I553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 187
her instantly whether she might look for assistance from Flanders ; on the active support of the Emperor, so far as she could judge, the movements of her friends would depend.
The ambassadors sent a courier to Brussels for in- structions ; but, pending Charles's judgment to the contrary, they thought they had better leave Mary's appeal unanswered till they could see how events would turn. There was a rumour current indeed that she had from ten to fifteen thousand men with her ; but this they could ill believe. For themselves, they expected every hour to hear that she had been taken by Lord Warwick and Lord Robert Dudley, who were gone in pursuit of her, and had been put to death.1
The Lords who were with the new Queen were not so confident. They were sitting late at night in con- sultation with the Duchess of Northumberland and the Duchess of Suffolk, when a letter was brought in to them from Mary. The Lords ordered the messenger into arrest. The seal of the packet was broken, and the letter read aloud. It was dated the day before, Sunday, July 9 :—
' My Lords/ wrote Mary, ' we greet you well, and have received sure advertisement that our deceased brother the King, our late Sovereign Lord, is de- parted to God's mercjr ; which news how they be woeful to our heart He only knoweth to whose will and pleasure we must and do submit us and all our
1 Renard to Charles V. : Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal Granvelle, vol. iv.
iS8 RElGtf OP QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
wills. But in this so lamentable a case that is, to wit, now, after his Majesty's departure and death, concern- ing the crown and governance of this realm of England, that which hath been provided by Act of Parliament and the testament and last will of our dearest father, you know — the realm and the whole world knoweth. The rolls and records appear, by the authority of the King our said father, and the King our said brother, and the subjects of this realm ; so that we verily trust there is no true subject that can pretend to be ignorant thereof; and of our part we have ourselves caused, and as God shall aid and strengthen us, shall cause, our right and title in this behalf to be published and pro- claimed accordingly.
' And, albeit, in this so weighty a matter, it seemeth strange that the dying of our said brother upon Thurs- day at night last past, we hitherto had no knowledge from you thereof; yet we consider your wisdom and prudence to be such, that having eftsoons amongst you debated, pondered, and well-weighed the present case, with our estate, with your own estate, the common- wealth, and all our honours, we shall and may conceive great hope and trust, with much assurance in your loyalty and service ; and therefore, for the time, we in- terpret and take things not for the worst ; and that ye yet will, like noblemen, work the best. Nevertheless, we are not ignorant of your consultation to undo the provisions made for our preferment, nor of the great banded provisions forcible whereunto ye be assembled and prepared, by whom and to what end God and you
15531 QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 189
know ; and nature can fear some evil. But be it that some consideration politic, or whatsoever thing else, hath moved you thereunto ; yet doubt ye not, my Lords, but we can take all these your doings in gracious part, being also right ready to remit and also pardon the same, with that freely to eschew bloodshed and venge- ance against all those that can or will intend the same ; trusting also assuredly you will take and accept this grace and virtue in good part as appertaineth, and that we shall not be enforced to use the service of other our true subjects and friends which, in this our just and rightful cause, God, in whom our whole affiance is, shall send us.
' Whereupon, my Lords, we require and charge you, and every of you, on your allegiance, which you owe to God and us, and to none other, that for our honour and the surety of our realm, only you will employ your- selves; and forthwith, upon receipt hereof, cause our right and title to the Crown and Government of this realm to be proclaimed in our city of London, and such other places as to your wisdom shall seem good, and as to this cause appertaineth, not failing hereof, as our very trust is in you ; and this our letter, signed with our own hand, shall be your sufficient warrant/ *
The Lords, when the letter was read to the end, looked uneasily in each other's faces. The ladies screamed, sobbed, and were carried off in hysterics. There was yet time to turn back ; and had the Reform -
HOUNSHED.
190
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
ation been, as he pretended, the true concern of the Duke of Northumberland, he would have brought Mary back himself, bound by conditions which, in her present danger, she would have accepted. But Northumberland cared as little for religion as for any other good thing. He was a great criminal, throwing a stake for a crown ; and treason is too conscious of its guilt to believe re- treat from the first step to be possible.
Another blow was in store for him that night before he laid his head upon his pillow. Lady Jane, knowing nothing of the letter from Mary, had retired to her apartment, when the Marquis of Winchester came in to wish her joy. He had brought the crown with him, which she had not sent for ; he desired her to put it on, and see if it required alteration. She said it would do very well as it was. He then told her that, before her coronation, another crown was to be made for her husband. Lady Jane started ; and it seemed as if for the first time the dreary suspicion crossed her mind that she was, after all, but the puppet of the ambition of the Duke to raise his family to the throne. Winchester retired, and she sat indignant l till Guilford Dudley appeared, when she told him that, young as she was, she knew that the crown of England was not a thing to be trifled with. There was no Dudley in Edward's will, and, before he could be crowned, the consent of Parliament must be first asked and obtained. The boy-husband went whin- ing to his mother, while Jane sent for Arundel and
1 Le quale parole io scnti con mio gran dispiacere.— BAOARDCK
!553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 191
Pembroke, and told them that it was not for her to appoint kings. She would make her husband a duke if he desired it ; that was within her prerogative ; but king she would not make him. As she was speaking, the Duchess of Northumberland rushed in with her son, fresh from the agitation of Mary's letter. The mother stormed ; Guilford cried like a spoilt child that he would be no duke, he would be a king : and, when Jane stood firm, the Duchess bade him come away, and not share the bed of an ungrateful and disobedient wife.1
The first experience of royalty had brought small pleasure with it. Dudley's kingship was set aside for the moment, and was soon forgotten in more alarming matters. To please his mother, or to pacify his vanity, he was called ' Your Grace/ He was allowed to preside in the council, so long as a council remained, and he dined alone2 — tinsel distinctions, for which the poor wretch had to pay dearly.
The next day restored the conspirators to their courage. No authentic accounts came in of disturbances. London was still quiet ; so quiet, that it was thought safe to nail Gilbert Potter by the ears in the pillory, and after sufficient suffering, to slice them off with a knife. Lord Warwick and Lord Robert were still absent, and no news had come from them — a proof that they were still in pursuit. The
1 BAOARDO.
2 Se faisoit servir de mesme. — Renard to Charles V. : MS. Rolls House.
I92 KEIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
Duke made up his mind that Mary was watching only for an opportunity to escape to Flanders ; and the ships in the river, with a thousand men-at-arms on board them, were sent to watch the Essex coast, and to seize her, could they find opportunity. Meanwhile he him- self penned a reply to her letter. ' The Lady Jane/ he said, ' by the antient laws of the realm/ and ' by letters patent of the late King/ signed by himself, and counter- signed by the nobility, was rightful Queen of England. The divorce of Catherine of Arragon from Henry VIII. had been prescribed by the laws of God, pronounced by the Church of England, and confirmed by Act of Par- liament ; the daughter of Catherine was, therefore, ille- gitimate, and could not inherit ; and the Duke warned her to forbear, at her peril, from molesting her lawful sovereign, or turning her people from their allegiance. If she would submit and accept the position of a subject, she should receive every reasonable attention which it was in the power of the Queen to show to her.
During the day rumours of all kinds were flying,
but Mary's friends in London saw no reasonable grounds
for hope. Lord Robert was supposed by Renard 1 to be
on his way to the Tower with the Princess as his
prisoner ; and if she was once within the Tower walls,
all hope was over. It was not till Wednesday
morning that the Duke became really alarmed.
Then at once, from all sides, messengers came in with
unwelcome tidings. The Dudleys had come up with
Renard to Charles V. : MS. Rolls Home.
I553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 193
Mary the day before, as she was on her way from Keninghall to Framlingham. They had dashed forward upon her escort but their own men turned sharp round, declared for the Princess, and attempted to seize them ; they had been saved only by the speed of their horses.1 In the false calm of the two preceding days, Lord Bath had stolen across the country into Norfolk. Lord Mor- daunt and Lord Wharton. had sent their sons ; Sir William Drury, Sir John Skelton, Sir Henry Beding- field, and many more, had gone in the same direction. Lord Sussex had declared also for Mary; and, worse than all, Lord Derby had risen in Cheshire, and was reported to be marching south with twenty thousand men.2 Scarcely were these news digested, when Sir Edmund Peckham, cofferer of the household, was found to have gone off with the treasure under his charge. Sir Edward Hastings, Lord Huntingdon's brother, had called out the musters of Buckinghamshire in Mary's name, and Peckham had joined him ; while Sir Peter Carew, the very hope and stay of the western Protest- ants, had proclaimed Mary in the towns of Devon- shire.
Now, when too late, it was seen how large an errol had been committed in permitting the Princess's escape. But it was vain to waste time in regrets. Her hasty levies, at best, could be but rudely armed ; the Duke had trained troops and cannon, and, had he been free to act, with no enemies but those in the field against him,
1 Renard to Charles V. : MS. Rolls House. 2 Queen Jane and Queen Mary. Renard to Charles V. VOL. v. 13
194
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
he had still the best of the game. But Suffolk and Northampton, the least able of the council, were, nevertheless, the only members of it on whom he could rely. To whom but to himself could he trust the army which must meet Mary in the field ? If he led the army in person, whom could he leave in charge of London, the Tower, and Lady Jane ? Winchester and Arundel knew his dilemma, and deliberately took advantage of it. The guard, when first informed that they were to take the field, refused to march. After a communication with the Marquis of Winchester, they withdrew their objections, and professed themselves willing to go. Northumberland, uneasy at their conduct, or requiring a larger force, issued a proclamation offering tenpence a day to volunteers who would go to bring in the Lady Mary.1 The lists were soon filled, but filled with the retainers and servants of his secret enemies.2
The men being thus collected, Suffolk was first thought of to lead them, or else Lord Grey de Wilton ; 3 but Suffolk was inefficient, and his daughter could not bring herself to part with him ; Grey was a good soldier, but he had been a friend of Somerset, and the Duke had tried hard to involve him with Arundel and Paget in Somerset's ruin.4 Northampton's truth could have been
1 Grey Friars' Chronicle.
2 ' Ille impigre quidcm, utpote cujus res agebatur, proponit magua stipendia ; conducit mill tern partim invitum partim perfidum ; consta- bant enim majori ex parte satellitia nobilium qui secreto Maria? fave-
bant.' — Julius Terentianus to John ab Uhnis : Epistolte TIGUKIN^E, p.
243-
3 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
4 Ibid.
I553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 195
depended upon, but Northampton four years before had been defeated by a mob of Norfolk peasants. North- umberland, the council said, must go himself — ' there was no remedy/ No man, on all accounts, could be- so fit as he ; 'he had achieved the victory in Norfolk once already, and was so feared, that none durst lift their weapons against him : ' 1 Suffolk in his absence should command the Tower. Had the Duke dared, he would have delayed; but every moment that he remained inactive added to Mary's strength, and whatever he did he must risk something. He resolved to go, and as the plot was thickening, he sent Sir Henry Dudley to Paris to entreat the King to protect Calais against Charles, should the latter move upon it in his cousin's interest.
Noailles had assured him that this and larger favours would be granted without difficulty ; while, as neither Renard nor his companions had as yet acknowledged Lady Jane, and were notoriously in correspondence with Mary, the French ambassador suggested also that he would do wisely to take the initiative himself, to send Renard his passports, and commit the country to war with the Emperor.2 Northumberland would not venture the full length to which Noailles invited him ; but he sent Sir John Mason and Lord Cobham to Renard, with an intimation that the English treason laws were not to be trifled with. If he and his companions dared to meddle in matters which did not concern them, their
1 Chronicle of Queen Jane. 2 NOAILLES, vol. ii.
196 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [en. 30.
privileges as ambassadors should not protect them from extremity of punishment.1
Newmarket was chosen for the rendezvous of the army. The men were to go down in companies, in whatever way they could travel most expeditiously, with the guns and ammunition waggons. The Duke himself intended to set out on Friday at dawn. In his calculations of the chances, hope still predominated — his cannon would give him the advantage in the field, and he trusted to the Protestant spirit in London to prevent a revolution in his absence. But he took the precaution of making the council entangle themselves more completely by taking out a commission under the Great Seal, as general of the army, which they were forced to sign ; and before he left the Tower, he made a parting appeal to their good faith. If he believed they would betray him, he said, he could still provide for his own safety ; but, as they were well aware that Lady Jane was on the throne by no will of her own, but through his influence and theirs, so he trusted her to their honours to keep the oaths which they had sworn. ' They were all in the same guilt/ one of them answered ; ' none could excuse themselves/ Arundel especially wished the Duke God speed upon his way, and regretted only that he was not to accompany him to the field.2
This was on Thursday evening. Northumberland
1 Ajoutant menace de la rigeur de leurs lois barbares. — Renard to Charles V. : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.
2 Chronicle of Queen Jane.
'553-1 QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 197
slept that night at Whitehall. The following morning he rode out of London, accompanied by his four sons, Northampton, Grey, and about six hundred men. The streets were thronged with spec- tators, but all observed the same ominous silence with which they had received the heralds' proclamation. ' The people press to see us/ the Duke said, ' but not one saith God speed us/1
The principal conspirator was now out of the way ; his own particular creatures — Sir Thomas and Sir Henry Palmer, and Sir John Gates, who had commanded the Tower guard, had gone with him. Northampton was gone. The young Dudleys were "gone all but Guilford. Suffolk alone remained of the faction definitely attached to the Duke ; and the Duke was marching to the destruction which had been prepared for him. But prudence still warned those who were loyal to Mary to wait before they declared themselves ; the event was still uncertain ; and the disposition of the Earl of Pembroke might not yet, perhaps, have been perfectly ascertained.
Pembroke, in the black volume of appropriations, was .the most deeply compromised. Pembroke, in Wilts and Somerset, where his new lands lay, was hated for his oppression of the poor, and had much to fear from a Catholic sovereign, could a Catholic sovereign obtain the reality as well as the name of power ; Pembroke, so said Northumberland, had been the first to propose the conspiracy to him, while his eldest son had married
Chronicle of Queen Jane.
KEIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
CCH. 30
Catherine Grey. But, as Northumberland's designs began to ripen, he had endeavoured to steal from the Court ; he was a distinguished soldier, yet he was never named to command the army which was to go against Mary ; Lord Herbert's marriage was outward and nominal merely — a form, which had not yet become a reality, and never did. Although Pembroke was the first of the council to do homage to Jane, Northumber- land evidently doubted him. He was acting and would continue to act for his own personal interests only. With his vast estates and vast hereditary influence in South Wales and on the Border, he could bring a larger force into the field than any other single noble- man in England ; and he could purchase the secure possession of his acquisitions by a well-timed assistance to Mary as readily as by lending his strength to buttress the throne of her rival.
Of the rest of the council, Winchester and Arundel had signed the letters patent with a deliberate intention of deserting or betraying Northumberland, whenever a chance should present itself, and of carrying on their secret measures in Mary's favour l with greater security,
1 ' Aliqui subscripserunt, id quod postca compertum est, ut facilius fallerent Northumbrian, cujus con- silio haec orania videbant fieri et tegerent conspirationem quara ador- nabant in auxilium Marias.' — Julius Terentianus to John ab Ulmis : Epi- stola TIGURIN^E, p. 242. John Knox allowed his vehemence to carry him too far against the
Marquis of Winchester, who un- questionably was not one of those who advised the scheme of Northum- berland. In the ' aliqui ' of Julius Terentianus, the letters of Reiiard, of Schcyfne, enable us to identify both him and Arundel ; but there must have been many more, in the council or out of it, who were acting in concert with them.
1SS3-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 199
The other noblemen in the Tower perhaps imperfectly understood each other. Cranmer had taken part un- willingly with Lady Jane ; but he meant to keep his promise, having once given it. Bedford had opposed the Duke up to the signature, and might be supposed to adhere to his original opinion; but he was most likely hesitating, while Lord Russell had been trusted with the command of the garrison at Windsor. Sir Thomas Cheyne and Shrewsbury might be counted among Mary's friends; the latter certainly. Of the three secretaries, Cecil's opposition had put his life in jeopardy ; Petre was the friend and confidant of Paget, and would act as Paget should advise ; Cheke, a feeble enthusiast., was committed to the Duke.
The task of bringing the council together was under- taken by Cecil. Cecil and Winchester worked on Bed- ford ; and Bedford made himself responsible for his son, for the troops at Windsor, and generally for the western counties. The first important step was to readmit Paget to the council. Fresh risings were reported in Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire ; 1 Sir John Williams was proclaiming Mary round Oxford ; and on Friday night or Saturday morning news came from the fleet which might be considered decisive as to the Duke's prospects. The vessels, so carefully equipped, which left the Thames on the 12th, had been driven into Yarmouth Harbour by stress of weather. Sir Henry Jerningham was in the town raising men for
1 Cecil's Submission, printed by TYTLER, vol. ii.
200 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [011.30.
Mary ; and knowing that the crews had been pressed, and that there had been desertions among the troops before they were embarked,1 he ventured boldly among the ships. ' Do you want our captains ? ' some one said to him. 'Yea, marry/ was the answer. 'Then they shall go with you/ the men shouted, ' or they shall go to the bottom/ Officers, sailors, troops, all declared for Queen Mary, and landed with their arms and artillery. The report was borne upon the winds ; it was known in a few hours in London ; it was known in the Duke's army, which was now close to Cambridge, and was the signal for the premeditated mutiny. * The noblemen's tenants refused to serve their lords against Queen Mary/2 Northumberland sent a courier at full speed to the council for reinforcements. The courier returned ' with but a slender answer.'3
The Lords in London, however, were still under the eyes of the Tower garrison, who watched them narrowly. Their first meeting to form their plans was within the Tower walls, and Arundel said 'he liked not the air.'4 Pembroke and Cheyne attempted to escape, but failed to evade the guard ; Winchester made an excuse to go to his own house, but he was sent for and brought back at midnight. Though Mary might succeed, they might still lose their own lives, which they were inclined to value.
On Sunday, the i6th, the preachers again exerted themselves. Ridley shrieked against
1 Scheyfue to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
2 Chronicle of Queen Jane. 3 Ibid.
4 Cecil's Submission : TYTLEB, vol. ii.
I553-]
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Mary at Paul's Cross ; 1 John Knox, more wisely, at Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, foretold the approach- ing retribution from the giddy ways of the past years ; Buckinghamshire, Catholic and Protestant, was arming to the teeth ; and he was speaking at the peril of his life among the troopers of Sir Edward Hastings.
' Oh England ! ' cried the saddened Reformer, ' now is God's wrath kindled against thee — now hath he begun to punish as he hath threatened by his true prophets and messengers. He hath taken from thee the crown of thy glory, and hath left thee without honour, and this appeareth to be only the beginning of sorrows. The heart, the tongue, the hand of one Englishman is bent against another, and division is in the realm, which is a sign of desolation to come. Oh, England, England ! if thy mariners and thy governors shall consume one another, shalt not thou suffer shipwreck ? Oh England, alas ! these plagues are poured upon thee because thou wouldst not know the time of thy most gentle visitation/ 2
At Cambridge, on the same day, another notable man preached — -Edwin Sandys, then Protestant Vice- Chancellor of the University, and afterwards Arch- bishop of York. Northumberland the preceding evening brought his mutinous troops into the town. He sent for Parker, Lever, Bill, and Sandys to sup with him, and told them he required their prayers, or he and his friends were like to be 'made deacons of/3 Sandys,
1 STOW.
2 Account of a Sermon at Araers- ham : Admonition to the Faithful
in Ihigland, by JOHN KNOX.
3 Some jest, perhaps, upon a shorn crown ; at any rate, a eu-
202 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [en. 30.
the vice- chancellor, must address the University the next morning from the pulpit.
Sandys rose at three o'clock in the summer twilight, took his Bible, and prayed with closed eyes that he might open at a fitting text. His eyes, when he lifted them, were resting on the i6th of the ist of Joshua : ' The people answered Joshua, saying, All thou com- mandest us we will do ; and whithersoever thou sendest us we will go ; according as we hearkened unto Moses, so will we hearken unto thee, only the Lord thy God be with thee as he was with Moses/
The application was obvious. Edward was Moses, the Duke was Joshua ; and if a sermon could have saved the cause, Lady Jane would have been secure upon her throne.1
But the comparison, if it held at all, held only in its least agreeable features. The deliverers of England from the Egyptian bondage of the Papacy had led the people out into a wilderness where the marina had been stolen by the leaders, and there were no tokens of a promised land. To the Universities the Reformation had brought with it desolation. To the people of Eng- land it had brought misery and want. The once open hand was closed ; the once open heart was hardened ; the ancient loyalty of man to man was exchanged for the scuffling of selfishness; the change of faith had
phemism for decapitation ; for Foxe, who tells the story, says, ' and even so it came to pass, for he and Sir
were made deacons ere it was long after on the Tower Hill.' —Fox E, vol. viii. p. 590.
John Gates, who was then at table, I l Ibid.
* 553-i QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MAR K 203
brought with it no increase of freedom, and less of charity. The prisons were crowded, as before, with sufferers for opinion, and the creed of a thousand years was made a crime by a doctrine of yesterday ; monks and nuns wandered by hedge and highway, as mission- aries of discontent, and pointed with bitter effect to the fruits of the new belief, which had been crimsoned in the blood of thousands of English peasants. The Eng- lish people were not yet so much in love with wretched- ness that they would set aside for the sake of it a princess whose injuries pleaded for her, whose title was affirmed by Act of Parliament. In the tyranny under which the nation was groaning, the moderate men of all creeds looked to the accession of Mary as to the rolling away of some bad black nightmare.
On Monday Northumberland made another effort to move forward. His troops followed him as far as Bury, and then informed him decisively that they would not bear arms against their lawful sovereign. He fell back on Cambridge, and again wrote to London for help. As a last resource, Sir Andrew Dud- ley, instructed, it is likely, by his brother, gathered up a hundred thousand crowns' worth of plate and jewels from the treasury in the Tower, and started for France to interest Henry — to bribe him, it was said, by a pro- mise of Guisnes and Calais, to send an army into Eng- land.1 The Duke foresaw and dared the indignation of the people ; but he had left himself no choice except
Renard to Charles V. : Rolls Home MSS.
204
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[ CH. 30.
between treason to the country or now inevitable de- struction.1 When he called in the help of France he must have known well that his ally, with a successful army in England, would prevent indeed the accession of Mary Tudor, but as surely would tear in pieces the paper title of the present Queen and snatch the crown for his own Mary, the Queen of Scots, and the bride of the Dauphin.
But the council was too quick for Dudley. A secret messenger followed or attended him to Calais, where he was arrested, the treasure recovered, and his despatches taken from him.
The counter-revolution could now be accomplished without bloodshed and without longer delay. On Wednesday the 1 9th word came that the Earl of Oxford had joined Mary. A letter was written to Lord Rich admonishing him Dot, to follow Oxford's example, but to remain true to Queen Jane, which the council were required to sign. Had they refused, they would probably have been massacred.2
July 19.
1 La peine ou se retreuve ledict due est qu'il ne se ose fier en per- sonne, pour n'avoir faict ou donne occasion a personne de 1'aimei*, — que a meu envoyer en France le Millor Dudley son frere, pour 1'as- surer du secours que luy a este promis par le roy de France, et le prjer en faire demonstration pour intimider ceulx de par dec,a. Car encores qu'il entende qu'il degoustera davantage ceulx du pays pour y umener Francois, si est ce craignant
d'estre reboute de son emprinse, et d'estre massacre du peuple et sa generation, et que ma dicte dame Marie ne parvienne a la couronne, il ne respectera chose quelconque : plustot donnera il pied aux Francois ou peys : tel est le couraige d'ung homme tiran, obstine, et resolu, signamment quant il est question de se demesurer pour regner. — Renard to Charles V. : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 38.
2 The letter is among the Lans-
J553]
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY
205
Towards the middle of the day, Winchester, Arundel, Pembroke, Shrewsbury, Bedford, Oheyne, Paget, Mason, and Petre found means of passing the gates, and made their way to Baynard's Castle,1 where they sent for the mayor, the aldermen, and other great persons of the city. When they were all assembled, Arundel was the first to speak.
The country, he said, was on the brink of civil war, and if they continued to support the pretensions of Lady Jane Grey to the crown, civil war would inevitably break out. In a few more days or weeks the child would be in arms against the father, the brother against the brother ; the quarrels of religion would add fury to the struggle ; the French would interfere on one side, the Spaniards on the other, and in such a conflict the triumph of either party would be almost equally in- jurious to the honour, unity, freedom, and happiness of England. The friends of the commonwealth, in the face of so tremendous a danger, would not obstinately persist in encouraging the pretensions of a faction. It was for his hearers where they sat to decide if there should be peace or war, and he implored them, for the sake of the country, to restore the crown to her who was their lawful sovereign.
downe MSS. It is in the hand of Sir John Cheke, and dated July 19. The signatures are Cranmer, Good- rich, Winchester, Bedford, Suffolk, Arundel, Shrewsbury, Pembroke, Darcy, Paget, Cheyne, Cotton, Pe- tre, Cheke, Baker, Bowes.
1 Fronting the river, about three-
quarters of a mile above London Bridge. The original castle of Bay- nard the Norman had fallen into ruins at the end of the fifteenth cen- tury. Henry VII. built a palace on the site of it, which retained the name.
206
RETGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
Pembroke rose next. The words of Lord Arundel, he said, were true and good, and not to be gainsaid. What others thought he knew not ; for himself, he was so convinced, that he would fight in the quarrel with any man ; and if words are not enough, he cried, flash- ing his sword out of the scabbard, 'this blade shall make Mary Queen, or I will lose my life.'1
Not a voice was raised for the Twelfth-day Queen, as Lady Jane was termed, in scornful pity, by Noailles. Some few persons thought that, before they took a de- cisive step, they should send notice to Northumberland, and give him time to secure his pardon. But it was held to be a needless stretch of consideration ; Shrews- bury and Mason hastened off to communicate with Renard ; 2 while a hundred and fifty men were marched directly to the Tower gates, and the keys were de- manded in the Queen's name.
It is said that Suffolk was unprepared : but the goodness of his heart and the weakness of his mind alike saved him from attempting a useless resistance : the gates were opened, and the unhappy father rushed to his daughter's room. He clutched at the canopy
1 E quando le persuasion! del conte d'Arundel non habiano luogo appresso di voi, o questa spada fara Reina Maria, o perdero io la vita. — BAOARDO.
2 Renard had been prepared, by a singular notice, to expect their coming, and to suspect their good faith. Ce matin, he wrote, relating the counter-revolution to the Em-
peror ; ce matin, a bonne heure, il y a venu une vieille femme de soix- ante ans en nostre logis pour nous advertir que 1'on deust faire s^avoir a madicte dame Marie qu'elle se donna garde de ceulx de conseil car ils la vouloicnt tromper soubz couleur de luy monstrer affection. — Gran- velle Papers, vol. iv.
1 553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 207
under which she was sitting, and tore it down ; she was no longer Queen, he said, and such distinctions were not for one of her station. He then told her briefly of the revolt of the council. She replied that his present words were more welcome to her than those in which he had advised her to accept the crown;1 her reign being at an end, she asked innocently if she might leave the Tower and go home.2 But the Tower was a place not easy to leave, save by one route too often travelled. Meanwhile the Lords, with the mayor and the heralds, went to the Cross at Cheapside to proclaim Mary Queen. Pembroke himself stood out to read ; and this time there was no reason to complain of a silent audience. He could utter but one sentence before his voice was lost in the shout of joy which thundered into the air. l God save the Queen/ ' God save the Queen/ rung out from tens of thousands of throats. ' God save the Queen/ cried Pembroke himself, when he had done, and flung up his jewelled cap and tossed his purse among the crowd. The glad news spread like lightning through London, and the pent-up hearts of the citizens poured themselves out in a torrent of exultation. Above the human cries, the long- silent church-bells clashed again into life ; first began St Paul's, where happy chance had saved them from destruction ; then, one by one, every peal which had been spared caught up the sound ; and through the summer evening and the summer night, and all the next day, the metal
1 Baoardo to Charles V. : Molls I 2 Narrative of Edward Under- Home MSS. I hill : Harleian MSS. 425.
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REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
tongues from tower and steeple gave voice to England's gladness. The Lords, surrounded by the shouting multitude, walked in state to St Paul's, where the choir again sang a Te Deum, and the unused organ rolled out once more its mighty volume of music. As they came out again, at the close of the service, the apprentices were heaping piles of wood for bonfires at the cross- ways. The citizens were spreading tables in the streets, which their wives were loading with fattest capons and choicest wines ; there was free feasting for all comers ; and social jealousies, religious hatreds, were forgotten for the moment in the ecstasy of the common delight. Even the retainers of the Dudleys, in fear or joy, tore their badges out of their caps, and trampled on them.1
At a night session of the council, a letter was written to Northumberland, which Cranmer, Suffolk, and Sir John Cheke consented to sign, ordering him in the name of Queen Mary to lay down his arms. If he com- plied, the Lords undertook to intercede for his pardon. If he refused, they said that they would hold him as a traitor, and spend their lives in the field against him 2
While a pursuivant bore the commands of the coun- cil to the Duke, Arundel and Paget undertook to carry to Mary at Framlingham their petition for forgiveness, in which they declared that they had been innocent at heart of any share in the conspiracy,3 and had only de-
1 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSB. All authorities agree in the general description of the state of London. Renard, Noailles, and Baoarrlo are the most explicit and
interesting.
• This letter is among the Tan- ner MSS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It was printed by Stowe.
3 ' Our bounden duties most
1533-] Q_V KEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 209
layed coming forward in her favour from a desire to prevent bio*, dshed.
The two lords immediately mounted and galloped off into the darkness, followed by thirty horse, leaving the lights of illuminated London gleaming behind them.
The Duke's position was already desperate : on the 1 8th, before the proclamation in London, Mary had felt herself strong enough to send orders to the Mayor of Cambridge for his arrest ; 1 and, although he had as yet been personally unmolested, he was powerless in the midst of an army which was virtually in Mary's service. The news of the revolution in London first reached him by a private hand. He at once sent for Sandys, and, going with him to the market cross, he declared, after
humbly remembered to your excel- lent Majesty. It may like the same to understand, that we, your most humble, faithful, and obedient sub- jects, having always, God we take to witness, remained your Highness's true and humble subjects in our hearts, ever since the death of our late Sovereign Lord and master your Highness's brother, whom God pardon, and seeing hitherto no pos- sibility to utter our determination without great destruction and blood- shed, both of ourselves and others, till this time, have this day pro- claimed in your city of London your Majesty to be our true natural sovereign liege Lady and Queen ; most humbly beseeching your Ma- jesty to pardon and remit our former infirmities, and most graciously to
VOL. V.
accept our meanings, which have been ever to serve your Highness truly, and so shall remain with all our power and force, to the effusion of our blood, as these bearers, our very good Lords, the Earls of Arun- del and Paget, can, and be ready more particularly to declare — to whom it may please your excellent Majesty to give firm credence ; and thus we do and shall daily pray to Almighty God for the preserva- tion of your most royal person long to reign over us.' — Lansdowne MSS. 3. Endorsed, in Cecil's hand, ' Copy of the Letter of the Lords to the Queen Mary from Baynard's Castle.' The signatures are, unfortunately, wanting.
1 Renard to Charles V. ; Holla House MSS.
14
210 REIGN' OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 36.
one violent clutch at his beard, that he had acted under orders from the council; the council, he understood, had changed their minds, and he would change his mind also ; therefore he cried, ' God save Queen Mary/ and with a strained effort at a show of satisfaction, he, too, like Pembroke, threw up his cap. The Queen, he said to Sandys, was a merciful woman, and there would be a general pardon. ' Though the Queen grant you a pardon/ Sandys answered, 'the Lords never will ; you can hope nothing from those who now rule/1 It was true that he could hope nothing — the hatred of the whole nation, which before his late treasons he had brought upon himself, would clamour to the very heavens for judgment against him. An hour after the proclamation of Mary, Kouge-cross herald arrived with the Lords' letter from London. An order at the same time was read to the troops informing them that they were no longer under the Duke's com- mand, and an alderman of the town then ventured to execute the Queen's warrant for his arrest. Northum- berland was given in charge to a guard of his own soldiers ; he protested, however, that the council had sent no instructions for his detention ; and in some un- certainty, or perhaps in compassion for his fate, the soldiers obeyed him once more, and let him go. It was then night. He intended to fly ; but he put it off till the morning, and in the morning his chance was gone. Before he could leave his room he found himself face to
FOXE, vol. viii.
1553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 21 i
face with Arundel, who, after delivering the council's letter to the Queen, had hastened to Cambridge to se- cure him.
Northumberland, who, while innocent of crime, had faced death on land and sea like a soldier and a gentle- man, flung himself at the Earl's feet. ' Be good to me, for the love of God/ he cried ; ' consider I have done nothing but by the consent of you and the council/ He knew what kind of consent he had extorted from the council. ' My Lord/ said Arundel, * I am sent hither by the Queen's Majesty ; and in her name I do arrest you.' — ' I obey, my Lord/ the Duke replied ; ' yet show me mercy, knowing the case as it is.' — ' My Lord/ was the cold answer, ' you should have sought for mercy sooner; I must do according to my commandment.'1
At the same moment Sandys was paying the penalty for his sermon. The University, in haste to purge it- self of its heretical elements, met soon after sunrise to depose their vice-chancellor. Dr Sandys, who had gone for an early stroll among the meadows to meditate on his position, hearing the congregation-bell ringing, resolved, like a brave man, to front his fortune ; he walked to the Senate-house, entered, and took his seat. ' A rabble of Papists ' instantly surrounded him. He tried to speak, but the masters of arts shouted * Traitor ; ' rough hands shook or dragged him from his chair : and the impatient theologian, in sudden heat, drew his dag- ger, and * would have done a mischief with it/ had not some of his friends disarmed him.2 He, too, was handed
1 HOLINSHED. 2 FOXE, vol. viii. pp. 591-2.
212 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [011.30.
over to a guard, lashed to the back of a lame horse, and carried to London.
Mary, meanwhile, notwithstanding the revolution in her favour, remained a few more days at Framling- ham, either suspicious of treachery or uncertain whether there might not be another change. But she was assured rapidly that the danger was at an end by the haste with which the lords and gentlemen who were compromised sought their pardon at her feet. On the
2 1st and 2 2nd Clinton, Grey, Fitzgerald, Or- July 21.
mond, Fit z warren, Sir Henry Sidney, and Sir
James Crofts presented themselves and received for- giveness. Cecil wrote, explaining his secret services, and was taken into favour. Lord Robert and Lord Ambrose Dudley, Northampton, and a hundred other gentlemen — Sir Thomas Wyatt among them, who had accompanied the Duke to Bury — were not so fortunate. The Queen would not see them, and they were left under arrest. Ridley set out for Norfolk, also, to con- fess his offences ; but, before he arrived at the Court, he was met by a warrant for his capture, and carried back a prisoner to the Tower.
The conspiracy was crushed, and crushed, happily, without bloodshed. The inquiry into its origin, and the punishment of the guilty, could be carried out at leisure. There was one matter, however, which admit- ted of no delay. Mary's first anxiety, on feeling her crown secure, was the burial of her dead brother, who, through all these scenes, was still lying in his bed in his room at Greenwich. In her first letter to the Im-
1 553-]
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
213
perial ambassadors, the day after the arrival of Arundel and Paget at the Court, she spoke of this as her greatest care ; to their infinite alarm, she announced her inten- tion of inaugurating her reign with Requiem and Dirige, and a mass for the repose of his soul.
Their uneasiness requires explanation.
While on matters of religion there was in England almost every variety of opinion, there was a very gener- al consent that the Queen should not marry a foreigner. The dread that Mary might form a connection with some Continental prince, had formed the strongest ele- ment in Northumberland's cause ; all the Catholics, ex- cept the insignificant faction who desired the restoration of the Papal authority,1 and all the moderate Protestants, wished well to her, but wished to see her married to some English nobleman ; and, while her accession was still uncertain, the general opinion had already fixed upon a husband for her in the person of her cousin Edward Courtenay, the imprisoned son of the Marquis of Exeter. The interest of the public in the long con- finement of this young nobleman had invested him with all imaginary graces of mind and body. He was the grandchild of a Plantagenet, and a representative of the White Eoso. He had suffered from the tyranny, and was supposed to have narrowly escaped murder at the
1 I must again remind my readers of the distinction between Catholic and Papist. Three-quarters of the English people were Catholics ; that is, they were attached to the heredi- tary and traditionary doctrines of
the Church. They detested, as coi dially as the Protestants, the inter- ference of a foreign power, whether secular or spiritual, with English liberty.
214
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
hands of the man whom all England most hated. Na- ture, birth, circumstances, all seemed to point to him as the king-consort of the realm.1 The Emperor had thought of Mary for his son ; and it has been seen that the fear of such an alliance induced the French to sup- port Northumberland. • To prevent the injury which the report, if credited in England, would have done to her cause, Mary, on her first flight to Keninghall, em- powered Renard to assure the council that she had no thought at all of marrying a stranger. The Emperor and the Bishop of Arras, in assuring Sir Philip Hoby that the French intended to strike for the Queen of Scots, declared that, for themselves they wished only to see the Queen settled in her own realm, as her subjects desired ; and especially they would prevent her either from attempting innovations in religion without their consent, or from marrying against their approbation.2
1 ' Adversity is a good thing. I trust in the Lord to live to see the day her Grace to marry such an one as knoweth what adversity raeaneth; so shall we have both a merciful queen and king to their subjects ; and would to God I might live to have another virtuous Edward.' — Epistle of Poor Pratt to Gilbert Potter, written July 13 : Queen Jane and Queen Mary, Appendix, p. 116. The occasion of this curious epistle was the punishment of Gilbert on the pillory. The writer was a Protestant, and evidently thought the Reformation in greater danger from Northumberland than Mary. 1 "We have had many prophets and
true preachers,' he said, ' which did declare that our King shall be taken away from us, and a tyrant shall reign. The gospel shall be plucked away, and the right heir shall be dispossessed ; and all for our un- thankfulness. And, thinkest thou not, Gilbert, this world is now come ? Yea ! truly ! and what shall follow, if we repent not in time ? The same God will take from us the virtuous Lady Mary our lawful Queen, and send such a cruel Pharaoh as the Ragged Bear to rule us, which shall pull and poll us, and utterly destroy us, and bring us in great calamities and miseries.' 2 MS. Harleian, 523.
1553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 215
But the Emperor's disinterestedness was only the result of his despondency. While the crisis lasted, neither Charles nor Henry of France saw their way to a distinct course of action. Charles, on the 2Oth of July, ignorant of the events in London, had written to Eenard, despairing of Mary's success. Jane Grey he would not recognize ; the Queen of Scots, he thought, would shortly be on the English throne. Henry, con- sidering, at any rate, that he might catch something in troubled waters, volunteered to Lord William Howard,1 in professed compliance with the demands of Northum- berland, to garrison Guisnes and Calais for him. Howard replied that the French might come to Calais if they desired, but their reception might not be to their taste.2 The revolution of the i Qth altered the aspect of the situation both at the Courts of Paris and of Brussels. The accession of Mary would be no injury to France, provided she could be married in England ; and Henry at once instructed Noailles to congratulate the council on her accession. Noailles himself indeed considered, that, should she take Courtenay for a husband, the change might, after all, be to their advantage. The Emperor, on the other hand, began to think again of his original scheme. Knowing that the English were sincere in their detestation of the Papacy, and imper- fectly comprehending the insular distinction between general attachment to Catholic tradition and indifference to Catholic unity, he supposed that the country really
1 Governor of Calais. • 9 r 2 NOAIM.ES,
216 REIGN- OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
was, on the whole, determined in its adherence to the Reformed opinions. But the political alliance was still of infinite importance to him ; and therefore he was anxious beyond everything that the Princess, whom he intended to persuade to break her word about her mar- riage, should be discreet and conciliatory about religion. He lost not a moment, after hearing that she was pro- claimed Queen, in sending her his congratulations ; but he sent with them an earnest admonition to be cau- tious; to be content with the free exercise for herself of her own creed, to take no step whatever without the sanction of Parliament, and to listen to no one who would advise her, of her own authority, to set aside the Act of Uniformity. Her first duty was to provide for the quiet of the realm; and she must endeavour, by prudence and moderation, to give reasonable satisfaction to her subjects of all opinions. Above all things, let her remember to be a good Englishwoman (bonne An- glaise).1
It was, in consequence, with no light anxiety that Renard learnt from Mary her intention of commencing her reign with an act which was so far at variance with the Emperor's advice, and which would at once display the colours of a party. To give the late King a public funeral with a ceremonial forbidden by the law, would be a strain of the prerogative which could not fail to create jealousy even among those to whom the difference between a Latin mass and an English service was not
Charles V, to Renard, July 22 : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.
'553-L QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 217
absolutely vital ; and the judicious latitudinarianism to which the lay statesmen of the better sort were inclining, would make them dread the appearance of a disposition that would encourage the revolutionists. She owed her crown to the Protestants as well as to the Catholics. If she broke the law to please the prejudices of the latter, Renard was warned that her present popularity would not be of long continuance.1
Yet, as the ambassador trembled to know, a care- lessness of consequences and an obstinate perseverance in a course which she believed to be right were the principal features in Mary's character. He wrote to her while she was still at Framlingham, using every argument which ought, as he considered, to prevail. He reminded her of the long and unavailing struggle of the Emperor to bring back Germany out of heresy, where the obstinacy of the Romanists had been as mis- chievous to him as the fanaticism of the Lutherans. ' Her duty to God was of course the first thing to be considered ; but at such a time prudence was a part of that duty. The Protestant heresies had taken a hold deep and powerful upon her subjects. In London alone there were fifteen thousand French, Flemish, and German refugees, most of them headstrong and un- governable enthusiasts. The country dreaded any fresh convulsions, and her Majesty should remember that she had instructed him to tell the council that she was sus-
1 Elle sera odicuse, suspecte, et dangereuse. — Renard to the Emperor : Rolls Home MSX.
218 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
pected unjustly, and had no thought of interfering with the existing settlement of the realm/ *
With all his efforts, however, Renard could but bring the Queen to consent to a few days' delay ; and fearing that she would return to her purpose, he sent to the Emperor a copy of his letter, which he urged him to follow up. Charles on the 29th replied again, lauding the ambassador's caution, and sug- gesting an argument more likely to weigh with his cousin than the soundest considerations of public policy. Edward had lived and died in heresy, and the Catholic services were intended only for the faithful sons of the Church.2 He desired Renard to remind her that thosB who had been her most valuable friends were known to hold opinions far from orthodox ; and he once more im- plored her to be guided by Parliament, and to take care that the Parliament was free. She had asked whether she should imitate Northumberland and nominate the members of the House of Commons. He cautioned her against so dangerous an example ; she might make a selection among the towns and counties, but he advised her to let them choose for themselves ; and if the writs
1 Renard to Queen Mary, copy enclosed to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
2 Vous avez tres bien faict do desconseillicr a la dicte Royne qu'elle fist les obseques du feu Roy, ce qu'elle peult tant plus deluisser avecque le repos de sa conscience, puisque comme escripvez il est de- code sonstenant jusques a la fin, selon qu'il avoit este persuade de
depuis sa jeunesse, les opinions de desvoyez de nostre ancienne reli- gion : par on Ton ne peult sans scrupule luy faire renterrement et obseques accoustumez en nostre dicto religion. Et est bien que 1'ayez persuade par vostre dicte lettre a la dicte dilation. — Charles V. to Re- nard, July 29 : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.
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were sent into Cornwall and the North, which had re- mained most constant to the Catholic religion, these places might be expected to return persons who would support her own sentiments.1
If the Emperor had been equally earnest in urging Mary to consult the wishes of her subjects on her mar- riage, he would have been a truer friend to her than he proved to be. But prudential arguments produced no effect on the eager Queen ; Renard had warned her not to resist Northumberland ; she had acted on her own judgment, and Northumberland was a prisoner, and she was on the throne. By her own will she was confident that she could equally well restore the mass, and in good time the Pope's authority. The religious objection to the funeral was more telling, and on this point she hesitated. Meantime she began to move slowly towards London, and at the end of the month she reached her old house of Newhall in Essex, where she rested till the preparations were complete for her entry into the city.
The first point on which she had now to make up her mind concerned the persons with whom she was to carry on the Government. The Emperor was again clear in his advice, which here she found herself obliged to fol- low. She was forced to leave undisturbed in their au- thorities such of her brother's late ministers as had con- tributed to the revolution in her favour. Derby, Sussex,
1 Et il seroit a esperer que y appellant ceulx du Noort et de Cornuailles avec les autres comme ce sont ceulx qui sont demeurez plus ferae en la religion, et qui ont
demonstre plus d'affection en son endroit qu'elle trouveroit envers iceulx pour tout ce qu'elle vouldroit ordonner plus de faveur.— Ibicj,
2 to REIGN OF Q UEEN MARY. [en. 30.
Bath, Oxford, who had hurried to her support at Fram- Kngham, were her loyal subjects, whom she could afford to neglect, because she could depend upon their fidelity. Pembroke and Winchester, Arundel and Shrewsbury, Bedford, Cobham, Cheyne, Petre, too powerful to affront, too uncertain to be trusted as subjects, she could only attach to herself, by maintaining them in their offices and emoluments. She would restore the Duke of Norfolk to the council ; Gardiner should hold office again ; and she could rely on the good faith of Paget, the ablest, as well as the most honest, of all the professional statesmen. But Norfolk was old, and the latitudinarian Paget and the bigoted Gardiner bore each other no good will ; so that, when the Queen had leisure to contemplate her position, it did not promise to be an easy one. She would have to govern with the assistance of men who were gorged with the spoils of the Church, suspected of heresy, and at best indifferent to religion.
In Mary's absence, the Lords in London carried on the government as they could on their own responsibility. On the 2 ist Courtenay was released from the Tower. Gardiner was offered liberty, but he waited to accept it from the Queen's own hand. He rejoined the council, however, and on the first or second day of his return to the board, he agitated their deliberations by requiring the restoration of his house in Southwark, which had been appropriated to the Marquis of Northampton, and by reminding Pembroke that he was in possession of estates which had been stolen from the See of Win- chester.
'553-1 QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 221
On the 25th Northumberland and Lord Ambrose Dudley were brought in from Cambridge, escorted by Grey and Arundel, with four hundred of the guard. Detachments of troops were posted all along the streets from Bishopsgate where the Duke would enter, to the Tower, to prevent the mob from tearing him in pieces. It was but twelve days since he had ridden out from that gate in the splendour of his power ; he was now assailed from all sides with yells and execrations ; bareheaded, with cap in hand, he bowed to the crowd as he rode on, as if to win some compassion from them ; but so recent a humility could find no favour. His scarlet cloak was plucked from his back ; the only sounds which greeted his ears were, ' Traitor, traitor, death to the traitor ! ' He hid his face, sick at heart with shame, and Lord Ambrose, at the gate of the Tower, was seen to burst into tears.1 Edwin Sandys, Northampton, Ridley, Lord Robert Dudley, the offending judges Cholmley and Montague, with many others, followed in the few next days. Montague had protested to the Queen that he* had acted only under compulsion, but his excuses were not fully received. Lady Northumberland went to Newhall to beg for mercy for her sons, but Mary refused to admit her.2
In general, however, there was no desire to press hard upon the prisoners. Few had been guilty in the first degree ; in the second degree so many were guilty,
1 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS. BAOAKDO. Grey friars' Chronicle.
8 Benarcl to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
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[CH. 30.
that all could not be punished, and to make exceptions would be unjust and invidious. The Emperor recom- mended a general pardon, from which the principal of- fenders only should be excluded, and Mary herself was as little inclined to harshness. Her present desire was to forget all that had passed, and take possession of her throne for the objects nearest to her heart. Her chief embarrassment for the moment was from the over-loyalty of her subjects. The old-fashioned lords and country gentlemen who had attended her with their retainers from Norfolk, remained encamped round Newhall, unable to persuade themselves that they could leave her with safety in the midst of the men who had been the minis- ters of the usurpation.1
Her closest confidence the Queen reserved for Eenard. On the 2 8th of July she sent for him at mid- night. On the 2nd of August he was again with her, and the chief subject of her thoughts was still the funeral. * She could not have her brother committed *to the ground like a dog/ she said. While her fortunes were uncertain, she had allowed Renard to promise for her that she would make no changes in religion, but * she had now told the Lords distinctly that she would not recognize any of the laws which had been passed in the minority,2 and she intended to act boldly ; timidity
August 2.
1 llenard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.
2 She, perhaps, imagined that she was not exceeding her statutable right in the refusal. The ijth of the 28th of Henry VIII. empower-
ed any one of the heirs to the crown named in the King's will, on arriv- ing at the age of twenty-four, to re- peal laws passed not only in his or her own minority; hut under cir- cumstances such as those which had
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
would only encourage the people to be insolent ; ' ' the Lords were all quarrelling among themselves, and accus- ing one another ; she could not learn the truth on any point of the late conspiracy ; she did not know who were guilty or who were innocent; and, amidst the distracted advices which were urged upon her, she could not tell whether she could safely venture to London or not. But outward acquiescence in the course which she chose to follow she believed that she could compel, and she would govern as God should direct her. The Em- peror, she added, had written to her about her marriage, not specifying any particular person, but desiring her to think upon the subject. She had never desired to marry while princess, nor did she desire it now ; but if it were for the interests of the Church, she would do whatever he might advise/
On this last point Renard knew more of the Em- peror's intentions than Mary, and was discreetly silent ; on other points he used his influence wisely. He con- strained her, with Charles's arguments, to relinquish her burial scheme. * Edward, as a heretic, should have a heretic funeral at Westminster Abbey ; she need not be present, and might herself have a mass said for him in the Tower. As to removing to London, in his opinion
actually occurred, where the first heir had died before coming of age. The nth of the ist of Edward VI. modified the Act of Henry, limiting the power of repeal to the sovereign in whose own reign the law to be repealed had been passed. But this
Act of Edward's was, itself, passed in a minority, and Mary might urge that she might repeal that as well as any other statute passed in his reign in virtue of the Act of her father.
224 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30
she had better go thither at once, take possession of her throne, and send Northumberland to trial. Her brother's body ought to be examined also, that it might be ascer- tained whether he had been poisoned ; and if poisoned, by whom and for what purpose.'1
Mary rarely paused upon a resolution. Making up her mind that, as Henard said, it would be better for her to go to London, she set out thither the following day, Thursday, the 3rd of August. Excitement lent to her hard features an expression almost of beauty,2 as she rode in the midst of a splendid cavalcade of knights and nobles. Elizabeth, escorted by two thousand horse and a retinue of ladies, was waiting to receive her outside the gates. The first in her con- gratulations, after the proclamation, yet fearful of giving offence, Elizabeth had written to ask if it was the Queen's pleasure that she should appear in mourning ; but the Queen would have no mourning, nor would have others wear it in her presence. The sombre colours which of late years had clouded the Court, were to be banished at once and for ever ; and with the dark colours, it seemed for a time as if old dislikes and suspicions were at the same time to pass away. The sisters embraced, the Queen was warm and affectionate, kissing all the ladies in Elizabeth's train ; and side by side the daughters of Henry VIII. rode through Aldgate at seven in the evening, amidst the shouts of the people, the thunder of
1 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls Home MSS.
2 ' La beaute de visage plus que mediocre,' are Renard' s words to Charles
1553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 225
cannon, and pealing of church bells.1 At the Tower gates the old Duke of Norfolk, Gardiner, Courtenay, and the Duchess of Somerset were seen kneeling as Mary approached. ' These are my prisoners/ she said, as she alighted from her horse and stooped and kissed them. Charmed by the enthusiastic reception and by the pleasant disappointment of her anxieties, she could find no room for hard thoughts of any one ; so far was she softened, Renard wrote, that she could hardly be brought to consent to the necessary execution of justice. Against Northumberland himself she had no feeling of vindictiveness, and was chiefly anxious that he should be attended by a confessor ; Northampton was certainly to be pardoned ; Suffolk was already free ; Northumber- land should be spared, if possible ; and, as to Lady Jane, justice forbade, she said, that an innocent girl should suffer for the crimes of others.2
The Emperor had recommended mercy ; but he had not advised a general indemnity, as Renard made haste to urge. The Imperialist conception of clemency dif- fered from the Queen's ; and the same timidity which had first made the ambassadors too prudent, now took the form of measured cruelty. Renard entreated that Lady Jane should not be forgiven ; ' conspirators re- quired to be taught that for the principals in treason there was but one punishment ; the Duke must die, and the rival Queen and her husband must die with him/ ' We set before her ' — Renard3 s own hand is the witness
1 RENARD ; NOAILLES ; MACHYN ; Grey Friars' Chronicle. 2 Eenard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
VOL. V. 15
226
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
against him — ' the examples of Maximus and his son Victor, both executed by the Emperor Theodosius ; Maximus, because he had usurped the purple ; Victor, because, as the intended heir of his father, he might have been an occasion of danger had he lived.3 1
Looking also, as Renard was already doing, on the scenes which were round him, chiefly or solely as they might affect the interests of his master's son, he had been nervously struck by the entourage which sur- ^ounded Elizabeth, and the popularity which she, as well as the Queen, was evidently enjoying.
Elizabeth, now passing into womanhood, was the per- son to whom the affections of the liberal party in England most definitely tended. She was the heir-presumptive to the crown after her sister ; in matters of religion she was opposed to the mass, and opposed as decidedly to factious and dogmatic Protestantism; while from the caution with which she had kept aloof from political entangle- ments, it was clear that her brilliant intellectual abilities were not her only or her most formidable gifts. Already she shared the favour of the people with the Queen. Let Mary offend them (and in the intended marriage offence would unquestionably have to be given), their entire hearts might be transferred to her. The public finger had pointed to Courtenay as the husband which Eng-
1 Et luy fust propose 1'exemple de Maxinius et Victor son filz que Theodose 1'Empereur feit raourir pour s'estre attrihue le nom d'Em- pereur par tyrannie et 1' avoir vouhi eoiitinuer en son diet filz Victor, es-
cripvarit Phistoire que Pon fcit mourir le filz pour le scandale et danger qu'en eust peu advenir. — Renard to Charles V. : Rolls Souse MSS. For the story, see GIBBON, cap. xxvii,
155:
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land desired for the Queen. When Courtenay should be set aside by Mary, he might be accepted by Eliza- beth ; and Elizabeth, it was rumoured, looked upon him with an eye of favour.1 On all accounts, therefore, Elizabeth was dangerous. She was a figure on the stage whom Eenard would gladly see removed ; and a week or two later he bid Mary look to her, watch her, and catch her tripping if good fortune would so permit : ' it was better to prevent than to be prevented/2
The Queen did not close her ears to these evil whispers ; but for the first few days after she came to the Tower her thoughts were chiefly occupied with reli- gion, and her first active step was to release and to re- store to their sees the deprived and imprisoned bishops. The first week in August, Ponet, by royal order, was ejected from Winchester, Ridley from London, and Scory from Chichester. The See of Durham was recon- stituted. Tunstal, Day, and Heath were set at liberty,
1 Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.
2 Signantment sembleroit que vostre majeste ne se deust confier en Madame Elizabeth que Men a point, et discouvrir sur ce qu'ellene se voit en espoir d'entrer en regne, ne avoir youlu fleschir quant au point de la religion ny ouyr la messe ; ce que Ton jugeoit elle deust faire pour la respect de vostre majeste, et pour les courtoysies dont elle use en son en- droit encores qu'elle ny eust faict sinon Fassister et Faccompaigner. Et davantage Fon peult discouvrir
comme elle se maintient en la nou- velle religion par practique, pour attirer et gaigner a sa devotion ceulx quilz sont de la dicie religion en s'en aider, si elle avoit intention de maligner ; et ja^ois Fon se pourroit fourcompter quant a son intention, si est en ce commencement, qu'il est plus sure prevenir que d'estre pre- venu et penser a ce que peult ad- venir ; actendu que les objects sont evidens. — Les Ambassadeurs de FEmpereur a Marie, Eeine d'An- gleterre : Granvelle Papers, vol. ii. pp. 64—69.
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
August 5.
and returned to their dioceses. The Bishop of Ely was deposed from the chancellorship, and the seals were given to Gardiner. ' On the 5th of August/ says the Grey Friars' Chronicle, 'at seven o'clock at night, Edmond Bonner came home from the Marshalsea like a bishop, and all the people by the way- side bade him welcome home, both man and woman, and as many of the women as might kissed him ; and so he came to Paul's, and knelt on the steps, and said his prayers, and the people rang the bells for joy.'1
While Mary was repairing acts of injustice, Gardin- er, with Sir William Petre, was looking into the public accounts. The debts of the late Government had been reduced, the currency unconsidered, to i9O,ooo/.2 A doubt had been raised whether, after the attempt to set aside the succession, the Queen was bound to take the responsibility of these obligations, but Mary preferred honour to convenience ; she promised to pay everything as soon as possible. Further, there remain, partly in Gardiner's hand, a number of hasty notes, written evi- dently in these same first weeks of Mary's reign, which speak nobly for the intentions with which both Mary
1 Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, p. 82.
2 August 1553. Debts of the crown. Irish debt, 36,094^. iSs. Household debts, 14,574^. i6s. Further household debts, 7,450^. 5*. Berwick debt, with the wages of the officers, 16,639^. 185. Calais debt, beside 17,000^. of loans and other things, 21,184^. i os. Ordnance
Office, 3,134^. 7*. Public works, 3,2OO/. Admiralty debt, 3,923^. 4*. Debts in the Office of the Chamber, 17,968^. Debts beyond the seas by Sir Thomas Gresham's particular bill, 6i,o68£. Alderney's debt, 3,028^. Scilly debt, 3,0711.— MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. i. State Paper Office.
1553-1
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
229
and himself were setting generally to work. The ex- penses of the household were to be reduced to the scale of Henry VII., or the early years of Henry VIII. ; the garrisons at Berwick and Calais were to be placed on a more economical footing, the navy reduced, the irregu- lar guard dismissed or diminished. Bribery was to be put an end to in the courts of Westminster, at quarter sessions, and among justices of the peace ; ' the laws were to be restored to their authority without suffering any matters to be ordered otherwise than as the laws should appoint.'1 These first essentials having been attended to, the famous or infamous book of sales, grants, and exchanges of the Crown lands was to be looked into ; the impropriation of benefices was to cease, and decency to be restored to the parish churches, where the grooms and game-keepers should give way to com- petent ministers. Economy, order, justice, and reverence were to heal the canker of profligate profanity which had eaten too long into the moral life of England.
In happier times Mary might have been a worthy Queen, and Gardiner an illustrious minister ; 2 but the
1 Note of things to be attended to : MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. i.
2 Another natural feature of these curious days was the arrest of suspected persons ; one of whom, Edward Underbill, the Hot Gospel- ler, has left behind him, in the ac- count of his own adventures, a very vivid picture of the time. Under- bill was a yeoman of the guard. He had seen service in the French wars,
but had been noted chiefly for the zeal which he had shown in the late reign in hunting Catholics into gaol. He had thus worked his way into Court favour. During the brief royalty of Jane Grey, his wife was confined. His child was christened at the Tower church, and Suffolk and Pembroke were 'gossips,' and Jane herself was godmother. The day that Mary was proclaimed, he
2. S
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
fatal superstition which confounded religion with ortho- dox opinion was too strong for both of them.
put out a ballad, which, as he ex- pected, brought him into trouble. ' The next day,' he is telling his own story, 'after the Queen was come to the Tower, the foresaid ballad came into the hands of Secre- tary Bourne, who straightway made inquiry for the said Edward, who dwelt in Lymehurst ; which he having intelligence of, sent the sheriff of Middlesex with a com- pany of bills and glaives, who came into my house, being in my bed, and my wife newly laid in childbed. The high constable, whose name is Thomas Joy, dwelled at the house nextto me, whom the sheriff brought also with him. He being my very friend, desired the sheriff and his company to stay without for fright- ing of my wife, and he would go fetch me unto him ; who knocked at the door, saying, he must speak with me. I, lying so near that I might hear him, called unto him, willing him to come unto me, for that he was always my very friend and earnest in the gospel, who de- clared unto me that the sheriff and a great company was sent for me. Whereupon I rose and made me ready to come unto him.'
k Sir, said he, I have command- ment from the council to apprehend you and bring you unto them.
' "Why, said I, it is now ten of the clock at night ; you cannot now carry me unto them.
' No, sir, said he, you shall go with me to my house in London, where you shall have a bed, and to- morrow I will bring you unto them in the Tower.
' In the name of God, quoth I, and so went with him, requiring him if I might understand the cause. He said he knew none.'
Underbill, however, conjectured that it was the ballad. He ' was nothing dismayed ; ' and in the morning went readily to the Tower, where he waited in the presence chamber talking to the pensioners.
Sir Edward Hastings passed through, and as he saw him, ' frown- ed earnestly.' ' Are you come ? ' said Hastings, ' we will talk with you ere you part, I warrant you.' They were old acquaintances. Un- derbill had been controller of the ordnance at Calais when Lord Huntingdon was in command there. The Earl being in bad health, his brother Sir Edward was with him, assisting in the duties of the office ; and Underbill, being able to play and sing, had been a frequent visitor at the Government House. The Earl, moreover, ' took great delight to hear him reason ' with Sir Edward, on points of controversy — chiefly on the real presence — where the con- troller of the ordnance (according to his own account), would quote Scripture, and Sir Edward would ' swear great oaths,' ' especially by
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Edward's body was meanwhile examined. The physicians reported that without doubt he had died of
the Lord's foot ; ' on which Under- hill would say, ' Nay, then, it must needs be so, and you prove it with such oaths , ' and the Earl would laugh and exclaim, ' Brother, give him over, Underbill is too good for you.'
Hastings, it seemed, could not forgive these passages of wit, and Underbill was to smart for them. While he stood waiting, Secretary Bourne came in, 'looking as the wolf at the lamb,' and seeing the man that he had sent for, carried him off into the council room. Hastings was gone, Bedford sat as President, ' and Bedford,' says Underbill, ' was my friend, for that my chance was to be at the recovery of his son, my Lord Russell, when he was cast into the Thames by Lymehurst, whom I received into my house, and gate him to bed, who was in great peril of his life, the weather being very cold. '
Bedford, however, made no sign of recognition. Bourne read the ballad ; on which Underbill pro- tested that there was no attack on the Queen's title in it. No ! Bourne said, but it maintains the Queen's title with the help of an arrant heretic, Tyndal. Underbill used the word Papist. Sir John Mason asked what be meant by that : ' Sir,' he says that he replied, « I think, if you look among the priests in Paul's, you shall find some old
mumpsimusses there.
' Mumpsimusses, knave, said he, mumpsimusses ! Thou art an heretic knave, by God's blood !
' Yea ! by the mass, said the Earl of Bath, I warrant him an heretic knave indeed.
* I beseech your honours,' Under- hill said, ' speaking- to the Lords that sat at the table (for those others stood by and were not of the council), be my good Lords. I have offended no laws. I have served the Queen's Majesty's father and brother long time, and spent and consumed my living therein. I went not forth against her Majesty, notwithstanding I was commanded.'
He was interrupted by Arundel, who said that, ' by his writing,' ' he wished to set them all by the ears.' Hastings re-entered at the moment, telling the council that they must repair to the Queen, and the Hot Gospeller was promptly ordered to Newgate.
The sheriff led him through the streets, his friend Joy ' following afar off, as Peter followed Christ.' He wrote a few words to his wife at the door of Newgate, asking her to send him ' his nightgown, his Bible, and his lute ; ' and then entered the prison, his life in which he goes on to describe.
In the centre of Newgate was ' a great open hall.' ' As soon as it was supper time,' the board was
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poison,1 and there was a thought of indicting the Duke of Northumberland for his murder : hut it was relin- quished on further inquiry ; the poison, if the physi- cians were right, must have been administered by negligence or accident. The corpse was then
August 6.
buried with the forms of the Church of Eng-
covered in the same hall. The keeper, whose name was ' Alisander,' <vith his wife, came and sat down, and half a dozen prisoners that were there for felony,' Underbill < being the first that for religion was sent unto tbat prison.' One of the felons had served with him in France. ' After supper,' the story continues, 'this good fellow, whose name was Bristow, procured me to have a bed in his cb amber, wbo could play well upon a rebeck. He was a tall fellow, and after one of Queen Mary's guard ; yet a Protestant, which he kept secret, for else, he said, he should not have found such favour as he did at the keeper's hands and his wife's, for to such as loved the gospel they were very cruel. "Well, said Under- bill, I have sent for my Bible, and, by God's grace, therein shall be my daily exercise ; I will not hide it from them. Sir, said he, I am poor ; but they will bear with you, for they see your estate is to pay well ; and I will shew you the nature and manner of them ; for I have been here a good while. They both do love music very well. Wherefore you with your lute, and I to play with you on my rebeck, will please them greatly. He loveth to be merry,
and to drink wine, and she also. If you Avill bestow upon them, every dinner and supper, a quart of wine and some music, you shall be their white son, and have all the favour they can shew you.'
The honour of being ' white son ' to the governor and governess of Newgate was worth aspiring after. Underbill duly provided the desired entertainments. The governor gave him the best room in the prison, with all other admissible indulgences.
' At last,' however, ' the evil savours, great unquietness, with over many drafts of air,' threw the poor gentleman into a burning ague. He shifted « his lodgings,' but to no purpose ; the ' evil savours ' followed him. The keeper offered him his own parlour, where he escaped from the noise of the prison ; but it was near the kitchen, and the smell of the meat was disagreeable. Finally, the wife put him away in her store-closet, amidst her best plate, crockery, and clothes, and there he continued to survive till the middle of September, when he was released on bail through the interference of the Earl of Bed- ford. — Underbill's Narrative : Har- Man MSS. 425.
1 Supra, p. 172.
1 553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 233
land at Westminster Abbey ; the Archbishop of Canter- bury, who had so far been left at liberty, read the service ; it was the last and saddest function of his public ministry which he was destined to perform. Simultaneously, as Mary had determined, requiems were chanted in the Tower Chapel ; and Gardiner, in the presence of the Queen and four hundred persons, sung the mass for the dead with much solemnity. The ceremony was, however, injured by a misfortune; after the gospel the incense was carried round, and the chaplain who bore it was married; Doctor Weston, who was afterwards deprived of the deanery of Wind- sor for adultery, darted forward and snatched the censer out of the chaplain's hand. 'Shamest thou not to do thine office/ he said, ' having a wife, as thou hast? The Queen will not be censed by such as thou.'1 Nor was scandal the worst part of it. Elizabeth had been requested to attend, and had refused ; angry murmurs and curses against the Bishop of Winchester were heard among the yeomen of the guard ; while the Queen made no secret of her desire that the example which she had set should be imitated. Eenard trembled for the consequences ; Noailles anticipated a civil war ; twenty thousand men, the latter said, would lose their lives before England would be cured of heresy ; 2 yet Mary had made a beginning, and as she had begun she was resolved that others should continue.
In the Tower she felt her actions under restraint.
1 STRYPE. z NOAILLES, vol. ii. p. in.
234
REIGN- OF QUEEN" MARY.
[CH. 30.
She was still surrounded by thousands of armed men, the levies of Derby and Hastings, the retainers of Pem- broke and Arundel and Bedford ; the council were spies upon her actions ; the sentinels at the gates were a check upon her visitors. She could receive no one whose business with her was not made public to the Lords, and whose reception they were not pleased to sanction ; even Renard was for a time excluded from her, and in her anxiety to see him she suggested that he might come to her in disguise.1 Such a thraldom was irksome and inconvenient. She had broken the promise which Renard had been allowed to make for her about religion ; she had been troubled, it is easy to believe, with remonstrances to which she was not likely to have answered with temper ; Pembroke absented himself from the presence ; he was required to return and to reduce the number of his followers ; the quarrels which began while the Queen was at New Hall broke out with worse violence than ever ; Lord Derby com- plained to Renard that those who had saved her crown were treated with neglect, while men like Arundel, Bedford, and Pembroke, who had been parties to the treasons against her, remained in power ; Lord Russell
1 Monseigneur, je n'ay sceu trouver moien jusques a ceste heure de communiquer avec la royne, ce HIIG je deliberois faive avec 1' occasion dcs lectres do sa Majeste, si sans suspicion, j'eusse peu avoir acc&s, que n'a este possible pour estre les portes en la Tour de Londres oil eile este logee, si gardees que u'est
possible y entrer que Ton ne soit congneu ; elle m'avoit faict dire si je me pouvoys desguiser et prendre ung manteau, mais il m'a semble pour le mieux et plus sour d'attendre qu'elle soit a Richemont. — Renard to Charles V. : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. pp. 71, 72.
'553-1 QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 235
was soon after placed under arrest ; Pembroke and Winchester were ordered to keep their houses, and the Court was distracted with suspicion, discord, and un- certainty.1
From such a scene Mary desired to escape to some place where she could be at least mistress of her own movements ; her impatience was quickened by a riot at St Bartholomew's, where a priest attempted to say mass ; and on Saturday, the I2th of August, she removed to Richmond. Her absence encouraged the insubordination
of the people. On Sunday, the I 3th, another
J' August 13
priest was attacked at the altar ; the vestments
were torn from his back, and the chalice snatched from his hands. Bourne, whom the Queen had appointed her chaplain, preached at Paul's Cross. A crowd of refugees and English fanatics had collected round the pulpit; and when he spoke something in praise of Bonner, and said that he had been unjustly imprisoned,2 yells rose of ' Papist, Papist ! Tear him down ! ' A dagger was hurled at the preacher, swords were drawn, the mayor attempted to interfere, but he could not make his way through the dense mass of the rioters ; and Bourne would have paid for his rashness with his life, had not Courtenay, who was a popular favourite, with his mother the Marchioness of Exeter, thrown them- selves on the pulpit steps, while Bradford sprung to his side, and kept the people back till he could be carried off.
1 Renard to the Emperor : Rolls I 2 Renard says it was at these House MSS. Queen Jane and Queen words that the exasperation broke p. 15. I out,
236 REIGN OF QUEEN MAR Y. [CH. 30.
But the danger did not end there. The Protestant orators sounded the alarm through London. Meetings were held, and inflammatory placards were scattered about the streets. If religion was to be tampered with, men were heard to say, it was better at once to fetch Northumberland from the Tower.
Uncertain on whom she could rely, Mary ' sent for Renard, who could only repeat his former cautions, and appeal to what had occurred in justification of them. He undertook to pacify Lord Derby ; but in the necessity to which she was so soon reduced of appealing to him, a foreigner, in her emerg- encies, he made her feel that she could not carry things with so high a hand. She had a rival in the Queen of Scots, beyond her domestic enemies, whom her wisdom ought to fear ; she would ruin herself if she flew in the face of her subjects ; and he prevailed so far with her that she promised to take no further steps till the meet- ing of Parliament. After a consultation with the mayor, she drew up a hasty proclamation, granting universal toleration till further orders, forbidding her Protestant and Catholic subjects to interrupt each other's services, and prohibiting at the same time all preaching on either sfde without license from herself.
Being on the spot, the ambassador took the oppor- tunity of again trying Mary's disposition upon the mar- riage question. His hopes had waned since her arrival in London ; he had spoken to Pa get, who agreed that an alliance with the Prince of Spain was the most splendid which the Queen could hope for ; but the time
I553-]
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237
was inopportune and the people were intensely hostile. The exigencies of the position, he thought, might oblige the Queen to yield to wishes which she could not oppose, and accept Lord Courtenay ; or possibly her own in- clination might set in the same direction; or, again, she might wish to renew her early engagement with the Emperor himself. The same uncertainty had been felt at Brussels ; the Bishop of Arras, therefore, had charged Renard to feel his way carefully and make no blunder. If the Queen inclined to the Emperor, he might speak of Philip as more eligible ; if she fancied Courtenay, it would be useless to interfere — she would only resent his opposition.1 Renard obeyed his in- structions, and the result was reassuring. When the ambassador mentioned the word ' marriage/ the Queen began to smile significantly, not once, but many times : she plainly liked the topic : plainly, also, her thoughts were not turning in the direction of any English husband ; she spoke of her rank, and of her unwilling- ness to condescend to a subject ; Courtenay, the sole remaining representative of the White Rose except the Poles, was the only Englishman who could in any way be thought suitable for her ; but she said that she ex- pected the Emperor to provide a consort for her, and that, being a woman, she could not make the first ad- vances. Renard satisfied himself from her manner that
1 Car si elle y avoit fantasie, elle ne laisseroit, si elle este du naturel des autres femmes, de passer oultre, et si se ressentiroit a jaraais de ce
que vous en pourriez avoir dit. — Arras to Renard : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 77.
238 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 36.
if the Prince of Spain was proposed, the offer would be most entirely welcome.1
The trials of the conspirators were now resolved up- on. The Queen was determined to spare Lady Jane Grey, in spite of all which Henard could urge ; but the state of London showed that the punishment of the really guilty could no longer be safely delayed. On this point all parties in the council were agreed. On Friday, the 1 8th of August, therefore, a court of peers was formed in Westminster Hall, with the aged Duke of Norfolk for High Steward, to try John Dudley Duke of Northumberland, the Earl of "Warwick, and the Marquis of Northampton, for high treason. Forty-four years before, as the curious re- marked, the father of Norfolk had sat on the commis- sion which tried the father of Northumberland for the same crime.
The indictments charged the prisoners with levying war against their lawful sovereign. Northumberland, who was called first to the bar, pleaded guilty of the acts which were laid against him, but he submitted two points to the consideration of the court.
1. Whether, having taken the field with a warrant under the Great Seal, he could be lawfully accused of treason.
2. Whether those peers from whom he had received his commission, and by whose letters he had been
1 Renard to the Bishop of Arras : . Renard to Charles V., August 16: Qranvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 79. | Holla House, MSS.
J553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
239
directed in what lie had done, could sit upon his trial as his judges.
The Great Seal, he was answered briefly, was the seal of a usurper, and could convey no warrant to him. If the Lords were as guilty as he said, yet, ' so long as no attainder was on record against them, they were persons able in law to pass upon any trial, and not to be challenged but at the prince's pleasure.'1
The Duke bowed and was silent.
Northampton and Warwick came next, and, like Northumberland, confessed to the indictment. North- ampton, however, pleaded in his defence, that he had held no public office during the crisis ; that he had not been present at the making of Edward's device, and had been amusing himself hunting in the country.2 War- wick, with proud sadness, said merely that he had followed his father, and would share his father's for- tunes ; if his property was confiscated, he hoped that his debts would be paid.3
But Northampton had indisputably been in the field with the army, and, as his judges perfectly well knew, had been, with Suffolk, the Duke's uniform supporter in his most extreme measures ; the Queen had resolved to pardon him •; but the court could not recognize his
1 Queen Jane and Queen Mary. The anomaly in the constitution of the Court amused Renard, who com- mented upon it to the Emperor, as an illustration of England and the English character. — Bolls Hoitse MSS.
2 Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS. Queen Jane and Queen Mary, Appendix. Baoardo says, Northampton pleaded — Ch' egli non si era raai messo in governo et che sempre attese alia caccia.
3 Ibid.
240
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
ICH. 30.
excuse. Norfolk rose, in a few words pronounced the usual sentence, and broke his wand ; the cold glimmer- ing edge of the Tower axe was turned towards the pri- soners, and the peers rose. Northumberland, before he was led away, fell upon his knees ; his children were young, he said, and had acted under orders from their father.; to them let the Queen show mercy ; for himself he had his peace to make with Heaven ; he entreated for a few days of life, and the assistance of a confessor ; if two of the council would come to confer with him, he offered to communicate important secrets of state ; and, finally, he begged that he might die by the axe like a nobleman.1
On the ipth, Sir John and Sir Henry Gates, Sir Andrew Dudley, and Sir Thomas Palmer were tried before a special commission. Dudley had gone with the treasonable message to France ; the three others were the boldest and most unscrupulous of the Duke's partisans, while Palmer was also especially hated for his share in the death of Somerset. These four also pleaded guilty, and were sentenced, Palmer only scornfully telling the commissioners that they were traitors as well as he, and worse than he.2
Seven had been condemned ; three only, the Duke, Sir John Gates, and Palmer, were to suffer.
August 19.
1 Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 17. Renard says that he asked the council to intercede for his life.
2 So Renard states. The author of the Chronicle of Queen Mary savs
merely that he denied that he had borne arms against the Queen, hut admitted that he had been with the army.
I553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 241
Crime alone makes death terrible : in the long list of victims whose bloody end, at stake or scaffold, the historian of England in the sixteenth century has to relate, two only showed signs of cowardice, and one of those was a soldier and a nobleman, who, in a moment of extreme peril, four years before, had kissed swords with his comrades, and had sworn to conquer the insurgents at Norwich, or die with honour. < „•>[
The Duke of Northumberland, who since that time had lived very emphatically without God in the world, had not lived without religion. He had affected re- ligion, talked about religion, played with religion, till fools and flatterers had told him that he was a saint ; and now, in his extreme need, he found that he had trifled with forms and words, till they had grown into a hideous hypocrisy. The Infinite of death was open- ing at his feet, and he had no faith, no hope, no con- viction, but only a blank and awful horror, and perhaps he felt that there was nothing left for him but to fling himself back in agony into the open arms of superstition. He had asked to speak with some member of the council ; he had asked for a confessor. In Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, he found both.
After the sentence Gardiner visited him in the Tower, where he poured out his miserable story ; he was a Catholic, he said, he always had been a Catholic ; he had believed nothing of all the doctrines for which he had pretended to be so zealous under Edward. ' Alas ! ' he cried, ' is there no help for me ? ' ' Let me live but a little longer to do penance for my many sins.'
VOL. V. 16
242
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
Gardiner's heart was softened at the humiliating specta- cle ; he would speak to the Queen, he said, and he did speak, not wholly without success ; he may have judged rightly, that the living penitence of the Joshua of the Protestants would have been more useful to the Church than his death.1 Already Mary had expressed a wish that, if possible, the wretched man should be spared ; and he would have been allowed to live except for the reiterated protests of Eenard in his own name and in the Emperor's.
It was decided at last that he should die ; and a priest was assigned him to prepare his soul. Doctor Watts or Watson, the same man whom Cranmer long ago had set in the stocks at Canterbury, took charge of Palmer and the rest — to them, as rough soldiers, spirit- ual consolation from a priest of any decent creed was welcome.
The executions were fixed originally for Monday the aist; but the Duke's conversion was a triumph to the Catholic cause too important not to be dwelt upon a little longer. Neither Northampton, Warwick, Andrew Dudley, nor Sir Henry Gates were aware that they were to be respited, and, as all alike
August 21.
1 The authority for this story is Parsons the Jesuit, who learnt it from one of the council who was present at the interview. Parsons says, in- deed, that Mary would have spared the Duke ; but that some one wrote to the Emperor, and that the Em- peror insisted that he should he put to death. This could not he, be-
cause there was no time for letters to pass and repass between Brussels and London, in the interval between the sentence and the execution ; but Renard says distinctly that Mary did desire to pardon him, and that he was himself obliged to exert his influence to prevent it.
*553'] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 243
availed themselves of the services of a confessor and the forms of the Catholic faith, their compliance could be made an instrument of a public and edifying lesson. The lives of those who were to suffer were prolonged for twenty- four hours. On Monday morning ' certain of the citizens of London ' were requested to be in at- tendance at the Tower chapel, where Northumberland, Northampton, Dudley, Henry Gates, and Palmer were brought in ; and, ' first kneeling down, every one of them, upon his knees, they heard mass, saying devout- edly, with the Bishop,1 every one of them, Confiteor.'
1 After the mass was done, the Duke rose up, and looked back upon my lord marquis, and came unto him, asking them all forgiveness, the one after the other, upon their knees, one to another ; and the one did heartily forgive the other. And then they came, every one of them, before the altar, every one of them kneel- ing, and confessing to the Bishop that they were the same men in the faith according as they had confessed to him before, and that they all would die in the Catho- lic faith.' When they had all received the sacrament, they rose and turned to the people, and the Duke said : —
' Truly, good people, I profess here before you all, that I have received the sacrament according to the true Catholic faith : and the plague that is upon the realm and upon us now is that we have erred from the faith these sixteen years ; and this I protest unto you all from the bottom of my heart.'
1
GARDINER.
24 ; REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
Northampton, with the rest, 'did affirm the same with weeping tears. l
Among the spectators were observed the sons of the Duke of Somerset.
In exhibiting to the world the humiliation of the
professors of the gospel, the Catholic party enjoyed a
pardonable triumph. Northumberland, in playing a
part in the pageant, was hoping to save his wretched
life. When it was over he wrote a passionate
AllgUSt 22.
appeal to Arundel.
' Alas, my lord/ he said, ' is my crime so heinous as no redemption but my blood can wash away the spots thereof ? An old proverb there is, and that most true — A living dog is better than a dead lion. Oh that it would please her good Grace to give me life, yea, the life of a dog, if I might but live and kiss her feet, and spend both life and all in her honourable service.'
But Arundel could not save him — would not have saved him, perhaps, had he been able — and he had only to face the end with such resolution as he could com- mand.
The next morning at nine o'clock, Warwick and Sir John Gates heard mass in the Tower chapel ; the two Seymours were again present with Courtenay : and be- fore Gates received the sacrament he said a few words of regret to the latter for his long imprisonment, of which he admitted himself in part the cause.2 On leav-
1 Harleian MSS. 284. Compare the account of the chronicler Qtieen Jane and Queen Mary, pp. 18, 19.
8 ' Not for any hatred towards you,' he added, ' but for fear that harm
1 553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 245
ing the chapel Warwick was taken back to his room, and learned that he was respited. Gates joined Palmer, who was walking with Watson in the garden, and talk- ing with the groups of gentlemen who were collected there. Immediately after the Duke was brought out. ' Sir John,' he said to Gates, ' God have mercy on us ; forgive me as I forgive you, although you and your council have brought us hither.' ' I forgive you, my Lord/ Gates answered, ' as I would be forgiven ; yet it was you and your authority that was the only original cause of all.' They bowed each* The Duke passed on, and the procession moved forward to Tower Hill.
The last words of a worthless man are in themselves of little moment ; but the effect of the dying speech of Northumberland lends to it an artificial importance. Whether to the latest moment he hoped for his life, or whether, divided between atheism and superstition, he thought, if any religion was true, Romanism was true, and it was prudent not to throw away a chance, who can tell ? At all events, he mounted the scaffold with Heath, the Bishop of Worcester, at his side ; and then deliberately said to the crowd, that his rebellion. and his present fall were owing to the false preachers who had led him to err from the Catholic faith of Christ ; the fathers and the saints had ever agreed in one doctrine ; the present generation were the first that had dared to follow their private opinions ; and in England and in Germany, where error had taken deepest root, there
might come thereby to my late young master.' — Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 20.
246
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[en. 30.
had followed war, famine, rebellion, misery, tokens all of them of God's displeasure. Therefore, as they loved their country, as they valued their souls, he implored his hearers to turn, all of them, and turn at once, to the Church which they had left ; in which Church he, from the bottom of his heart, avowed his own steadfast belief. For himself he called them all to witness that he died in the one true Catholic faith ; to which, if he had been brought sooner, he would not have been in his present calamity.
He then knelt ; ' I beseech you all/ he said again, ' to believe that I die in the Catholic faith.' He re- peated the Miserere psalm, the psalm De Profundis, and the Paternoster. The executioner, as usual, begged his pardon. ' I have deserved a thousand deaths/ he mut- tered. He made the sign of the cross upon the saw- dust, and kissed it, then laid down his head, and perished.
The shame of the apostasy shook down the frail edifice of the Protestant constitution, to be raised again in suffering, as the first foundations of it had been laid, by purer hands and nobler spirits.1 In his better years
1 Lady Jane Grey spoke a few memorable words on the Duke's conduct at the scaffold. ' On Tues- day, the 29th of August,' says the writer of the Chronicle of Queen Mary, f I dined at Partridge's house (in the Tower) with my Lady Jane, she sitting at the board' s-end, Partridge, his wife, and my Lady's gentlewoman. We fell in
discourse of religion. I pray you^ quoth she, have they mass in Lon- don. Yea, forsooth, quoth I, in some places. It may so be, quoth she. It is not so strange as the sudden conversion of the late Duke ; for who could have thought, said she, he would have so done ? It was answered her, perchance he thereby hoped to have hud his par-
1553.1
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
247
Northumberland had been a faithful subject and a fear- less soldier, and, with a master's hand over him, he might have lived with integrity and died with honour. Opportunity tempted his ambition — ambition betrayed him into crime — and, given over to his lower nature, he climbed to the highest round of the political ladder, to fall and perish like a craven. He was one of those many men who can follow worthily, yet cannot lead ; and the virtue of the beginning was not less real than the ignominy of the end.
Gates was the second sufferer. He, too, spoke in the same key. He had been a great reader of Scripture, he said, but he had not read it to be edified, but to be seditious — to dispute, to interpret it after his private
don. Pardon ! quoth she, woe worth him ! He hath brought me and our stock in most miserable calamity by his exceeding ambition ; but for the answering that he hoped for life by his turning, though other men be of that opinion, I utterly am not. For what man is there living, I pray you, although he had been innocent, that would hope of life in that case, being in the field in person against the Queen, as general, and after his taking so hated and evil spoken of by the Commons ; and at his coming into prison, so wondered at as the like was never heard by any man's time. "Who can judge that he should hope for pardon whose life was odious to all men ? But what will ye more ? Like as his life was wicked and full of dissimulation, so
was his end thereafter. I pray God I view no friend of mine die so. Should I, who am young and in my few years, forsake my faith for the love of life? Nay, God forbid! Much more he should not, whose fatal course, although he had lived his just number of years, could not have long continued. But life was sweet, it appeared. So he might have lived, you will say, he did not care how; indeed the reason is good ; for he that would have lived in chains to have had his life, by like would leave no other means unat- tempted. But God be merciful to us, for he saith, whoso denyeth him before men, he will not know him in his Father's kingdom.'— Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 24.
248 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
affection ; to him, therefore, the honey had been poison, and he warned all men how they followed his ill ex- ample ; God's holy mysteries were no safe things to toy or play with. Gates, in dying, had three strokes of an axe ; — ' Whether/ says an eye- witness,1 ' it was by his own request or no was doubtful ' — remarkable words — as if the everlasting fate of the soul depended on its latest emotion, and repentance could be intensified by the conscious realization of death.
Last came Sir Thomas Palmer, in whom, to judge by his method of taking leave of life, there was some kind of nobleness. It was he who led the cavalry forlorn hope, at Haddington, when the supplies were thrown in for the garrison.
He leapt upon the scaffold, red with the blood of his companions. ' Good morning to you all, good people/ he said, looking round him with a smile ; * ye come hither to see me die, and to see what news I have ; marry, I will tell you: I have seen more in yonder terrible place [he pointed towards the Tower] than ever I saw before throughout all the realms that ever I wan- dered in ; for there I have seen God, I have seen the world, and I have seen myself ; and when I beheld my life, I saw nothing but slime and clay, full of cor- ruption ; I saw the world nothing else but vanity, and all the pleasures and treasures thereof nought worth ; I saw God omnipotent, his power infinite, his mercy incomprehensible ; and when I saw this, I most humbly
Harleian MSS. 284.
1 5 53-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 249
submitted myself unto him, beseeching him of mercy and pardon, and I trust he hath forgiven me ; for he called me once or twice before, but I would not turn to him, but even now by this sharp kind of death he hath called me unto him. I trust the wings of his mercy shall spread over me and save me ; and I do here con- fess, before you all, Christ to be the very Son of God the Father, born of the Virgin Mary, which came into the world to fulfil the law for us, and to bear our of- fences on his back, and suffered his passion for our redemption, by the which I trust to be saved/
Like his fellow -sufferers, Palmer then said a few prayers, asked the Queen's forgiveness, knelt, and died.
Stunned by the apostasy on the scaffold of the man whom they had worshipped as a prophet, the ultra- faction among the Protestants became now powerless. The central multitude, whose belief was undefined, yielded to the apparent sentence of Heaven upon a cause weakened by unsuccessful treason, and disavowed in his death by its champion. Edward had died on the anniversary of the execution of More ; God, men said, had visited his people, and ' the Yirgin Mary' had been set upon the throne for their redemption.1 Dr Watson, on the 20th of August, preached at Paul's Cross under a guard of soldiers ; on the 24th, two days after the scene on Tower Hill, so little was a guard necessary, that mass was said in St Paul's Church in Latin, with matins and vespers. The crucifix was re-
Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House M&SS.
.150 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30,
placed in the roodloft, the high altar was re-decorated, the real presence was defended from the pulpit, and except from the refugees not a murmur was heard.1 Catching this favourable opportunity, the Queen charmed the country with the announcement that the second portion of the last subsidy granted by Parliament should not be collected ; she gave her word that the currency at the earliest moment should be thoroughly restored; while she gained credit on all sides for the very moder- ate vengeance with which she appeared to be contenting herself. Ridley only, Renard wrote, on the 9th of September, would now be executed ; the other prisoners were to be all pardoned. The enthusiasm was slightly abated, indeed, when it was announced that their for- giveness would not be wholly free. Montague and Bromley, on their release from the Tower, were fined yooo/. a-piece ; Suffolk, Northampton, and other noble- men and gentlemen, as their estates would bear. But, to relieve the burdens of the people at the expense of those who had reaped the harvest of the late spoliations was, on the whole, a legitimate retribution; the moneyed men were pleased with the recognition of Edward's debts, and provided a loan of 25,000 crowns for the present necessities of the Government. London streets rang again with shouts of ' God save the Queen ; ' and Mary recovered a fresh instalment of popularity to carry her a few steps further.2
The refugees were the first difficulty. They were
1 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS. 2 NOAILLES ; RENARD.
1553-1 QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 251
too numerous to imprison ; and the most influential among them — men like Peter Martyr — having come to England on the invitation of the late Government, it was neither just nor honourable to hand them over to their own sovereigns. But both Mary and her Flemish adviser were anxious to see them leave the country as quickly as possible. The Emperor recommended a general intimation to be given out that criminals of all kinds taking refuge in England would be liable to seizure, offences against religion being neither specially mentioned nor specially excepted.1 The foreign preachers were ordered to depart by proclamation ; and Peter Martyr, who had left Oxford, and was staying with Cranmer at Lambeth, expecting an arrest, received, instead of it, a safe- conduct, of which he instantly availed himself. The movements of others were quick- ened with indirect menaces ; while Gardiner told Henard, with much self-satisfaction, that a few messages desiring some of them to call upon him at his house had given them wings.2
Finding her measures no longer opposed, the Queen refused next to recognize the legality of the marriage of the clergy. Married priests should either leave their wives or leave their benefices ; and on the 29th of August, Gardiner, Bonner, Day, and Tunstal, late prisoners in the Tower, were appointed commissioners to examine into the conditions of their episcopal brethren. Convocation was about to meet, and must undergo a preliminary
1 Eenard to Queen Mary : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 65. 2 Renard to Charles V., September 9 : Rolls House MSS.
252
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[en. 30.
purification. Unhappy Convocation ! So lately the supreme legislative body in the country, it was now patched, clipped, mended, repaired, or altered, as the secular Government put on its alternate hues. The Protestant bishops had accepted their offices on Protest- ant terms — Quamdiu se bene gesserint, on their good be- haviour ; and, with the assistance of so pliant a clause, a swift clearance was effected. Barlow, to avoid ex- pulsion, resigned Bath. Paul Bush retreated from Bristol. Hooper, ejected from Worcester by the restor- ation of Heath, was deprived of Gloucester for heresy and marriage, and, being a dangerous person, was com- mitted on the ist of September to the Fleet Ferrars, of St David's, left in prison by North- umberland for other pretended offences, was deprived on the same grounds, but remained in confinement. Bird, having a wife, was turned out of Chester ; Arch- bishop Holgate out of York. Coverdale, Ridley, Scory, and Ponet had been already disposed of. The bench was wholesomely swept.1
September.
1 Some of the Protestant bishops (Cranmer, Hooper, Ridley, and Fer- rars were admirable exceptions) had taken care of themselves in the seven years of plenty. At the time of the deposition of the Archbishop of York, an inventory was taken of the personal property which was then in his possession. He had ' five houses, three very well provided, two meetly well. ' At his house at Battersea he had, of coined gold, 300^ ; plate gilt and parcel gilt, 1600 oz. Mitre,
gold, with two pendants set with very fine diamonds, sapphires, and balists, and other stones and pearls weigbt 125 oz. ; six great gold rings, with very fine sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, turquoises. ' At Cawood he had of money goo/. ; mitres, 2. Plate gilt and parcel gilt, 770 oz. ; broken cross of silver gilt, 46 oz. ; two thousand five hundred sheep ; two Turkey carpets, as big and as good as any subject had ; a chest full of copes and vestments. House-
'553-]
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Sept. 4.
The English. Protestant preachers seeing that priests everywhere held themselves licensed ex officio to speak as they pleased from the pulpit, began themselves also, in many places, to disobey the Queen's proclamation. They were made immediately to feel their mistake, and were brought to London to the Tower, the Marshalsea, or the Fleet, to the cells left vacant by their opponents. Among the rest came one who had borne no share in the late misdoings, but had long foreseen the fate to which those doings would bring him and many more. When Latimer was sent for, he was at Stam- ford. Six hours' notice was given him of his intended arrest ; and so obviously his escape was desired that the pursuivant who brought the warrant left him to obey it at his leisure ; his orders, he said, were not to wait. But Latimer had business in England. While the fanatics who had provoked the catastrophe were slinking across the Channel from its consequences, Latimer determined to stay at home, and help to pay the debts which they had incurred. He went quietly to London, appeared before the council, where his ' demean- our ' was what they were pleased to term ' seditious/ l and was committed to the Tower. ' What, my friend/ he said to a warder who was an old acquaintance there, ' how do you ? I am come to be your neighbour again.'
hold stores : wheat, 200 quarters ; malt, 500 quarters ; oats, 60 quart- ers ; wine, 5 or 6 tuns ; fish and ling, 6 or 7 hundred ; horses at Ca- wood, four or five score ; harness
and artillery sufficient for 7 score men.' — ST HYPE'S Cmnmer, vol. i. p. 440.
1 Privy Council Register, MS Mary.
254 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
Sir Thomas Palmer's rooms in the garden were assigned for his lodging. In the winter he was left without a fire, and, growing infirm, he sent a message to the Lieu- tenant of the Tower to look better after him, or he should give him the slip yet.1
And there was another besides Latimer who would not fly when the chance was left open to him. Arch- bishop Cranmer had continued at Lambeth unmolested, yet unpardoned ; his conduct with respect to the letters patent had been more upright than the conduct of any other member of the council by whom they had been signed ; and on this ground, therefore, an exception could not easily be made in his disfavour. But his friends had interceded vainly to obtain the Queen's definite forgiveness for him ; treason might be forgotten ; the divorce of Catherine of Arragon could never be for- gotten. So he waited on, watching the reaction gather- ing strength, and knowing well the point to which it tended. In the country the English service was set aside and the mass restored with but little disturbance. No force had been used or needed ; the Catholic ma- jorities among the parishioners had made the change for themselves. The Archbishop's friends came to him for advice ; he recommended them to go abroad ; he was urged to go himself while there was time ; he said, ' it would be in no ways fitting for him to go away, con- sidering the post in which he was ; and to show that he was not afraid to own all the changes that were by his means made in religion in the last reign/ 2
1 FOXE. 2 STRYPE'S Cranmer.
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Neither was it fitting for him to sit by in silence. The world, misconstruing his inaction, believed him false like Northumberland ; the world reported that he had restored mass at Canterbury ; the world professed to have ascertained that he had offered to sing a requiem at Edward's funeral. In the second week of September, therefore, he made a public offer, in the form of a letter to a friend, to defend the communion service, and all the alterations for which he was responsible, against any one who desired to impugn them; he answered the stories against himself with a calm denial ; and, though the letter was not printed, copies in manuscript were circulated through London so numerously that the press, said Renard, would not have sent out more.1
1 Eenard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS. In these late times, when men whose temper has not been tried by danger, feel them- selves entitled, nevertheless, by their own innocence of large errors, to sit in judgment on the greatest of their forefathers, Cranmer has received no tender treatment. Because, in the near prospect of a death of agony, his heart for a moment failed him, the passing weakness has been ac- cepted as the key to his life, and he has been railed at as a coward and a sycophant. Considering the position of the writer, and the circumstances under which it was issued, I regard the publication of this letter as one of the bravest actions ever deliber- ately ventured by rnan.
Let it be read, and speak for itself.
' As the devil, Christ's antient adversary, is a liar and the father of lying, even so hath he stirred his servants and members to persecute Christ and his true word and reli- gion, which he ceaseth not to do most earnestly at this present. For whereas the most noble prince, of famous memory, King Henry VIII., seeing the great abuses of the Latin masses, reformed some things there- in in his time, and also our late sovereign lord King Edward VI. took the same wholly away, for the manifold errours and abuses thereof, and restored in the place thereof Christ's holy supper, accoi-ding to Christ's own institution, and as the Apostles in the primitive Church used the same in the beginning, the devil goeth about by lying to over- throw the Lord's holy supper, and
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
The challenge was answered by an immediate sum- mons before the council ; the Archbishop was accused of attempting to excite sedition among the people, and was forthwith committed to the Tower to wait, with Ridley and Latimer, there, till his fate should be de cided on. Meantime the eagerness with which the country generally availed itself of the permission to restore the Catholic ritual, proved beyond a doubt that, except in London and a few large towns, the popular feeling was with the Queen. The English people had no affection for the Papacy. They did not wish for the re -establishment of the religious orders, or the odious domination of the clergy. But the numerical majority
to restore the Latin satisfactory masses, a thing of his own inven- tion and device. And to bring the same more clearly to pass, some have abused the name of me, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, bruiting abroad that I have set up the mass at Canterbury, and that I offered to say mass before the Queen's High- ness at Paul's Cross and I wot not where. I have been well exercised these twenty years, to suffer and to bear evil reports and lies, and have not been much grieved thereat, and have borne all things quietly; yet where untrue reports and lies turn to the hindrance of God's truth, they oe in no ways to be tolerated and suffered. Wherefore these be to signify to the world that it was not I that did set up the mass at Canteroury, but a false, nattering, lying, and dissembling monk, which
caused the mass to be set up there without my advice and counsel : and as for offering myself to say mass before the Queen's Highness, or in any other place, I never did, as her Grace knoweth well. But if her Grace will give me leave, I shall be ready to prove against all that will say the contrary, that the Com- munion-book, set forth by the most innocent and godly prince King Ed- ward VI., in his High Court of Parliament, is conformable to the order which our Saviour Christ did both observe and command to be observed, Avhich his Apostlos and primitive Church used many years ; whereas the mass in many things not only hath no foundation of Christ, his Apostles, nor the primi- tive Church, but also is contrary to the same, and containeth many horrible blasphemies.'
"'5530 QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 257
among them did desire a celibate priesthood, the cere- monies which the customs of centuries had sanctified, and the ancient faith of their fathers, as reformed by Henry VIII. The rights of conscience had found no. more consideration from the Protestant doctrinalists than from the most bigoted of the persecuting prelates ; and the facility with which the professors of the gospel had yielded to moral temptations, had for the time in- spired moderate men with much distrust for them and for their opinions.
Could Mary have been contented to pursue her vic- tory no further, she would have preserved the hearts of her subjects ; and the reaction, left to complete its own tendencies, would in a few years, perhaps, have accom- plished in some measure her larger desires. But few sovereigns have understood less the effects of time and forbearance. She was deceived by the rapidity of her first success ; she flattered herself that, difficult though it might be, she could build up again the ruined hier- archy, could compel the holders of Church property to open their hands, and could reunite the country to Rome. Before she had been three weeks on the throne, she had received, as will be presently mentioned, a secret mes- senger from the Vatican ; and she had opened a corre spondence with the Pope, entreating him, as an act of justice to herself and to those who had remained true to their Catholic allegiance, to remove the inter- dict. l
1 Renard to Charles V., September 9 : Rolls House MSS. VOL. v. 17
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY
[CH. 30.
Other actors in the great drama which was approach- ing were already commencing their parts.
Reginald Pole having attempted in vain to recover a footing in England on the accession of Edward, having seen his passionate expectations from the Council of Trent melt into vapour, and Germany confirmed in heresy by the Peace of Passau, was engaged, in the summer of 1553, at a convent on the Lago di Garda, in re- editing his book against Henry VIII. , with an in- tended dedication to Edward, of whose illness he was ignorant. The first edition, on the failure of his attempt to raise a Catholic crusade against his country, had been withdrawn from circulation ; the world had not received it favourably, and there was a mystery about the pub- lication which it is difficult to unravel. In the interval between the first despatch of the book into England as a private letter in the summer of 1.536, and the appear- ance of it in print at Eome in the winter of 1538-9, it was re- written, as I have already stated, enlarged and divided into parts. In a letter of apology which Pole wrote to Charles V., in the summer or early autumn of 1538,* he spoke of that division as having been executed by himself ; 2 he said that he had kept his book secret till the Church had spoken ; but Paul having excom- municated Henry, he could no longer remain silent ; he dwelt at length on the history of the work which he was then editing,3 and he sent a copy at the same time
1 Before his embassy to Spain.
2 Opus in quatuor libros sum partitus.
8 ' Scripta quae nunc edo,' are his own words in the apology, and therefore, in an earlier part of this
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with a letter, or he wrote a letter with the intention of sending a copy, to James Y. of Scotland.1
But Charles had refused to move ; the book injured Henry not at all, and injured fatally those who were dear to Pole ; he checked the circulation of the copies, and he declared to the Cardinal of Naples that it had been published only at the command of the Pope — that his own anxiety had been for the suppression of it.2 Thirteen years after this, however, writing to Edward VI., he forgot that he had described himself to Charles as being himself engaged in the publication; and he assured the young King that he had never thought of publishing the book, that he had abhorred the very thought of publishing it ; that it was prepared, edited, and printed by his friends at Rome during his own ab- sence ; 3 now, at length, he found himself obliged in his
work, I said that lie published his book himself. There is no doubt, from the context, that in the word scripta, he referred to that book and to no other.
1 ' Eum ad te librum Catholice prmceps nunc mitto, et sub nominis tui auspiciis cujus te strenuum pie- tatis ministrum prsebes in lucem exire volo.' — Epistola ad Regem Scotiae : POLI JSpistolee, vol. i. p. 174.
2 ' Qui si postea editus fuit magis id aliorum voluntate et illius qui mihi imperare potuit quam mea est factunij mea vero fuit ut impres- sus supprimeretur.' — Ibid. vol. iv. p. 85.
3 ' Nam cum ad urbern ex His-
pania rediens libros injussu meo typis excusos reperissem, toto volu- mine amicorum studio et operd non sine ejus auctoritate qui jus impe- randi haberet in plures libros disposito quod ego non feceram quippe qui de ejus editione nunquara cogitassem,' &c.
' Quid aliud hoc significavit nisi me ab his libris divulgandis penitus abhorruisse ut certe abhorrui.' — Epistola ad Edwardum Sextum : POLI Epistolce. The book being the sole authority for some of the darkest charges against Henry VIII., the history of it is of some importance. See vol. ii. of this history, appen- dix.
This was not the only instance
260
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[CH. 30.
own person to give it forth, because an edition was in preparation elsewhere from one of the earlier copies; and he selected the son of Henry as the person to whom he could most becomingly dedicate the libel against his father's memory.
Edward did not live to receive this evidence of Pole's good feeling. He died before the edition was completed ; and as soon as Northumberland's failure and Mary's ac- cession were known at Rome, England was looked upon in the Consistory as already recovered to the faith, and Pole was chosen by the unanimous consent of the car- dinals as the instrument of the reconciliation. The ac- count of the proclamation of the Queen was brought to the Vatican on the 6th of August by a courier from Paris : the Pope in tears of joy drew his commission and despatched it on the instant to the Lago di Garda ; and on the 9th Pole himself wrote to Mary to say that he had been named legate, and waited her orders to fly to England. He still clung to his con-
August.
in which his recollection of his own conduct was something treacherous. In the apology to Charles V., speak- ing of a war against Henry, he had said : ' Tempus venisse video, ad te primum missus, deinde ad Regem Christianissimum, ut hujus scelera per se quidem minime ohscura de- tegam, et te Caesar a bello Turcico abducere coner et quantum possum suadeam ut arma tua eo convertas si huic tanto malo aliter mederi non possis.' For thus ' levying war against his country,' Pole had been
attainted. The name of traitor grated upon him. To Edward, therefore, he wrote : ' I invited the two sovereigns rather to win back the King, by the ways of love and affection, as a fallen friend and brother, than to assail him with arms as an enemy. This I never desired nor did I urge any such con- duct upon them. Hoc ego nunquam profecto volui neque cum illis egi.' — Epistola ad Edwardura Sextum : Ibid.
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viction that the revolution in all its parts had been the work of a small faction, and that he had but himself ta set his foot upon the shore to be received with an ova- tion ; his impulse was therefore to set out without de- lay ; but the recollection, among other things, that he was attainted by Act of Parliament, forced him to delay unwillingly till he received formal permission to present himself.
Anxious for authentic information as to the state of England and the Queen's disposition, Julius had be- fore despatched also a secret agent, Commendone, after- wards a cardinal, with instructions to make his way to London to communicate with Mary, and if possible to learn her intentions from her own lips. Eapid move- ment was possible in Europe even with the roads of the sixteenth century. Commendone was probably sent from Rome as soon as Edward was known to be dead ; he was in London, at all events, on the 8th of August,1 disguised as an Italian gentleman in search of property which he professed had been bequeathed him by a kins- man. By the favour of Providence,2 he fell in with an acquaintance, a returned Catholic refugee, who had a place in the household ; and from this man he learnt that the Queen was virtually a prisoner in the Tower, and that the heretics on the council allowed no one of whose business they disapproved to have access to her. Mary, however, was made acquainted with his arrival ;
1 He remained fifteen days, and he left for Rome the day after the execution of Northumberland. — PALLAVICINO. 2 Caelitum ductu.
262
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[CH. 36.
a secret interview was managed, at which she promised to do her very best in the interests of the Church ; but she had still, she said, to conquer her kingdom, and Pole's coming, much as she desired it, was for the mo- ment out of the question; before she could draw the spiritual sword she must have the temporal sword more firmly in her grasp, and she looked to marriage as the best means of strengthening herself. If she married abroad, she thought at that time of the Emperor ; if she accepted one of her subjects, she doubted — in her dis- like of Courtenay — whether Pole might not return in a less odious capacity than that of Apostolic Legate ; as the Queen's intended husband the country might re- ceive him ; he had not yet been ordained priest, and deacon's orders, on a sufficient occasion, could perhaps be dispensed with.1 The visit, or visits, were concealed even from E/enard. Commendone was forbidden, under the strictest injunctions, to reveal what the Queen might say to him, except to the Pope or to Pole ; and it is the more likely that she was serious in her expressions about the latter, from the care with which she left Renard in ignorance of Commendone's presence.
The Papal messenger remained long enough to witness a rapid change in her position ; he saw the restoration of the mass ; he was in London at the exe- cution, and he learnt the apostasy, of Northumberland ;
1 ' Nee dcstiterat rcgina id ipsum Commeudono indicare, eum percon- tata an existimaret Pontificem ad id legem Polo relaxaturum, cum is
nondum saccrdos sed diaconus esset, cxtarentque hujusmodi relaxionum exempla ingentis alicujus emolu- ment! gratia.' — PALLAVICINO.
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
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and he carried letters from Mary to the Pope with assurances of fidelity, and entreaties for the absolution of the kingdom. But Mary was obliged to say, not- withstanding, that for the present she was in the power of the people, of whom the majority mortally detested the Holy See; that the Lords of the Council were in possession of vast estates which had been alienated from the Church, and they feared their titles might be called in question ; l and, although she agreed herself in all which Pole had urged (she had received his letter before Commendone left England), yet that, nevertheless, necessity acknowledged no law. Her heretical sister was in every one's mouth, and might at any moment take her place on the throne, and for the present, she said, to her deep regret, she could not, with prudence or safety, allow the legate to come to her.
The Queen's letters were confirmed by Commendone himself; he had been permitted to confer in private with more than one good Catholic in the realm ; and every one had given him the same assurances,2 although he had urged upon them the opposite opinion enter- tained by Pole : 3 he had himself witnessed the disposition with which the people regarded Elizabeth, and he was
1 Mary described her throne as, 4 acquistato per benevolenze di quei popoli, che per la maggior parte odiano a morte questa sancta sede, oitre gl' interessi del beni ecclesiastic! occupati da molti signori, che sono del suo consiglio.' — Julius III. to Pole : Pou Epistola, vol. iv.
2 ' Le parole che haveva inteso da lei disse di haver inteso da per- sone Catholice et digne di fede in quel paese.' — Julius III. to Pole : POLI Hpistolce, vol. iv.
3 'Et similmente espose 1' o- pinione vostra con le ragioni che vi movano.' — Ibid.
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satisfied that the Queen's alarm on this head was not exaggerated.1
In opinions so emphatically given, the Pope was obliged to acquiesce, and the same view was enforced upon him equally strongly by the Emperor. Charles knew England tolerably well; he was acquainted perfectly well with the moral and intellectual unfitness of the intended legate for any office which required discretion ; and Julius, therefore, was obliged to com- municate to the eager Cardinal the necessity of delay, and to express his fear that, by excess of zeal, he might injure the cause and alienate the well-affected Queen.2 Though Pole might not go to England, however, he might go, as he went before, to the immediate neigh- bourhood ; he might repair to Flanders, with a nominal commission to mediate in the peace which was still hoped for. In Flanders, though the Pope forbore to tell him so, he would be under the Emperor's eyes and under the Emperor's control, till the vital question of the Queen's marriage had been disposed of, or till Eng- land was in a calmer humour.
About the marriage Charles was more anxious than ever; Pole was understood to have declined the honour of being a competitor ; 3 Kenard
September.
1 Julius III. to Pole : POLI Epistolee, vol. iv.
2 ' Onde se per questa molta dili- gtaiza nostra, le avvenisse qualche caso sinistro, si rovinarebbe forse (il che Dio non voglie) ogni speranza della reduttione di quella patria, le-
vamlo se le forze a questa buona e Catholica regina, overo alienando la de noi par offesa ricevuta.' — Ibid.
8 ' Ayant le Cardinal Pole si ex- pressement declaire qu'il n'a nul desir de soy marier, et que nous
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had iiifornied the Emperor of the present direction of the Queen's own inclinations ; and treating himself, therefore, as out of the question on the score of age and infirmities, he instructed .his minister to propose the Prince of Spain as a person whom the religious and the political interests of the world alike recommended to her as a husband. The alliance of England, Spain, and Flanders would command a European suprem- acy ; their united fleets would sweep the seas, and Scotland, deprived of support from France, must be- come an English province ; while sufficient guar- antees could be provided easily for the security of English liberties. These, in themselves, were powerful reasons ; Eenard was permitted to increase their cogency by promises of pensions, lands, and titles, or by hard money in hand, in whatever direction such liberality could be usefully employed.1
The external advantages of the connection were obvious ; it recommended itself to the Queen from the Spanish sympathies which she had contracted in her blood, and from the assistance which it promised to afford her in the great pursuit of her life. The proposal was first suggested informally. Mary affected to find difficulties ; yet, if she raised objections, it was only to prolong the conversation upon a subject which de- lighted her. She spoke of her age ; Philip was twenty- seven, she ten years older ; she called him. ' boy ; ' she
tenons, que pour avoir si longuement suivi 1'etat ecclesiastique, et s'ac- commode aux choses duysant a icel-
luy et estant diacre.' — Charles V. to Renard : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. 1 Ibid.
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
feared slie might not be enough for him ; she was un- susceptible ; she had no experience in love ; 1 with such other phrases, which Reiiard interpreted at their true importance. With the Queen there would be no difficulty ; with the council it was far otherwise. Lord Paget was the only English statesman who listened with any show of favour.
The complication of parties is not to be easily dis- entangled. Some attempt, however, may be partially successful.
The council, the peers, the commons, the entire lay voices of England, liberal and conservative alike, were opposed to Rome ; Gardiner was the only statesman in the country who thought a return to Catholic union practicable or desirable ; while there was scarcely an influential family, titled or untitled, which was not, by grant or purchase, in possession of confiscated Church property.
There was an equal unanimity in the dread that if Mary became the wife of a Spanish sovereign England would, like the Low Countries, sink into a provincial dependency ; while, also, there was the utmost un- willingness to be again entangled in the European war. The French ambassador insisted that the Emperor only desired the marriage to secure English assistance ; and the council believed that, whatever promises might be made, whatever stipulations insisted on, such a inar-
1 'Elle jura que jamais elle n'avoit senti esquillon de ce que Ton appelle amour, ny entre en pense-
ment de volupte, &c. — Renard to the Bishop of Arras : Granvelle Papers^ vol. iv.
»553«] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 267
riage, sooner or later, would implicate them. The country was exhausted, the currency ruined, the people in a state of unexampled suffering, and the only remedy was to be looked for in quiet and public economy. There were attractions in the oifer of a powerful alliance, but the very greatness of it added to their reluctance ; they desired to isolate England from European quarrels, and marry their Queen at home. With these opinions Paget alone disagreed, while Gardiner was loudly national.
On the other hand, though Gardiner held the re- storation of the Papal authority to be tolerable, yet he dreaded the return of Pole, as being likely to supersede him in the direction of the English Church.1 The party who agreed with the Chancellor about the marriage, and about Pole, disagreed with him about the Pope ; while Paget, who was in favour of the marriage, was with the lords on the supremacy, and, as the JR/omanizing views of the Queen became notorious, was inclining, with Arundel and Pembroke, towards the Protestants,
No wonder, therefore, that the whole council were in .confusion and at cross purposes. No sooner were Charles's proposals definitely known than the entire machinery of the Government was dislocated. Mary represented herself to Renard as without a friend whom she could trust ; and the letters, both of Renard and Noailles, contain little else but reports how the Lords were either quarrelling, or had, one after the other,
I
Renard to Charles V. : Soils House U&S.
268 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [cir. 30.
withdrawn in disgust to their country houses. Now it was Pembroke that was gone, now Mason, now Paget ; then Courtenay was a prisoner in his house ; then Lord Winchester was forbidden to appear at Court : the ministers were in distrust of each other and of their mistress ; the Queen was condemned to keep them in their offices because she durst not make them enemies ; while the Stanleys, Howards, Talbots, and Nevilles were glooming apart, indignant at the neglect of their own claims.
The Queen herself was alternately angry and miser- able ; by the middle of September Renard congratulated Charles on her growing ill-humour ; the five Dudleys and Lady Jane, he hoped, would be now disposed of, and Elizabeth would soon follow.
Elizabeth's danger was great, and proceeded as much from her friends' indiscretion as from the hatred of her enemies. Every one who disliked the Queen's measures, used Elizabeth's name. Renard was for ever hissing his suspicions in the Queen's ear, and, unfortunately, she was a too willing listener — not, indeed, that Renard hated Elizabeth for her own sake, for he rather admired her — or for religion's sake, for he had a most states- manlike indifference to religion ; but he saw in her the Queen's successful rival in the favour of the people, the heir-presumptive to the crown, whose influence would increase the further the Queen travelled on the road on which he was leading her, and, therefore, an enemy who, if possible, should be destroyed. An opportunity of creating a collision between the sisters was not long
I553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 269
wanting. The Lords of the Council were now generally present at mass in the royal chapel. Elizabeth, with Anne of Cleves, had as yet refused to appear. Her re- sistance was held to imply a sinister intention ; and on the 2nd and 3rd of September the council were instructed to bring her to compliance.1 Yet the days passed, the priest sang, and the heir to the crown continued absent. Gardiner, indeed, told Renard that she was not obdurate ; he had spoken to her, and she had seemed to say that, if he could convince her, her objections would cease ; 2 but they had not ceased so far ; she did not attend. In the happiness of her first triumph Mary had treated Elizabeth like a sister ; but her manner had relapsed into coldness ; and the princess, at length, knowing how her name was Inade use of, requested a private interview, which, with difficulty, was granted. The sisters, each accompanied by a single lady, met in a gallery with a half-door between them. Elizabeth threw herself on her knees. She said that she perceived her Majesty was displeased with her ; she could not tell what the cause might be, unless it was religion ; and for this, she said, she might be reasonably forgiven ; she had been educated, as the Queen was aware, in the modern belief, and she understood no other ; if her Majesty would send her books and teachers, she would read, she would listen, she could say no more.
Mary, at the moment, was delighted. Like a true Catholic, however, she insisted that obedience must pre-
1 Noailles to the King of France : Ambassades, vol. ii. p. 147. 2 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
270 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
cede faith ; come to the mass, she said, and belief will be the reward of your submission ; make your first trial on the mass of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.1
Elizabeth consented. She was present, but present reluctantly ; pretending, as Renard said, to be ill. The next Sunday she was again absent. The Queen, know- ing the effect which her conduct would produce, again sent for her, and asked her earnestly what she really believed ; the world said that, although she had com- plied once, her compliance was feigned, and that she had submitted out of fear; she desired to hear the truth. Elizabeth could reply merely that she had done as the Queen had required her to do, with no ulterior purpose ; if her Majesty wished, she would make a public declar- ation to that effect.2 The Queen was obliged to receive her answer ; but she told Renard that her sister trem- bled as she spoke, and well, Renard said, he understood her agitation ; she was the hope of the heretics, and the heretics were raising their heads ; the Papists, they said, had had their day, but it was waning ; if Eliza- beth lived, England would again apostatize.
There was no difficulty in keeping the Queen's jea- lousy alive against her sister. Courtenay was another offence in the eye of the ambassador, as the rival to Philip, who found favour with the English council. The Queen affected to treat Courtenay as a child ; she commanded him to keep to his house ; she forbade him to dine abroad without special permission ; the title of
1 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House 2 Kenard to Charles V., September 23 : Ibid.
1553-1 QUEEN JANE AMD QUEEN MARY. 271
Earl of Devon was given to him, and he had a dress made for him to take his seat in, of velvet and gold, but the Queen would not allow him to wear it : 1 and yet, to her own and the ambassador's mortification, she learnt that he affected the state of a prince ; that he spoke of his marriage with her as certain ; that certain prelates, G-ardiner especially, encouraged his expectation, and one or more of them had knelt in his presence.2 The danger had been felt from the first that, if she persisted in her fancy for the Prince of Spain, Courtenay might turn his addresses to Elizabeth ; the Lords would in that case fall off to his support, and the crown would fall from her head as easily as it had settled there.
More afflicting to Mary than these personal griev- ances, was the pertinacity with which the council con- tinued, in their public documents, to describe her as Head of the Church, the execrable title which was the central root of the apostasy. In vain she protested ; the hateful form — indispensable till it was taken away by Parliament — was thrust under her eyes in every paper which was brought to her for signature, and she was obliged to acknowledge the designation with her own hand and pen.
Amidst these anxieties, September wore away. Par- liament was to open on the fifth of October, and either before or after the meeting the Queen was to be crowned. The ceremony was an occasion of consider- able agitation ; Mary herself was alarmed lest the Holy
1 NOAILLES. - llenard to Charles V., September 19 ; Rolls House MSS.
272 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [on. 30.
Oil should have lost its efficacy through the interdict ; and she entreated Renard to procure her a fresh supply from Flanders, blessed by the excellent hands of the Bishop of Arras. But the oil was not the gravest diffi- culty. As the rumour spread of the intended Spanish marriage, libellous handbills were scattered about Lon- don ; the people said it should not be till they had fought for it. A disturbance at Greenwich, on the 25th of September, extended to Southwark, where Gardiner's house was attacked,1 and a plot was discovered to mur- der him : in the day he wore a shirt of mail under his robes, and he slept with a guard of a hundred men. Threatening notices were even found on the floor of the Queen's bed- room, left there by unknown hands. JSToailles assured the Lords that his own Government would regard the marriage as little short of a declara- tion of war, so inevitably would war be the result of it ; and Gardiner, who was unjustly suspected of being in the Spanish interest, desired to delay the coronation till Parliament should have met ; intending that the first act of the assembly should be to tie Mary's hands with a memorial which she could not set aside. She in- herited under her father's will, by which her accession was made conditional on her marrying not without the consent of the council ; Parliament might remind her both of her jwn obligation to obey her father's injunc- tions, and of theirs to see that those injunctions were obeyed.
1 NOAILLES ; RENARD.
I5S3-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 273
With the same object, though not with the same object only, the Lords of the Council supported the Bishop of Winchester. They proposed to alter the form of the coronation oath, and to bind the Queen by an especial clause to maintain the independence of the English Church — a precaution, as it proved, not uu necessary, for the existing form was already incon- venient, and Mary was meditating how, when called on to swear to observe the laws and constitutions of the realm, she could introduce an adjective sub silentio ; she intended to swear only that she would observe the JUST laws and constitutions.1 But she looked with the gravest alarm to the introduction of more awkward phrases ; if words were added which would be equivalent (as she would understand them) to a denial of Christ and his Church, she had resolved to refuse at all hazards.2
But her courage was not put to the test. The true grounds on which the delay of the coronation was de- sired could not be avowed. The Queen was told that her passage through the streets would be unsafe until her accession had been sanctioned by Parliament, and the Act repealed by which she was illegitimatized. With Paget's help she faced down these objections, and declared that she would be crowned at once ; she ap- pointed the ist of October for the ceremony ; on the 28th she sent for the council to at- tempt an appeal to their generosity. She spoke to them at length of her past life and sufferings, of the con-
1 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS. 2 Ibid.
VOL. v. 18
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spiracy to set her aside, and of the wonderful Provid- ence which had preserved her and raised her to the throne ; her only desire, she said, was to do her duty to God and to her subjects ; and she hoped, turning as she spoke pointedly to Gardiner, that they would not forget their loyalty, and would stand by her in her ex- treme necessity. Observing them hesitate, she cried, ' My Lords, on my knees I implore you ' — and flung herself on the ground at their feet.1
The most skilful acting could not have served Mary's purpose better than this outburst of natural emotion ; the spectacle of their kneeling sovereign overcame for a time the scheming passions of her ministers ; they were affected, burst into tears, and withdrew their opposition to her wishes.2
On the 3Oth, the procession from the Tower to Westminster through the streets was safely accom- plished. The retinues of the Lords protected the Queen from insult, and London put on its usual outward signs of rejoicing ; St Paul's spire was rigged with yards like a ship's mast, an adventurous sailor sitting astride on the weathercock five hundred feet in the air : 3 there was
1 ' Devant les quelz elle se mist a genoulx.' — Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
2 Ibid.
3 The Hot Gospeller, half-re- covered from his gaol fever, got out of bed to see the spectacle, and took his station at the west end of St Paul's. The procession passed so close as almost to touch him, and
one of the train seeing him muffled up, and looking more dead than alive, said, There is one that loveth her Majesty well, to come out in such condition. The Queen turned her head and looked at him. To hear that any one of her subjects loved her just then was too welcome to be overlooked. — Underbill's Nar- rative : MS. Harkian, 425,
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY
275
no interruption; and the next day, Arras
V October i.
having sent the necessary unction,1 the cere- mony was performed at the Abbey without fresh bur- dens being laid on Mary's conscience.
The banquet in the Great Hall passed off with equal success ; Sir Edward Dymocke, the champion, rode in and flung down his gage, and was listened to with be- coming silence : on the whole, Mary's friends were agreeably disappointed; only Renard observed that, between the French ambassador and the Lady Elizabeth there seemed to be some secret understanding ; the princess saluted Noailles as he passed her ; Renard she would neither address nor look at — and Renard was told that she complained to Noailles of the weight of her coronet, and that Noailles ' bade her have patience, and before long she would exchange it for a crown/2
The coronation was a step gained ; it was one more victory, yet it produced no material alteration. Rome, and the Spanish marriage, remained as before, insoluble elements of difficulty ; the Queen, to her misfortune, was driven to rely more and more on Renard ; and at this time she was so desperate and so ill-advised as to think of surrounding herself with an Irish body-guard ; she went so far as to send a commission to Sir George Stanley for their transport.3
1 Arras to Renard : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 105.
2 Renard to the Regent Mary : Rolls House MSS.
3 ' Mary, by the grace of God, Queen of England, &c to
all mayors, sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other our subjects, these our letters, hearing or seeing : whereas we have appointed a certain number of able men to be presently levied for our service within our
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[CH. 30.
The scheme was abandoned, but not because her relations with her own people were improved. Before Parliament met, an anonymous pamphlet appeared by some English nobleman on the encroachments of the House of Austria, and on the treatment of other coun- tries which had fallen through marriages into Austrian hands. In Lombardy and Naples every office of trust was described as held by a Spaniard; the Prince of Salerno was banished, the Prince of Benevento was a prisoner in Flanders, the Duke of Calabria a prisoner in Spain. Treating Mary's hopes of children as ridicul- ous, the writer pictured England, bound hand and foot, at the mercy of the insolent Philip, whose first step, on entering the country, would be to seize the Tower and the fleet, the next, to introduce a Spanish army and suppress the Parliament. The free glorious England of the Plantagenets would then be converted into a prostrate appanage of the dominions of Don Carlos. The pamphlet was but the expression of the universal feeling. Gardiner, indeed, perplexed between his re- ligion and his country, for a few days wavered. Gar- diner had a long debt to pay off against the Protestants, and a Spanish force, divided into garrisons for London and other towns, would assist him materially.1 Partly,
realm of Ireland, and to be trans- ported hither with diligence, we let you wit that for that purpose we have authorized our trusty Sir George Stanley, Knight,' &c.— October 5, 1553. From the original Commis- sion : Tanner MSS. go, Bodleian Library.
1 ' J'estime qu'il desire present- ment y veoir une bonne partie de. 1'Espaigne et Allemaigne, y tenir grosses et fortes garuisons, pom mortiner ce peuple, et s'en venger,' &c. — Noailles to the King of France : Amba&sades, vol. ii. p. 169.
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
277
however, from attachment to Courtenay, partly from loyalty to his country, he shook off the temptation and continued to support the opposition.1
1 A look at Gardiner, at this time, through contemporary eyes, assists much towards the under- standing him. Thomas Mountain, parson of St Michael's by the Tower, an ultra-Reformer, had been out with Northumberland at Cambridge. The following story is related by himself.
' Sunday, October 8,' Mountain says, ' I ministered service, accord- ing to the godly order set forth by that blessed prince King Edward, the parish communicating at the Holy Supper. Now, while I was even a breaking of bread at the table, saying to the communicants, Take and eat this, Drink this, there were standing by several serving- men, to see and hear, belonging to the Bishop of Winchester; among whom one of them most shamefully blasphemed God, saying :
' Yea, by God's blood, standest thou there yet, saying— Take and eat, Take and drink ; will not this gear be left yet ? You shall be made to sing another song within these few days, I trow, or else I have lost my mark.'
A day or two after came an order for Mountain to appear before Gardiner at Winchester House. Mountain said he would appear after morning prayers ; but the messenger's orders were not to leave him, and he was obliged to obey on the instant.
I The Bishop was standing when
i he entered, ' in a bay window, with
a great company about him ; among
them Sir Anthony St Leger, re-
appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland.'
'Thou heretic,' the Bishop be- gan ; ' how darest thou be so bold as to use that schismatical service still, seeing God hath sent us a Catholic Queen. There is such an abominable company of you, as Is able to poison a whole realm with heresies.'
' My lord,' Mountain replied, ' I am no heretic, for in that way you count heresy, so worship we the living God.'
' God's passion,' said the Bishop, 'did I not tell you, my Lord De- puty, how you should know a here- tic. He is up with his living God as though there was a dead God. They have nothing in their mouths, these heretics, but the Lord liveth ; the living God ; the Lord ! the Lord ! and nothing but the Lord.'
' Here,' says Mountain, ' he chafed like a bishop; and as his manner was, many times be put off his cap, and rubbed to aiid fro up and down the forepart of his head, where a lock of hair was always standing up.'
* My good Lord Chancellor,' St Leger said to him, ' trouble not yourself with this heretic ; I think all the world is full of them ; God bless me from them. But, as your
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REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
Mary, except for the cautious support of Paget., stood otherwise alone coquetting with her fancy, and played upon by the skilful Renard. The Queen and the ambassador were incessantly together, and Philip was the never-tiring subject of conversation between them. She talked of his disposition. She had heard, she said, that he was proud; that he was inferior to his father in point of ability ; and then he was young, and she had been told sad stories about him ; if he was of warm temperament, he would not suit her at all, she said, considering the age at which she had arrived.1 Moreover, when she was married, she must obey as God commanded ; her husband, perhaps, might wish to place
Lordship said, having a Christian Queen reigning over us, I trust there will shortly be a reformation and an order taken with these here- tics.' ' Submit yourself unto my lord,' he said to Mountain, ' and you shall find favour.'
' Thank you, sir,' Mountain an- swered, ' ply your own suit, and let me alone.'
A bystander then put in that the parson of St Michael's was a traitor as well as a heretic. He had been in the field with the Duke against the Queen.
' Is it even so ? ' cried Gardiner ; 'these be always linked together, treason and heresy. Off with him to the Marshalsea; this is one of our new broached brethren that speaketh against good works ; your fraternity was, is, and ever will be unprofitable in all ages, and good
for nothing but the fire.' — Troubles of Thomas Mountain : printed by STKYPE.
The portraits of Gardiner repre- sent a fine, vehement-looking man. The following description of him, by Fonet, his rival in the See of Winchester, gives the image as it was reflected in Ponet's antipathies.
'The doctor hath a swart colour, hanging look, frowning brows, eyes an inch within his head, a nose, hooked like a buzzard's, nostrils like a horse, ever snuffing in the wind ; a sparrow mouth, great paws like the devil, talons on his feet like a gripe, two inches longer than the natural toes, and so tied with sinews that he cannot abide to be touched.'
1 ' Que s'il vouloit estre volup- tueux ce n'est ce quelle desire pour estre de telle eaige.'— Renard to the Emperor : Rolls House MS$,
I553-]
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
279
Spaniards in authority in England, and she would have to refuse ; and that he would not like. To all of which, being the fluttering of the caught fly, Eenard would answer that his Highness was more like an angel than a man ; his youth was in his favour, for he might live to see his child of age, and England had had too much experience of minorities. Life, he added remarkably, was shorter than it used to be ; sixty was now a great age for a king; and as the world was, men were as mature at thirty as in the days of his grandfather they were considered at forty.1 Then touching the constant sore — 'her Majesty/ he said, 'had four enemies, who would never rest till they had destroyed her or were themselves destroyed — the heretics, the friends of the late Duke of Northumberland, the Courts of France and Scotland, and, lastly, her sister Elizabeth. Her subjects were restless, turbulent, and changeable as the ocean of which they were so fond ; 2 the sovereigns of England had been only able to rule with a hand of iron, and with severities which had earned them the name of tyrants ; 3 they had not spared the blood royal in order to secure their thrones, and she too must act as they had
1 Renard to the Emperor ; Rolls Home MSS.
2 'Vostre Majeste seit les hu- meurs des Angloys et leur voluntez estre forte discordantes, desireux de nouvellete*, de mutation, et vindica- tifz, soit pour estre insulaires, ou pour tenir ce natural de la marine.' — Renard to Mary : Granvelle Pa-
pers, vol. iv. p. 129.
3 'Les roys du passe on est6 forces de traicter en rigueur de jus- tice et effusion de sang par T execu- tion de plusieurs du royaulme, voir du sang royal, pour s'asseurer et maintenir leur royaulme, dont il3 ont acquis le renom de tyrans et cruelz.' — Ibid.
280 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
acted, leaning for support, meanwhile, 011 the arm of a powerful prince.
To these dark hints Mary ever listened eagerly. Meantime she was harassed painfully from another quarter.
Reginald Pole, as might have been expected from his temperament, could ill endure the delay of his re- turn to England. The hesitation of the Queen and the objections of the Emperor were grounded upon argu- ments which he assured himself were fallacious ; the English nation, he continued to insist, was devoted to the Holy See ; so far from being himself unpopular, the Cornish in the rebellion under Edward had petitioned for his recall, and had even designated him by the for- bidden name of Cardinal ; they loved him and they longed for him ; and, regarding himself as the chosen instrument of Providence to repair the iniquities of Henry VIII., he held the obstructions to his return not only to be mistaken, but to be impious. The duty of the returning prodigal was to submit ; to lay aside all earthly considerations — to obey God, God's vicegerent the Pope, and himself the Pope's representative.
Mendoza had been sent by Charles to meet Pole on his way to Flanders, and reason him into moderation. In return the legate wrote himself to Charles's confessor, commanding him to explain to his master the sin which he was committing. 'The objection to his going to England,' as Pole understood, ' was the supposed danger of an outbreak. Were the truth as the Emperor feared, the Queen's first duty would be, nevertheless, to God,
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QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY,
281
her own soul, and the souls of the millions of her sub- jects who were perishing in separation from the Church; for no worldly policy or carnal respect ought she to de- fer for a moment to apply a remedy to so monstrous a calamity.1 But the danger was imaginary — or, rather, such danger as there was, arose from the opposite cause. The right of the Queen to the throne did not rest on an Act of Parliament ; it rested on her birth as the lawful child of the lawful marriage between Henry and Cathe- rine of Arragon. Parliament, he was informed, would affirm the marriage legitimate, if nothing was said about the Pope ; but, unless the Pope's authority was first recognized, Parliament would only stultify itself; the Papal dispensation alone made valid a connection which, if the Pope had no power to dispense, was incestuous, and the offspring of it illegitimate. God had made the peaceful settlement of the kingdom dependent on sub- mission to the Holy See,2 and for Parliament to inter- fere and give an opinion upon the subject would be but a fresh act of schism and disobedience.
The original letter, being in our own State Paper
1 ' Quanto grave peccato et ir- reparabil danno sia il differir cosa che pertenga alle salute di tante anime, le quale mentre quel regno sta disunite dalla Chiesa, si trovano in manifesto pericolo della loro dan- natione.' — Pole to the Emperor's Confessor : MS. Germany, bundle 16, State Paper Office.
2 God, he said, had joined the title to the Crown, ' con 1'ohedientia
della Sede Apostolica, che levata questa viene a cader in tutto, quella non essendo ella legitime herede del regno, se non per la legitimation del matrimonio della regina sua madre, et questa non valendo senon per 1'autorita et dispensa del Papa.' — Pole to the Emperor's Confessor ; MS. Germany, bundle 16, State Paper Office.
282 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY, [CH. 30.
Office, was probably given by the confessor to Charles, and by Charles sent over to England. Most logical it was ; so logical that it quite outwitted the intention of the writer. While it added to the Queen's distress, it removed, nevertheless, all objections which might have been raised by the anti-papal party against the Act to legitimatize her. So long as there was a fear that, by a repeal of the Act of Divorce between her father and mother, the Pope's authority might indirectly be ad- mitted, some difficulty was to be anticipated ; as a new assertion of English independence, it could be carried with unanimous alacrity.
"What Parliament would or would not consent to, however, would soon cease to be a mystery. The advice of the Emperor on the elections had been, for the most part, followed. It was obvious, indeed, that a sovereign who was unable to control her council was in no position to dictate to constituencies. There were no circulars to the lords-lieutenants of counties, such as Northumber- land had issued, or such as Mary herself, a year later, was able to issue ; while the unusual number of members returned to the Lower House — four hundred and thirty, it will be seen, voted on one great occasion — shows that the issue of writs had been on the widest scale. On the whole, it was, perhaps, the fairest election which had taken place for many years. In the House of Lords the ejection of the Eeforming bishops and the restora- tion of their opponents — the death, imprisonment, or disgrace of three noblemen on the Reforming side, and the return to public life of the peers who, in the late
'553-]
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
2*3
October 5.
reign, had habitually absented themselves, had restored a conservative majority. How the representatives of the people would conduct themselves was the anxious and all-agitating question. The Queen, however, could console herself with knowing that Protestantism, as a system of belief, had made its way chiefly among the young ; the votes were with the middle-aged and the old.
The session opened on the 5th of October with the ancient form, so long omitted, of the mass of the Holy Ghost. Two Protestant bishops, Taylor of Lincoln and Harley of Hereford, who had been left as yet undisturbed in their sees, on the service commencing, rose and went out ; they were not allowed to return. Two prebendaries, Alexander Nowel and Doctor Tregonwell, had been returned to the Lower House; Nowel as a member of Convocation was de- clared ineligible;1 Tregonwell being a layman was on consideration allowed to retain his seat. These were the only ejections which can be specifically traced, and the silence of those who were interested in making the worst of Mary's conduct, may be taken to prove that they did not know of any more.2 The Houses purged
1 'Friday, October 13, it was declared by the commissioners that Alex. Nowel, being prebendary in Westminster, and thereby having a voice in the Convocation House, cannot be a member of this House, and so agreed by the House.' — Com- mons Journal, I Mary.
2 Burnet and other Protestant writers are loud- voiced with eloquent
generalities on the interference with the elections, and the ill-treatment of the Reforming members ; but of interference with the elections they can produce no evidence, and of members ejected they name no more than the two bishops and the two prebends. Noailles, indeed, who had opportunities of knowing, says something on both points. { No fault
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REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
of these elements then settled to their work ; and plung- ing at once into the great question of the time, the Commons came to an instant understanding that the lay owners of Church lands should not be disturbed in their tenures under any pretext whatsoever.
Commendone, on returning to Rome, had disre- garded his obligations to secrecy, and had related all that the Queen had said to him in the open Consistory ; from the Consistory the account travelled back to Eng- land, and arrived inopportunely at the opening of Parlia- ment. The fatal subject of the lands had been spoken of, and the Queen had expressed to Commendone her inten- tion to restore them, if possible, to the Church. The council cross-questioned her, and she could neither deny her words nor explain them away ; the Commons first, the Lords immediately after, showed her that whatever might be her own hopes or wishes, their minds on that point were irrevocably fixed.1
No less distinct were the opinions expressed in the Lower House on the Papacy. The authority of the Pope, as understood in England, was not a question of doctrine, nor was the opposition to it of recent origin It had been thrown off after a struggle which had
doutcr, sire,' he wrote to the King of France, ' que la dicte dame n'obtienne presque tout ce qu'elle vouldra en ce parlcment, de tant qu'elle a faict faire election de ceulx qui pourront estre en sa faveur, et jetter quelques uns a elle suspectz.' The Queen had probably done what
she could ; but the influence which she could exercise must obviously have been extremely small, and the event showed that the ambassador was entirely Avrong in his expecta- tions.
1 Eenard to Charles V., October 19 : Rolls House MSS.
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lasted for centuries, and a victory 1 so hardly won was not to be lightly parted with. Lord Paget warned the Queen that Pole's name must not be so much as men- tioned, or some unwelcome resolution about him would be immediately passed ; 2 and she was in hourly dread that before they would consent to anything, they would question her whether she would or would not maintain the royal supremacy.3 On the other hand, if no diffi- culties were raised about the Pope or the Church lands, the preliminary discussion, both among Lords and Com- mons, showed a general disposition to re-establish religion in the condition in which Henry left it — pro- vided, that is to say, no penalties were to attach to non- conformity; and the Houses were ready also to take the step so much deprecated by Pole, and pass a measurf legitimatizing the Queen, provided no mention was tc be made of the Papal dispensation. Some difference of opinion on the last point had shown itself in the House of Commons,4 but the legate's ingenuity had removed all serious obstacles.
1 Even the most reactionary clergy, men like Abbot Feckenham and Doctor Bourne, had no desire, as yet, to be re-united to Rome. In a discussion witb Ridley in the Tower, on the real presence, Feckenham ar- gued that ' forty years before all the world was agreed about it. Forty years ago, said Ridley, all held that the Bishop of Rome was supreme head of the Universal Church. What then? was Master Feckenham begin- ning to say ; but Master Secretary
(Bourne) took the tale, and said that was a positive law. A positive law, quoth Ridley ; he would not have it so ; he challenged it by Christ's own word, by the words, ( Thou art Peter ; thou art Cephas.' Tush, quoth Master Secretary, it was not counted an article of our faith.'— FOXE, vol. vi.
2 .Renard to Charles V., October 28 : Soils House MSS.
3 Ibid. October 15 : Rolls House MSS. 4 Ibid.
t&6 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
Again Parliament seemed determined that the Act of Succession, and the will of Henry VIII., should not be tampered with, to the disfavour of Elizabeth. It is singular that Renard and probably therefore Mary, were unaware of the position in which Elizabeth was placed towards the crown. They imagined that her only title was as a presumptively legitimate child ; that if the Act of Divorce between Catherine of Arragon and Henry was repealed, she must then, as a bastard, be cut off from her expectations, Had Elizabeth's prospects been liable to be affected by the legitimization of her sister, the Queen would have sued as vainly for it as she sued afterwards in favour of her husband. With un- mixed mortification Renard learnt that Elizabeth, in the eye of the law, had been as illegitimate as Mary, and that her place in the order of succession rested on her father's will. He flattered himself, at first, that Henry's dispositions could be set aside ; l but he very soon found that there was no present hope of it.
These general features of the temper of Parliament were elicited in conversation in the first few days of the session. The Marchioness of Exeter, during the same days, was released from her attainder, Courtenay was re- stored in blood, while a law, similar to that with which Somerset commenced his Protectorate, repealed all late treason Acts, restricted the definition of treason within the limits of the statute of Edward III., and relieved the clergy of the recent extensions of the Premunire.
Reuard to Charles V., October 21 : Hoik House MSS.
* 5 53-1 Q UEEN JANE AN£> Q UEEN MAR Y. 2$}
The Queen gave her assent to these three measures on the 2 ist of October ; and there was then an interval of three days, during which the bishops were consulted on the view taken by Parliament of the Queen's legitimacy. Renard told the Bishop of Norwich, Thirlby, that they must bend to the times, and leave the Pope to his for- tunes. They acted on the ambassador's advice. An Act was passed, in which the marriage from which the Queen was sprung, was declared valid, and the Pope's name was not mentioned ; but the essential point being secured, the framers of the statute were willing to gratify their mistress b}^ the intensity of the bitterness with which the history of the divorce was related.1 The bishops must have been glad to escape from so mortify- ing a subject, and to apply themselves to the more con- genial subject of religion.
As soon as the disposition of Parliament had been generally ascertained, the restoration of the mass was first formally submitted, for the sake of decency, to the clergy of Convocation.
The bench had been purged of dangerous elements. The Lower House contained a small fraction of Pro- testants just large enough to permit a controversy, and to ensure a triumph to their antagonists.. The proceed- ings opened with a sermon from Harpsfeld, then chap- lain of the Bishop of London, in which, in a series of ascending antitheses, Northumberland was described as Holofernes, and Mary as Judith ; Northumberland was
i Mary, cap. I.
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[OH. 30.
Haman, and Mary was Esther ; Northumberland was Sisera, and Mary was Deborah. Mary was the sister who had chosen the better part: religion ceased and slept until Mary arose a virgin in Israel, and with the mother of God Mary might sing, ' Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.' The trumpet having thus sounded, the lists were drawn for the combat; the bishops sat in their robes, the clergy stood bareheaded, and the champions appeared. Hugh. Weston, Dean of Windsor, Dean of Westminster afterwards, Dr Watson, Dr Moreman, and the preacher Harpsfeld undertook to defend the real presence against Phillips Dean of Rochester, Philpot, Cheny, Aylmer, and Young.
The engagement lasted for a week'. The reforming theologians fought for their dangerous cause bravely and temperately ; and Weston, who was at once advocate and prolocutor, threw down his truncheon at last, and told Philpot that he was meeter for Bethlehem than for a company of grave and learned men, and that he should come no more into their house.1 The orthodox thus ruled themselves the victors : but beyond the doors of- the Convocation House they did not benefit their cause. The dispute, according to Renard, resolved itself, in the opinion of the laity, into scandalous railing and recrim- ination ; 2 the people were indignant ; and the Houses of Parliament, disgusted and dissatisfied, resumed the dis-
1 Report of the Disputation in the Convocation House. — FOXE, vol. v. P- 395-
a Renard to Charles V., October 28 : Rolls House MSS.
1553] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 289
cussion among themselves, as more competent to con- duct it with decency. In eight days the various changes introduced by Edward VI. were argued in the House of Commons, and points were treated of there, said Renard, which a general council could scarcely resolve. At length, by a majority, which exceeded Gardiner's most sanguine hopes, of 350 against 80, the mass was restored, and the clergy were required to return to celibacy.1
The precipitation with which Somerset, Cranmer, and Northumberland had attempted to carry out the Reformation, was thus followed by a natural recoil. Protestant theology had erected itself into a system of intolerant dogmatism, and had crowded the gaols with prisoners who were guilty of no crime but Nonconform- ity ; it had now to reap the fruits of its injustice, and was superseded till its teachers had grown wiser. The first Parliament of Mary was indeed more Protestant, in the best sense of that word, than the statesmen and divines of Edward. While the House of Commons re- established the Catholic services, they decided, after long consideration, that no punishment should be inflicted on those who declined to attend those services.2 There was to be no Pope, no persecution, no restoration of the abbey lands, — resolutions, all of them disagreeable to a reactionary Court. On the Spanish marriage both Lords and Commons were equally impracticable. The Catholic noblemen — the Earls of Derby, Shrewsbury, Bath, and Sussex were in the interest of Courtenay.
1 Renard to Charles V., November 8 ; Rolls House MSS. 2 Ibid. Decembers.
VOL. V. 19
290 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 3d
The chancellor had become attached to him in the Tower when they were fellow-prisoners there ; and Sir Hobert Rochester, Sir Francis Englefield, Sir Edward Waldegrave, the Queen's tried and faithful officers of the household, went with the chancellor. Never, on any subject, was there greater unanimity in England than in the disapproval of Philip as a husband for the Queen, and, on the 29th of October, the Lower House had a petition in preparation to entreat her to choose from among her subjects.
To Courtenay, indeed, Mary might legitimately ob- ject. Since his emancipation from the Tower he had wandered into folly and debauchery ; he was vain and inexperienced, and his insolence was kept in check only by the quality so rare in an Englishman of personal timidity. But to refuse Courtenay was one thing, to fasten her choice on the heir of a foreign kingdom was another. Paget insisted, indeed, that, as the Queen of Scots was contracted to the Dauphin, unless England could strengthen herself with a connection of corre- sponding consequence, the union of the French and Scottish Crowns was a menace to her liberties.1 But the argument, though important in itself, was powerless against the universal dread of the introduction of a foreign sovereign, and it availed only to provide Mary with an answer to the protests and entreaties of her other ministers.
Perhaps, too, it confirmed her in her obstinacy, and
1 RENABD.
i553-l QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 291
allowed her to persuade herself that, in following her own inclination, she was consulting the interests of her subjects. Obstinate, at any rate, she was beyond all reach of persuasion. Once only she wavered, after her resolution was first taken. Some one had told her that, if she married Philip, she would find herself the step- mother of a large family of children who had come into the world irregularly. A moral objection she was always willing to recognize. She sent for Renard, and conjured him to tell her whether the prince was really the good man which he had described him; Renard assured her that he was the very paragon of the world.
She caught the ambassador's hand.
1 Oh ! ' she exclaimed, ' do you speak as a subject whose duty is to praise his sovereign, or do you speak as a man ? '
1 Your Majesty may take my life/ he answered, ' if you find him other than I have told you/
' Oh that I could but see him ! ' she said.
She dismissed Renard gratefully. A few days after she sent for him again, when she was expecting the petition of the House of Commons. ' Lady Clarence/ one of the Queen's attendants, was the only other person present. The holy wafer was in the room on an altar, which she called her protector, her guide, her adviser.1 Mary told them that she spent her days and nights in tears and prayers before it, imploring God to direct her ; and as she was speaking her emotions overcame her ;
1 ' Elle 1'avoit toujours invoque comme son protecteur, conducteur, ct conseilleur.'— Renard to Charles V., October 31 : Holla House MSS.
i92 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY, [CH. 30.
she flung herself on her knees with Renard and Lady Clarence at her side, and the three together before the altar sang the ' Yeni Creator/ The invocation was heard in the breasts from which it was uttered. As the chant died into silence, Mary rose from the ground as if inspired, and announced the divine message. The Prince of Spain was the chosen of Heaven for the virgin Queen ; if miracles were required to give him to her, there was a stronger than man who would work them ; the malice of the world should not keep him from her ; she would cherish him and love him, and him alone ; and never thenceforward, by a wavering thought, would she give him cause for jealousy.1
It was true that she had deliberately promised not to do what she was now resolved on doing, but that was no matter.
The Commons' petition was by this time November. .
ready, but the agitation of the last scene
brought on a palpitation of the heart which for the time enabled the Queen to decline to receive it ; while Renard assailed the different ministers, and extracted from them their general views on the state of the coun- try, and the measures which should be pursued.
The Bishop of Winchester he found relaxing in his zeal for Rome, and desiring a solid independent English Government, the re-enactment of the Six Articles, and an Anglican religious tyranny supported by the lords of the old blood. Nobles and people were against the
1 Renard to Charles V., October 31 : Rolls Home MSS.
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QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
203
Pope, Gardiner said, and against foreign interference of all sorts ; Mary could not marry Philip without a Papal dispensation, which must be kept secret, for the country would not tolerate it ; l the French would play into the hands of the heretics, and the Spanish alliance would give them the game ; there would be a cry raised that Spanish troops would be introduced to inflict the Pope upon the people by force. If the Emperor desired the friendship of England, he would succeed best by not pressing the connection too close. Political marriages were dangerous. Cromwell tied Henry YIII. to Anne of Cleves ; the marriage lasted a night, and destroyed him and his policy. Let the Queen accept the choice of her people, marry Courtenay, send Elizabeth to the Tower, and extirpate heresy with fire and sword.
These were the views of Gardiner, from whom Re- nard turned next to Paget.
If the Queen sent Elizabeth to the Tower, Lord Paget said, her life would not be safe for a day. Paget wished her to be allowed to choose her own husband ; but she must first satisfy Parliament that she had no intention of tampering with the succession. Should she die without children, the country must not be left ex- posed to claims from Spain on behalf of Philip, or from France on behalf of the Queen of Scots. His own ad- vice, therefore, was, that Mary should frankly acknow-
1 ' II fauldra obtenir dispense du Pape, pour le parentage, qui ne pourra estre publique ains secrete, autreraent le peuple se revoltcroit,
pour 1'auctorite du Pape qu'il ne veult admettre et revoir.' — "Renard to Charles V., November 9 : Rolls House MSS.
294 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
ledge her sister as her presumptive successor ; Elizabeth might be married to Courtenay, and, in default of heirs of her own body, it might be avowed and understood that those two should be king and queen. Could she make up her mind to this course, could she relinquish her dreams of restoring the authority of the Pope, of meddling with the Church lands, and interfering with the liberties of her people, she might rely on the loyalty of the country, and her personal inclinations would not be interfered with.1
Both the, lines of conduct thus sketched were con- sistent and intelligible, and either might have been suc- cessfully followed. But neither the one nor the other satisfied Mary. She would have Philip, she would have the Pope, and she would not recognize her sister. If she insisted on choosing a husband for herself, she felt it would be difficult to refuse her ; her object was to surprise the council into committing themselves, and
she succeeded. On the 8th of November, Nov. 8. ... .
when they were in session in a room in the
Dalace, Renard presented Mary in th« Emperor's name with a formal offer of Philip's hand, and requested a distinct answer, Yes or no. The Queen said she would consult her ministers, and repaired in agitation to the council-room.2 Distrusting one another, unprepared for the sudden demand, and unable to consult in her presence, the Lords made some answer, which she in-
1 Eenard to Charles V., November 4 : Rolls House MSS. 2 ' Visage intinride et gestes tremblans.' — Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS
I553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 295
terpreted into acquiescence : Mary returned radiant with joy, and told the ambassador that his proposal was accepted.
A momentary lull followed, during which Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lady Jane Grey, Lord Guilford, Lord Ambrose and Lord Henry Dudley were taken from the Tower on foot to the Guildhall, and were there tried, found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to die. Lady Jane the Queen still intended to spare ; the Dudleys she meant to pause upon. Cranmer, in a grave, mild letter, ex- plained what his conduct had been with respect to his so-called treason ; but his story, creditable to him as it was, produced no effect ; Cranmer was immediately to be put to death. That was the first intention, though it was found necessary to postpone his fate through a superstitious scruple. The Archbishop had received the pallium from Rome, and, until degraded by apostolic authority, he could not, according to Catholic rule, be condemned by a secular tribunal. But there was no intention of sparing him at the time of his trial ; in a few days, Renard wrote on the lyth of November, 'the Archbishop ' will be executed ; and Mary triumphant, as she believed herself, on the question nearest to her heart, had told him that the melancholy which had weighed upon her from childhood was rolling away ; she had never yet known the meaning of happiness, and she was about to be rewarded at last. *
1 Renard to Charles V., November 17 : Rolls House MSS,
296 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
The struggle had told upon her. She was looking aged and worn,1 and her hopes of children, if she mar- ried, were thought extremely small. But she considered that she had won the day, and was now ready to face the Commons ; the House had chafed at the delay : they had talked largely of their intentions ; if the Queen's answer was unsatisfactory, they threatened to dissolve of themselves, and return to their counties. On the 1 6th of November a message was brought that the Speaker would at last be admitted to the presence. The interview which followed, Mary thus herself described to Renard. The council were present ; the Speaker was introduced, and the Queen received him standing.
In an oration which she described as replete to weari- ness with fine phrases and historic precedents, the Speaker requested her, in the name of the commonwealth, to marry. The succession was perplexed ; the Queen of Scots made pretensions to the Crown ; and in the event of her death, a civil war was imminent. Let her Majesty take a husband, therefore, and with God's grace the king- dom would not be long without an heir whose title none would dispute. Yet, in taking a husband, the Speaker said, her Majesty's faithful Commons trusted she \vould not choose from abroad. A foreign prince had interests of his own which might not be English interests ; he would have command of English armies, fleets, and fortresses, and he might betray his trust ; he might involve the country in wars ; he might make promises
' Fort envieillie ct ag«'c.' — NOAILLES.
1 553-]
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
297
and break them ; he might carry her Highness away out of the realm ; or he might bring up her children in foreign courts and in foreign habits. Let her marry, therefore, one of her own subjects.
The Speaker was so prolix, so tedious, so
/-v • Nov. 10.
confused, the Queen said — his sentences were
so long drawn and so little to the purpose — that she sat down before he had half finished. When he came to the words ' marry a subject/ she could remain silent no longer.
Replies to addresses of the House of Commons were usually read by the chancellor ; but, careless of forms, she again started, to her feet, and spoke : — !
' For your desire to see us married we thank you ; your desire to dictate to us the consort whom we shall choose we consider somewhat superfluous ; the Eng- lish Parliament has not been wont to use such language to their sovereigns, and where private persons in such cases follow their private tastes, sovereigns may reason- ably challenge an equal liberty. If you, our Commons, force upon us a husband whom we dislike, it may occa- sion the inconvenience of our death ; 2 if we marry where we do not love, we shall be in our grave in three months, and the heir of whom you speak will not have been brought into being. We have heard much from you of the incommodities which may attend our mar-
1 Renard is the only authority for this speech, which he heard from the Queen. Translated by him in to French, and retranslated by myself
into English, it has, doubtless, suf- fered much in the process.
2 ' Ceseroit procurer 1'inconve- nient de sa mort.'
298 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 30.
riage ; we have not heard from you of the commodities thereof — one of which is of some weight with us, the commodity, namely, of our private inclination. We have not forgotten our coronation oath. We shall marry as God shall direct our choice, to his honour and to our country's good.'
She would hear no reply. The Speaker was led out, and as he left the room Arundel whispered to Gardiner that he had lost his office ; the Queen had usurped it. At the same moment the Queen herself turned to the chancellor — ' I have to thank you, my Lord, for this business/ she said.
The chancellor swore in tears that he was innocent ; the Commons had drawn their petition themselves ; for himself it was true he was well inclined towards Courtenay ; he had known him in the Tower.
* And is your having known him in the Tower/ she cried, ' a reason that you should think him a fitting husband for me ? I will never, never marry him — that I promise you — and I am a woman of my word ; what I say I do/
'Choose where you will/ Gardiner answered, 'your Majesty's consort shall find in me the most obedient of his subjects.'
Mary had now the bit between her teeth, and, resisting all efforts to check or guide her, was making her own way with obstinate resolution.
The next point was the succession, which, notwith- standing the humour of Parliament, should be re- arranged, if force or skill could do it. There were four
!553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 299
possible claimants after herself, she told Renard, and in her own opinion the best title was that of the Queen of Scots. But the country objected, and the Emperor would not have the English crown fall to France. The Greys were out of the question, but their mother, the Duchess of Suffolk, was eligible ; and there was Lady Lennox, also, Darnley's mother, who perhaps, after all, would be the best choice that could be made.1 Eliza- beth, she was determined, should never, never succeed. She had spoken to Paget about it, she said, and Paget had remonstrated ; Paget had said, marry her to Courtenay, recognize her as presumptive heir, and add a stipulation, if necessary, that she become a Catholic ; but, Catholic or no Catholic, she said, her sister should never reign in England with consent of hers ; she was a heretic, a hypocrite, and a bastard, and her infamous mother had been the cause of all the calamities which had befallen the realm.
Even Renard was alarmed at this burst of passion He had fed Mary's suspicions till they were beyond either his control or her own ; and the attitude of Parliament had lately shown him that, if any step were taken against Elizabeth without provocation on her part, it would infinitely increase the difficulty of con- cluding the marriage. He was beginning to believe, and he ventured to hint to the Queen, that Paget' s advice might be worth consideration ; but on this sub- ject she would listen to nothing.
1 Renard to Charles V., November 28 : Rolls House MSS.
300
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 30.
Elizabeth, had hitherto, when at Court, taken pre- cedence of all other ladies. The Queen now compelled her to walk behind Lady Lennox and the Duchess of Suffolk, as a sign of the meditated change ; * and the ladies of the Court were afraid to be seen speaking to her. But in reply to Mary's derogatory treatment the young lords, knights, and gentlemen gathered osten- tatiously round the princess when she rode abroad, or thronged the levees at her house; old-established statesmen said, in Renard's ear, that, let the Queen decide as she would, no foreigner should reign in Eng- land ; and Lord Arundel believed that Elizabeth's foot was already on the steps of the throne. A large and fast- growing party, which included more than one member of the privy council, were now beginning to consider as the best escape from Philip, that Courtenay should fly from the Court, taking Elizabeth with him — call round him in their joint names all who would strike with him for English independence, and proclaim the Queen deposed.
There was uncertainty about Elizabeth herself ; both Noailles and Renard believed that she would consent to this dangerous proposal ; but she had shown Courtenay, hitherto, no sign of favour ; while Courtenay, on his side, complained that he was frightened by her haughty ways. Again, there was a serious difficulty in Courte-
1 ' Elle 1'a faict quelquefois aller apres la Comtesse de Lennox, que Ton appelle icy Madame Marguerite, et Madame Frangoise, qu'est la
susdicte Duchesse de Suffolk.' — Noailles to the King of France, November 30.
*553-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 301
nay's character ; he was too cowardly for a dangerous enterprise, too incapable for an intricate one, and his weak humour made men afraid to,, trust themselves to a person who, to save himself, might at any moment be- tray them. Noailles, however, said emphatically that, were Courtenay anything but what he was, his success would be certain.1
The plot grew steadily into definite form. Devon- shire and Cornwall were prepared for insurrection, and thither, as to the stronghold of the Courtenay family, Elizabeth was to be first carried. Meantime the ferment of popular feeling showed in alarming symptoms through the surface. The council were in continual quarrel. Parliament, since the rebuff of the Speaker, had not grown more tractable, and awkward questions began to be asked about a provision for the married clergy. All had been already gained which could be hoped for from the present House of Commons ; and,
on the 6th of December, the session ended in
T rm i -ill December.
a dissolution. The same day a dead dog was
thrown through the window of the presence chamber with ears cropped, a halter about its neck, and a label saying that all the priests in England should be hanged.
Renard, who, though not admitted, like Noailles, into the confidence of the conspirators, yet knew the drift of public feeling, and knew also Arundel's opinion of the Queen's prospects, insisted that Mary should
1 Noailles to the King of France, December 6.
302 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [en. 30.
place some restraint upon herself, and treat her sister at least with outward courtesy ; Philip was expected at Christmas, should nothing untoward happen in the interval ; and the ambassador prevailed on her, at last, to pretend that her suspicions were at an end. His own desire, he said, was as great as Mary's that Elizabeth should be detected in some treasonable correspondence ; but harshness only placed her on her guard ; she would be less careful, if she believed that she was no longer Distrusted. The princess, alarmed perhaps at finding herself the unconsentiiig object of dangerous schemes, had asked permission to retire to her country house. It was agreed that she should go ; persons in her house- hold were bribed to watch her ; and the Queen, yielding to Renard's entreaties, received her, when she came to take leave, with an appearance of affection so well counterfeited, that it called out the ambassador's ap- plause.1 She made her a present of pearls, with a head- dress of sable ; and the princess, on her side, implored the Queen to give no more credit to slanders against her. They embraced ; Elizabeth left the Court ; and, as she went out of London, five hundred gentlemen formed about her as a voluntary escort.2 There were not wanting fools, says Renard, who would persuade the Queen that her sister's last words were honestly spoken ; but she remembers too acutely the injuries which her
1 ' La Reine a tres bien dissiraulee, en son endroict.' — Renard to Charles V., December 8 : Rolls House MSS.
2 NOAILLES.
*55 3-] QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY. 303
mother and. herself suffered at Anne Boleyn's hands ; and she has a fixed conviction that Elizabeth, unless she can be first disposed of, will be a cause of infinite calamities to the realm.1
Renard to Charles V., December 8 : Rolls House MSS.
304
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
THE fears of Renard and the hopes of Noailles were occasioned by the unanimity of Catholics and heretics in the opposition to the marriage ; yet, so singular was the position of parties, that this very unanimity was the condition which made the marriage possible. The Catholic lords and gentlemen were jea- lous of English independence, and, had they stood alone, they would have coerced the Queen into an abandon- ment of her intentions : but, if they dreaded a Spanish sovereign, they hated unorthodoxy more, and if they permitted or assisted in the schemes of the Reformers, they feared that they might lose the control of the situa- tion when the immediate object was obtained. Those who were under the influence of Gardiner desired to restore persecution ; and persecution, which was difficult with Mary on the throne, would be impossible under a sove- reign brought in by a revolution. They made a fa- vourite of Courtenay, but they desired to marry him to the Queen, not to Elizabeth : Gardiner told the young
1553-]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
305
Earl that lie would sooner see him the husband of the vilest drab who could be picked out of the London kennels.1
Thus, from their murmurs, they seemed to be on the edge of rebellion ; yet, when the point of action came, they halted, uncertain what to do, unwilling to acqui- esce, yet without resolution to resist. From a modern point of view the wisest policy was that recommended by Paget. The claim of the Queen of Scots on the throne unquestionably made it prudent for England to strengthen herself by some powerful foreign alliance ; sufficient precautions could be devised for the security of the national independence; and, so far from Eng- land being in danger of being drawn into the war on the Continent, Lord Paget said that, if England would accept Philip heartily, the war would be at an end. Elizabeth of France might marry Don Carlos, taking with her the French pretensions to Naples and Milan as a dowry. Another French princess might be given to the expatriated Philibert, and Savoy and Piedmont restored with her. ' You/ Paget said to Noailles, ' by your Dauphin's marriage forced us to be friends with the Scots ; we, by our Queen's marriage, will force you to be friends with the Emperor.'2
Paget, however, was detested as an upstart, and de-
1 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
* l Le diet Paget me respondict qu'il n'estoit ja besoing d'entrer en si grande jalousie, et que tout ainsi que nous les avions faicts amys avec-
ques les Escossoys, ce marriage seroit aussy cause que nous serions amys avecques 1'Empereur.' — Noailles to the King of France, December 26. Compare also the letter of December 23,Ambassades, vol. ii. pp. 334—356. 20
3o6
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31.
tested still more as a latitudinarian ; lie could form no party, and the Queen made use of him only to support her in her choice of the Prince of Spain, as in turn she would use Gardiner to destroy the Protestants ; and thus the two great factions in the State neutralized each other's action in a matter in which both were equally anxious ; and Mary, although with no remarkable capacity, without friends and ruined, if at any moment she lost courage, was able to go her own way in spite of her subjects.
The uncertainty was, how long so anomalous a state of things would continue. The marriage being once decided on, Mary could think of nothing else, and even religion sank into the second place. Reginald Pole, chafing the Imperial bridle between his lips, vexed her, so Renard said, from day to day, with his untimely importunities j1 the restoration of the mass gave him no pleasure so long as the Papal legate was an exile ; and in vain the Queen laboured to draw from him some kind of ap- proval. He saw her only preferring carnal pleasures to her duty to heaven ; and, indifferent himself to all in- terests save those of the See of Rome, he was irritated with the Emperor, irritated with the worldly schemes to which he believed that his mission had been sacrificed. He talked angrily of the marriage. The Queen heard, through Wotton the ambassador at Paris, that he had said openly, it should never take place;2 while Peto,
1 Renard to Charles V. : No- vember 14, November 28, December 3, December 8, December n : Rolls
House MSS.
2 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS. The Queen wrote to
1553-]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
307
the Greenwich friar, who was in his train, wrote to her, reflecting impolitely on her age, and adding Scripture commendations of celibacy as the more perfect state.1 It was even feared that the impatient legate had advised the Pope to withhold the dispensa- tions.
Mary, beyond measure afflicted, wrote to Pole at last, asking what in his opinion she ought to do. He sent his answer through a priest, by whom it could be conveyed with the greatest emphasis. First, he said, she must pray to God for a spirit of counsel and forti- tude ; next, she must, at all hazards, relinquish th« name of Head of the Church ; and, since she could trust neither peer nor prelate, she must recall Parliament, go in person to the House of Commons, and demand per- mission with her own mouth for himself to return to England. The Holy See was represented in his person, and was freshly insulted in the refusal to receive him ; the Pope's vast clemency had volunteered unasked to pardon the crimes of England ; if the gracious offer was not accepted, the legation would be cancelled, the
Wotton to learn his authority. The Venetian ambassador, Wotton said, was the person who had told him ; but the quarter from which the in- formation originally came, he be- lieved, might be relied on. — Wotton to the Queen and Council :MS. State Paper Office.
1 ' Un des principaulx qu'il a avec luy que se nomme William Peto, theologien, luy a escript luy donnant
conseil de non se marrier, et vivre en celibat ; meslant en ses lettres plu- sieurs allegations du Yieux et Nou- veau Testament, repetantx ou xii fois qu'elle tombera en la puissance et servitude du mari, qu'elle n'aura enfans, sinon soubz danger de sa vie pour 1'age dont elle est.' — Renard to Charles V. : TYTLEB,, vol. ii. p. 303,
3o8 REIGN- OF QUEEN MAR Y. [CH. 31
national guilt would be infinitely enhanced The Em- peror talked of prudence ; in the service of God pru- dence was madness ; and, so long as the schism continued, her attempts at reform were vanity, and her seat upon the throne was usurpation. Let her tell the truth to the House of Commons, and the House of Commons would hear.1
' Your Majesty will see/ wrote Renard, enclosing to Charles a copy of these advices, 'the extent of the Cardinal's discretion, and how necessary it is that foi the present he be kept at a distance.' The Pope was not likely to reject the submission of England at any mo- ment, late or early, when England might be pleased to offer it, and could well afford to wait. Julius was wiser than his legate. Pole was not recalled, but exhorted to patience, and a letter or message from Rome cooled Mary's anxieties. Meanwhile the marriage was to be expedited with as much speed as possible ; the longer the agitation continued, the greater the danger ; while the winter was unfavourable to revolutionary move- ments, and armed resistance to the prince's landing would be unlikely so long as the season prevented large bodies of men from keeping the field.2
The Emperor, therefore, in the beginning of Decem- ber, sent over the draft of a marriage treaty ; and if the security that the articles would be observed had equalled the form in which they were conceived, the
1 Instructions of Cardinal Pole to Thomas Goldwell : Cotton Titus, B. ii.
2 Renard dwelt much on this point as a reason for haste.
I553-] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE 309
English might have afforded to lay aside their alarms. Charles seemed to have anticipated almost every point on which the insular jealousy would be sensitive. The Prince of Spain should bear the title of King of Eng- land so long, but so long only, as the Queen should be alive ; and the Queen should retain the disposal of all af- fairs in the realm, and the administration of the revenues, The Queen, in return, should share Philip's titles, present and prospective, with the large settlement of 6o,ooo/. a year upon her for her life. Don Carlos, the Prince's child by his first wife, would, if he lived, inherit Spain, Sicily, the Italian provinces, and the Indies. But Bur- gundy and the Low Countries should be settled on the offspring of the English marriage, and be annexed to the English Crown ; and this prospect, splendid in itself, was made more magnificent by the possibility that Don Carlos might die. Under all contingencies, the laws and liberties of the several countries should be held in- violate and inviolable.
In such a treaty the Emperor conferred everything, and in return received nothing ; and yet, to gain the alliance, a negotiation already commenced for the hand of the Infanta of Portugal was relinquished. The liberality of the proposals was suspicious, but they were submitted to the council, who, unable to refuse to con- sider them, were obliged to admit that they were rea- sonable. Five additional clauses were added, however, to which it was insisted that Philip should swear before the contract should be completed —
i. That no foreigner, under any circumstances, should
310 REIGN OP QUEEN MARY. [cil. 31.
be admitted to any office in the royal household, in the army, the forts, or the fleet.
2. That the Queen should not be taken abroad with- out her own consent ; and that the children — should children be born — should not be carried out of England without consent of Parliament, even though among them might be the heir of the Spanish Empire.
3. Should the Queen die childless, the Prince's con- nection with the realm should be at an end.
4. The jewel-house and treasury should be wholly under English control, and the ships of war should not be removed into a foreign port.
5. The Prince should maintain the existing treaties between England and France ; and England should not be involved, directly or indirectly, in the war between France and the Empire.1
These demands were transmitted to Brussels, where they were accepted without difficulty, and further ob- jection could not be ventured unless constraint was laid upon the Queen. The sketch of the treaty, with the conditions attached to it, was submitted to such of the Lords and Commons as remained in London after the dissolution of Parliament, and the result was a sullen acquiescence.
An embassy was immediately announced as to be sent from Flanders. Count Egmont, M. de Courieres, the Count de Lalaing, and M. de Nigry, Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, were coming over as plenipotentiaries
1 Marriage Treaty between Mary, Queen of England, and Philip of Spain : RYMEE, vol. vi
1553 ] THE SPANISH MARRIA GE 311
of the Emperor. Secret messengers went off to Rome to hasten the dispensations — a dispensation for Mary to marry her cousin, and a dispensation which also was found necessary permitting the ceremony to be performed by a bishop in a state of schism. The marriage could be solemnized at once on their arrival, the ambassadors standing as Philip's representatives, while Sir Philip Hoby, Bonner, Bedford, and Lord Derby would go to Spain to receive the Prince's oaths, and escort him to England. Again and again the Queen pressed haste. Ash- Wednesday fell on the 6th of February, and in Lent she might not marry. Eenard assured her that the Prince should be in her arms before Septua- gesima, and all her trials would be over. The worst danger which he now anticipated was from some un- pleasant collision which might arise after the Prince's landing ; and he had advised the Emperor to have the Spaniards who would form the retinue selected for their meekness. They would meet with insolence from the English, which they would not endure, if they had th^ spirit to resent it ; their dispositions, therefore, must b* mild and forgiving.1
And yet Renard could not hide from himself, and the Lords did not hide from Mary, that their consent was passive only ; that their reluctance was vehement as ever. Bedford said, if he went to Spain, he must go without attendance, for no one would accompany him. Lord Derby refused to be one of the ambassadors, and
Ilenard to Charles V., December n : Rolls Home MSS.
3I2
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31.
with Sir Edward Waldegrave and Sir Edward Hastings told the Queen that he would leave her service if she persisted. The seditious pamphlets which were scattered everywhere created a vague terror in the Court, and the Court ladies wept and lamented in the Queen's presence. The council in a body again urged her to abandon her intention. The Peers met again to consider the marriage articles. Gardiner read them aloud, and Lord Windsor, a dull Brutus, who till then had never been known to utter a reasonable word, exclaimed, amidst general ap- plause, ' You have told us fine things of the Queen, and the Prince, and the Emperor ; what security have we that words are more than words ? ' Corsairs from Brest and Rochelle hovered in the mouth of the Channel to catch the couriers going to and fro between Spain and London and Brussels, and to terrify Philip with the danger of the passage. The Duke of Suffolk's brother and the Marquis of Winchester had been heard to swear that they would set upon him when he landed ; and Renard began to doubt whether the alliance, after all, was worth the risk attending it.1 Mary, however, brave in the midst of her perplexities, vowed that she would relinquish her hopes of Philip only with her life. An army of spies watched Elizabeth day and night, and the Emperor, undeterred by Renard's hesitation, encouraged the Queen's resolution. There could be no conspiracy
1 ' The English,' he said, 'sontsi traietres, si inconstantes, si doubles, si malicieux, et si faciles a esmover qu'il ne se fault fier ; et si 1' alliance
est grande, aussi est elle hazardeuse pour la personne de son Altesse.' — Renard to Charles V., December 12 : Rolls House MSS.
I553-] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 313
as yet, Charles said, which could not be checked with judicious firmness ; and dangerous persons could be ar- rested and made secure. A strong hand could do much in England, as was proved by the success for a time of the late Duke of Northumberland.1
The advice fell in with Mary's own temperament ; she had already been acting in the spirit of it. A party of Protestants met in St Matthew's Church on the publication of the Acts of the late session, to determine how far they would obey them. Ten or twelve were seized on the spot, and two were hanged out of hand.2 The Queen told Hastings and Waldegrave that she would endure no opposition ; they should obey her or they should leave the council. She would raise a few thousand men, she said, to keep her subjects in order, and she would have a thousand Flemish horse among them. There was a difficulty about ways and means ; as fast as money came into the treasury she had paid debts with it, and, as far as her means extended, she had replaced chalices and roods in the parish churches. But, if she was poor, five millions of gold had just arrived in Spain from the New World ; and, as the Emperor suggested, her credit was good at Ant- werp from her honesty. Lazarus Tucker came again to the rescue. In November, Lazarus provided 50,000^. for her at fourteen per cent. In January she required ioo,ooo/. more, and she ordered Gresham to find it foi
1 Charles V. to Eenard, December 24 : Rolls House MSS. 2 Reiiard to Charles V., December 20 : Ibid.
3*4 REIGN OF Q UEEN MARY. [CH. 3 1 ,
her at low interest or high.1 Fortunately for Mary the project of a standing army could not be carried out by herself alone, and the passive resistance of the council saved her from commencing the attempt. Neither Irish mercenaries, nor Flemish, nor Welsh, as two months after she was proposing to herself, were permit- ted to irritate England into madness.
While Mary was thus buffeting with the waves, on the 23rd, Count Egmont and his three companions arrived at Calais. The French had threatened to in- tercept the passage, and four English ships-of-war had been ordered to be in waiting as their escort : these ships, however, had not left the Thames, being detained either by weather, as the admiral pretended, or by the ill-humour of the crews, who swore they would give the French cruisers small trouble, should they present themselves.2 On Christmas-day ill-looking vessels were hanging in mid-channel, off Calais harbour, but the ambassadors were resolved to cross at all risks. They stole over in the darkness on the night of the 26th, and were at Dover by nine in the morning. Their retinue, a very large one, was sent on at once to London ; snow was on the ground, and the boys in the streets saluted the first comers with showers of balls. The ambas- sadors followed the next day, and were received in silence, but without active insult. The Emperor's choice of persons for his purpose had been judicious.
1 The Queen to Sir Thomas Gresham : Flanders MSS. Mary, State Paper Office.
2 Noailles to the King of France, December 6 : Ambassades, vol. ii.
1553.]
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The English ministers intended to be offensive, but they were disarmed by the courtesy of Egmont, who charmed every one. In ten days the business connected with the treaty was concluded. The treaty itself was sent to Brussels to be ratified, and the dispensations from Home, and the necessary powers from the Prince of Spain, were alone waited for that the marriage might be con- cluded in public or in private, whichever way would be most expeditious. The Queen cared only for the com- pletion of the irrevocable ceremony, which would bring her husband to her side before Lent.1
The interval of delay was consumed in hunting- parties 2 and dinners at the palace, where the courtiers played off before the guests the passions of their eager mistress.3 The enemies of the marriage, French and English, had no time to lose, if they intended to prevent the completion of it.
When the Queen's design was first publicly £^4. announced, the King of France directed No- I0>
1 The Bishop of Arras to the Ambassadors in England : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 181, &c.
2 The loth day of January the ambassadors rode unto Hampton Court, and there they had as great cheer as could be had, and hunted and killed, tag and rag, with hounds and swords. — MACHYN'S Diary.
3 After dinner Lord William Howard entered, and, seeing the Queen pensive, whispered something to her in English ; then turning to
us, he asked if we knew what he had said ? The Queen bade him not tell, but he paid no attention to her. Ho told us he had said he hoped soon to see somebody sitting there, pointing to the chair next her Majesty. The Queen blushed, and asked him how he could say so. He answered that he knew very well she liked it ; whereat her Majesty laughed, and the Court laughed, &c. — Egmont and Eenard to Charles V. : Rolls Home MSS.
316 REIGN OF QUEEN MAR\ [CH. 31.
allies to tell her frankly the alarm with which it was re- garded at Paris. Henry and Montmorency said the same repeatedly, and at great length, to Dr Wotton. The Queen might have the best intentions of remaining at peace, but events might be too strong for her ; and they suggested, at last, that she might give a proof of the good- will which she professed by making a fresh freaty with them.1 That a country should be at peace while its titular king was at war, was a situation with- out a precedent. Intricate questions were certain to arise ; for instance, if a mixed fleet of English and Spanish ships should escort the Prince, or convoy his transports or treasure, or if English ships having Spaniards on board should enter French harbours. A thousand difficulties such as these might occur, and it would be wise to provide for them beforehand.
The uneasiness of the Court of Paris was not allayed when the Queen met this most reasonable proposal with a refusal.2 A clause, she replied, was added to the marriage articles for the maintenance of the existing treaties with France, and with that and with her own promises the French Government ought to be content. In vain Noailles pointed out that the existing treaties would not meet the new conditions ; she was obstinate, and both Noailles and the King of France placed the worst interpretation upon her attitude. Philip, after his arrival, would unquestionably drag or lead her into his quarrels ; and they determined, therefore, to employ
1 NOAILLES. 2 Ibid.
1 554-1 THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 317
all means, secret and open, to prevent his coming, and to co-operate with the English opposition.
The time to act had arrived. Humours were indus- triously circulated that the Prince of Spain was already on the seas, bringing with him ten thousand Spaniards, who were to be landed at the Tower, and that eight thousand Germans were to follow from the Low Countries. Noailles and M. d'Oysel, then on his way through Lon- don to Scotland, had an interview with a number of lords and gentlemen, who undertook to place themselves at the head of an insurrection, and to depose the Queen. The whole country was crying out against her, and the French ministers believed that the opposition had but to declare itself in arms to meet with universal sympa- thy. They regarded the persons with whom they were dealing as the representatives of the national discontent ; but on this last point they were fatally mistaken.
Noailles spoke generally of lords and gentlemen ; but those with whom d'Oysel and himself had commu- nicated were a party of ten or twelve of the pardoned friends of the Duke of Northumberland, or of men otherwise notorious among the ultra-Protestants ; the Duke of Suffolk and his three brothers, Lord Thomas, Lord John, and Lord Leonard Grey ; the Marquis of Northampton ; Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet ; Sir Nicholas Throgmorton ; Sir Peter Carew ; Sir Edmund Warner, Lord Cobham's brother-in-law ; and Sir James Crofts, the late Deputy of Ireland.1 Courtenay, who
1 Noailles and d'Oysel to the King of France, January 15 : Am- bassades, vol. iii.
PEIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31.
had affected orthodoxy as long as lie had hopes of the Queen, was admitted into the confederacy. Cornwall and Devonshire were to be the first counties to rise, where Courtenay would be all-powerful by his name. "Wyatt undertook to raise Kent, Sir James Crofts the Severn border, Suffolk and his brothers the midland counties. Forces from these four points were to con- verge on London, which would then stir for itself. The French Admiral Villegaignon promised to keep a fleet on the seas, and to move from place to place among the western English harbours, wherever his presence would be most useful. Plymouth had been tampered with, and the mayor and aldermen, either really or as a ruse to gain information, affected a desire to receive a French garrison.1 For the sake of their cause the Protestant party were prepared to give to France an influence in England as objectionable in itself, and as offensive to the majority of the people, as the influence of Spain ; and the management of the opposition to the Queen was snatched from the hands of those who might have brought it to some tolerable issue, by a set of men to whom the Spanish marriage was but the stalking-horse for the reimposition of their late tyranny. If the Duke
1 ' Sire, tout maintenant en achevant cette lettre, les raaire et aldermans de Plymouth, ra'ont en- voyu prier de vous supplier les vou- loir prendre en votre protection, voulans et deliberans mettre leur ville entre vos mains, et y recepvoir dedans telle garrison qu'il vous plaira y envoyer; s'estans resoubz
de ne recevoir aulcunement le Prince d'Espaigne, ne s'asservir en fa<jon que ce soit a ses commandemens, et s'asseurans que tons les gentilz- hommes de 1'entour d'icy en feroient de mesme.' — Noailles to the King of France : Ambassades, vol. ii. p. 342.
1 554-] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 319
of Northumberland, instead of setting up a rival to Mary, had loyally admitted her to the throne which was her right, he might have tied her hands, and secured the progress of moderate reform. Had the great patriotic anti-papal party been now able to combine, with no dis- integrating element, they could have prevented the marriage or made it harmless. But the ultra-party plunged again into treason, in which they would suc- ceed only to restore the dominion of a narrow and blight- ing sectarianism.1
The conspirators remained in London till the second week in January. Wyatt went into Kent, Peter Carew ran down the Channel to Exmouth in a vessel of his own, and sent relays of horses as far as Aiidover for Courtenay, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton undertaking to see the latter thus far upon his way. The disaffection was already simmering in Devonshire. There was a violent scene among the magistrates at the Christmas quarter- sessions at Exeter. A countryman came in, and reported that he had been waylaid and searched by a party of strange horsemen in steel saddles, ' under the gallows at the hill top/ at Fair-mile, near Sir Peter Carew's house. His person had been mistaken, it seemed, but questions were asked, inquiries made, and ugly lan- guage had been used about the Queen. On Carew's arrival the ferment increased. One of his lacqueys,
1 One of the projects mooted 1 Clerk of the Council. Wyatt, how- was the Queen's murder ; a scheme I ever, would not stain the cause with suggested hy a man from whom | dark crimes of that kind, and threat- better things might have been ex- ened Thomas with rough handling pected, "William Thomas, the late I for his proposal.
320
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31.
mistaking intention for fact, whispered in Exeter that 1 my Lord of Devonshire was at Mohun's Ottery.'1 Six horses heavily loaded passed in, at midnight, through the city gates. The panniers were filled with harness and hand-guns from Sir Peter's castle at Dartmouth.2 Sir John Chichester, Sir Arthur Champernowne, Peter and Gawen Carew, and Gybbes of Silverton had met in private, rumour said for no good purpose ; and the Exeter Catholics were anxious and agitated. They had been all disarmed after the insurrection of 1549, the castle was in ruins, the city walls were falling down. Should Courtenay come, the worst consequences were anticipated.
But Courtenay did not come. After Carew had left London he became nervous ; when the horses were re- ported to be ready, he lingered about the Court ; he flattered himself that the Queen had changed her mind in his favour ; and two nights before the completion of the treaty he sat up, affecting to expect to be sent for to marry her on the spot.3 Finding the message did not arrive, he gave an order to his tailor to prepare a splendid Court costume, adding perhaps some boasting words, which were carried to Gardiner. The chancel- lor's regard for him was sincere, and went beyond a de- sire to make him politically useful. He sent for him, cross- questioned him, and by the influence of a strong
1 The house of Sir Peter Ca- rew.
2 Miscellaneous Depositions on the State of Devonshire : MS. Do-
mestic, Mary, vol. ii. State Paper Office.
3 Instructions to la Marque: NOAILLES, vol. iii. p. 25, &c.
1554-
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
321
mind over a weak one, drew out as much as Courtenay knew of the secrets of the plot.1
The intention was to delay, if possible, an open de- claration of rebellion a few weeks longer — till the Prince of Spain's arrival should raise the ferment to boiling point. Gardiner, who was determined, at all events, to prevent the Protestants from making head, informed the Queen, without mentioning Courtenay's name, that he had cause to suspect Sir Peter Carew. A summons was despatched to Devonshire to require Sir Peter and his brother to return to London : and thus either to compel them to rise prematurely, without Courtenay's assistance, or, if they complied, to enable the Court to secure their persons. The desired effect was produced ; .Carew had waded too deep in treason to trust himself in Gardiner's hands. He wrote an excuse, yet protest- ing his loyalty ; and he invited the inhabitants of Exe- ter to join in a petition to the Crown against the mar- riage, as a first step towards a rising.
But the Carews were notorious and unpopular ; the justices of the peace at the sessions had been just occu- pied with a Protestant outrage committed by one of their nearest friends,2 and their true object was sus-
- Xoailles to the King of France: ^Imbassades, vol. iii. p. 31.
2 ' On the morning of Christmas- day came twelve neighbours of Sil- verton, being the parish where Mr Gybbes dwelleth, and they com- plained to me of a cross of latten, and of an altar-cloth stolen out of VOL. v.
the church before that time ; and that the cross was set up upon a gate or upon a hedge by the way, where the picture of Christ was dressed with a paste or such like tyre, and the picture of our Lady and St John tied by threads to the arms of the cross, like thieves.' 21
322
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31.
pected. The barns of Crediton were not forgotten, nor the massacre of the prisoners at Clyst, and without Courtenay they were powerless. Their invitation met with no response ; and Chichester and Champernowne, seeing how the tide was setting, washed their hands of the connection. Sir Thomas Dennys, a Catholic gentle- man of the county, took command of Exeter, sent ex- press for the sheriff, Sir Richard Edgecumbe, of Cot- teyll, to come to his help, and as well as he could he put the city in a state of defence.1 Carew retired to Mohun's Ottery, when an order came to Dennys from the Court for his arrest.
Dennys, who desired Carew' s escape more than his capture, replied that for the moment he could not exe- cute the order. Mohun's Ottery could not be taken without cannon, and wet weather had made the roads impassable. Meantime he gave Sir Peter notice of his danger ; and Sir Peter, disposing in haste of his farm stock to raise a supply of money, crossed the country to Weymouth, embarked in a vessel which ' Mr Walter Raleigh ' had brought round to meet him, and sailed for France.2
One arm of the conspiracy was thus lopped off at the first blow. But, although Courtenay' s treachery was known, some days elapsed before the ill success of Carew
' Mr Gybbes,' could not be actually convicted of having been the perpe- trator, but he was ' vehemently sus- pected,' and, when examined, had used 'vile words.' — Depositions of John Prideaux : US. Mary, Domes-
tic, vol. ii. State Paper Office.
1 Ibid.
2 Depositions of John Pri- deaux : MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. ii. State Paper Office.
1 554.] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 323
was heard of in London. Courtenay had been trusted only so far as his intended share in the action had made it necessary to trust him, and the confederates were chiefly anxious that, having broken down, he should be incapacitated from doing further mischief by being re- stored to the Tower. Courtenay, wrote Noailles, has thrown away his chance of greatness, and will now probably die miserably. Lord Thomas Grey was heard to say that, as Courtenay had proved treacherous he would take his place, and run his chance for the crown or the scaffold.1
They would, perhaps, have still delayed till they had received authentic accounts from Devonshire ; but the arrest of Sir Edmund Warner, and one or two others, assured them that too much of their projects had transpired ; and on the 22nd of January Sir Thomas Wyatt called a meeting of his friends at Allingham Castle, on the Medway. The commons of Kent were the same brave, violent, and inflammable people whom John Cade, a century before, had led to London ; the country gentlemen were generally under Wyatt' s influence. Sir R. Southwell, the sheriff for the year, had been among the loudest objectors in Parlia- ment to the marriage ; and if Southwell joined in the rising he would bring with him Lord Abergavenny.2 Lord Cobham, Wyatt' s uncle, was known to wish him well. Sir Thomas Cheyne, the only other person of
1 NOAILLF.fi.
2 Confession of Anthony Norton : MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. iii. State Paper Office.
324 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31,
weight in the county, would be loyal to the Queen, but Wyatt had tampered with his tenants ; Cheyne could bring a thousand men into the field, but they would desert when led out, and there was nothing to fear from them. Whether Southwell and Cobham would act openly on Wyatt's side was the chief uncertainty; it was feared that Southwell might desire to keep within the limits of loyal opposition ; Cobham offered to send his sons, but ' the sending of sons/ some member of the meeting said, ' was the casting away of the Duke of Northum- berland ; their lives were as dear to them as my lord Cobham' s was to him ; let him come himself and set his foot by them/ 1 The result of the conference was a determination to make the venture. Thursday the 25th was the day agreed on for the rising, and the gentlemen present went in their several directions to prepare the people.
Meantime Gardiner was following the track which Courtenay had opened. He knew generally the leaders of the conspiracy, yet uncertain, in the universal per- plexity, how any one would act, he knew not whom to trust. To send Courtenay out of the way, he allowed a project to be set on foot for despatch- ing him on an embassy to Brussels ; and anxious, per- haps, not to alarm Mary too much, he simply told her what she and Renard knew already, that treasonable designs were on foot to make Elizabeth Queen. In a conversation about Elizabeth the chancellor agreed
1 Confession of Anthony Norton : MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. iii. State Paper Office.
1 5 54-] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 325
with Renard that it would be well to arrest her without delay. ' Were but the Emperor in England/ Gardiner said, ' she would be disposed of with little difficulty.' l Unfortunately, the spies had as yet detected no cause for suspicion on which the Government could act legiti- mately.
Mary, ignorant that she was in immediate danger, and only vaguely uneasy, looked to Philip's coming as the cure of her discomforts. 'Let the Prince come/ she said to Renard, ' and all will be well.' She said she would raise eight thousand men and keep them in London as his guard and hers ; she would send a fleet into the Channel and sweep the French into their harbours ; only let him come before Lent, which waa now but a fortnight distant : ' give him my affectionate love/ she added ; ' tell him that I will be all to him that a wife ought to be ; and tell him, too [delightful message to an already hesitating bridegroom], tell him to bring his own cook with him ' for fear he should be poisoned.2 The ceremony, could it have been accomplished, would have been a support to her ; but the forms from Home were long in coming. On the 24th the Em- peror was at last able to send a brief, which, in the absence of the bulls, he trusted might be enough to satisfy the Queen's scruples. Cuthbert Tunstal, who had been consecrated before the schism, might officiate, and the Pope would remove all irregularities afterwards.3
1 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS. • Ibid.
3 Charles V. to the Ambassadors in England, January 24 : Granvelh Papers, vol. iv.
326
&E1GN OF QUEEN MARY.
31.
Jan. 25.
But when the letter and the brief arrived Mary was at no leisure to be married.
Wyatt, having arranged the day for the rising, sent notice to the Duke of Suffolk, who was still in London. On the morning of the 25th an officer of the Court appeared at the Duke's house, with an intimation that he was to repair to the Queen's presence. Suffolk was in a riding dress — * Marry ! ' he said, ( I was coming to her Grace ; ye may see I am booted and spurred; I will but break my fast and go.'1 The officer retired. The Duke collected as much money as he could lay hands on — sent a servant to warn his brothers, and, though in bad health, mounted his horse and rode without stopping to Lutterworth, where on the Sunday following, Lord John and Lord Thomas Grey joined him.
The same morning of the 25th an alarm was rung on the church bells in the towns and villages in all parts of Kent ; and copies of a proclamation were scattered abroad, signifying that the Spaniards were coming to conquer the realm, and calling on loyal Englishmen to rise and resist them. Wyatt's standard was raised at Rochester, the point at which the insurgent forces were to unite ; his friends had done their work well, and in all directions the yeomen, and the peasants rose in arms.
1 Chronicle of Queen Mary. Baoardo says that Suffolk Avas sent for to take command of the force which was to he sent against Wyatt. But Wyatt's insurrection had not commenced, far less was any resolu-
tion taken to send a force against him. Noailles is, doubtless, right in saying that he was to have been arrested. — Ambassades. vol. iii. p. 48. -
1554-J
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
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Cheyne threw himself into Dover Castle : Southwell and Abergavenny held to the Queen as had been feared. Abergavenny raised two thousand men, and attacked and dispersed a party of insurgents under Sir Henry Isly on Wrotham Heath ; but Abergavenny 's followers deserted him immediately afterwards, and marched to Rochester to Wyatt. Southwell could do nothing ; he believed that the rebellion would spread to London, and that Mary would be lost.1
On the s6th, Wyatt, being master of Ro- chester and the Medway, seized the Queen's ships that were in the river, took possession of their guns and ammunition, proclaimed Abergavenny, Southwell, and another gentleman traitors to the commonwealth,2 and set himself to organize the force which continued to pour in upon him. Messengers, one after another, hurried to London with worse and worse news ; North- ampton was arrested and sent to the Tower, but Suifolk and his brothers were gone ; and, after all which had
1 Southwell to Sir William Petre : MS. Mary, Domestic, State Paper Office.
2 'You shall understand that Henry Lord of Abergavenny ; Robert Southwell, knight, and George Clarke, gentleman, have most traitorously, to the disturbance of the commonwealth, stirred and raised up the Queen's most loving subjects of this realm, to [maintain the] most wicked and devilish enter- prise of certain wicked and perverse councillors, to the utter confusion of
this her Grace's realm, and the per- petual servitude of all her most lov- ing subjects. In consideration whereof, we SirThos. Wyatt, knight, Sir George Harper, knight, Anthony Knyvet, esq., with all the faithful gentlemen of Kent, with the trusty commons of the same, do pronounce and declare the said Henry Lord of Abergavenny, Robert Southwell, and George Clarke to be traitors to God, the Crown, and the commonwealth.' — MS. Ibid.
328 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. |cn. 31.
been said of raising troops, when the need came for them there were none beyond the ordinary guard. The Queen had to rely only on the musters of the city and the personal retainers of the council and the other peers ; both of which resources she had but too much reason to distrust. In fact, the council, dreading the use to which the Queen might apply a body of regular troops, had resisted all her endeavours to raise such a body ; Paget had laboured loyally for a fortnight, and at the end he assured the Queen on his knees that he had not been allowed to enlist a man.1 Divided on all other points, the motley group of ministers agreed to keep Mary powerless ; with the exception of Gardiner and Paget, they were all, perhaps, unwilling to chock too soon a demonstration which, kept within bounds, might prove the justice of their own objections.
The Queen, however, applied to the cor- Jan. 27.
poration of the city, and obtained a promise of five hundred men ; she gave the command to the Duke of Norfolk, on whose integrity she knew that she could rely ; and, sending a herald to Rochester with a pardon, if the rebels would disperse, she despatched Nor- folk, Sir Henry Jerningham, and the young Lord Ormond, to Gravesend without waiting for an answer. The city bands were to follow them immediately. Afraid that Elizabeth would fly before she could be secured, the Queen wrote a letter to her studiously gracious, in which she told her that, in the disturbed state of the
Renard to Charles V, ; Rolls House MSS.
I554-]
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country, she was uneasy for her safety, and recommended her to take shelter with herself in the palace.1 Had Elizabeth obeyed, she would have been instantly arrested ; but she was ill, and wrote that she was un- able to move. The next day evidence came into Gardiner's hands which he trusted would consign her at last to the scaffold.
The King of France had sent a message to the con- federates that he had eighty vessels in readiness, with eighteen companies of infantry, and that he waited to learn on what part of the coast they should effect a landing.2 The dangerous communication had been made known to the Court. The French ambassador had been narrowly watched, and one of his couriers who left London on the 26th with despatches for Paris was fol- lowed to Rochester, where he saw, or attempted to see, Wyatt. The courier, after leaving the town, was way- laid by a party of Lord Cobham's servants in the dis- guise of insurgents ; his despatches were taken from him and sent to the chancellor, who found in the packet a letter of Noailles to the King in cypher, and a copy of Elizabeth's answer to the Queen. Although in the lat-
1 STRYPE, vol. v. p. 127. Mr Tytler appeals to this letter as an evidence of the good feeling of the Queen towards her sister ; but many and genuine as were Mary's good qualities, she may not be credited with a regard for Elizabeth. Re- nard's letters explain her real senti- ments, and account for her outward graciousness. She had already con-
sulted with Renard and Gardiner on the necessity of sending her to the Tower ; and, on the 2Qth of January, as the princess did not avail herself of the Queen's proposal, Renard de- scribes himself to the Emperor as pressing her immediate arrest. — Rolls House MSS.
~ Renard (o Charles V., January 29: Rolls House MSS.
330
&E1GN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31.
ter there was no treason, yet it indicated a suspicious
correspondence. The cypher, could it be read, might
be expected to contain decisive evidence against her.1
Saturday, Meantime the herald had not been admit-
Jan. 27. ted int() Rochester. He had read the Queen's
message on the bridge, and, being answered by Wyatt's
followers that they required no pardon, for they had
done no wrong, he retired. Sir George Harper, who
was joint commander with "Wyatt, stole away the same
evening to Gravesend, and presented himself to Norfolk.
The rebels, he said, were discontented and irresolute ; for
himself he desired to accept the Queen 's pardon, which
he was ready to earn by doing service against them ; if
the Duke would advance without delay, he would find
no resistance, and Wyatt would fall into his hands.
Sunday, The London bands arrived the following
Jan. 28. afternoon, and Norfolk determined to take
Harper's advice. The weather was 'very terrible.'
1 A letter from Gardiner to Sir William Petre is in the State Paper Office, part of which he wrote with the cypher open under his eyes in the first heat of the discovery. The breadth and depth of the pen-strokes express the very pulsation of his passion: —
'As I was in hand with other matters,' the paragraph runs, ' was delivered such letters as in times past I durst not have opened ; but now, somewhat heated with these treasons, I waxed bolder, wherein I trust I shall be borne with ; where- in hap helpeth me, for they be worth
the breaking up an I could wholly decypher them, wherein I will spend somewhat of my leisure, if I can have any. But this appeareth, that the letter written from my Lady Elizabeth to the Queen's Highness, now late in her excuse, is taken a matter worthy to be sent into France ; for I have the copy of it in the French Ambassador's packet. I will know what can be done in the decyphering, and to-morrow remit that I cannot do unto you.' — Gardiner to Petre : MS. Mary, Do- mestic, State Paper Office.
1554-1 THE SPANISH MARRIAGR 331
On Monday morning it blew so hard that no Monday, boat could live ; Wyatt, therefore, would be Jan' 29- unable to escape by the river, and an immediate advance was resolved upon. Sir Thomas Cheyne was coming up from Dover ; Lord William Howard was looked for hourly, and Abergavenny was again exerting himself: Lord Cobham had urged the Duke to wait a few days, and had told him that he had certain knowledge from Wyatt himself that ' the Londoners would not fight : ' 1 but Norfolk was confident ; the men had assured him of their loyalty ; and at four o'clock on Monday afternoon he was on the sloping ground facing towards Rochester, within cannon-shot of the bridge. The Duke was him- self in front, with Ormond, Jerningham, and eight ' field-pieces/ which he had brought with him. A group of insurgents were in sight across the water, a gun was placed in position to bear upon them ; and the gunner was blowing his match, when Sir Edward Bray gallop- ed up, crying out that the ' white coats/ as the London men were called, were changing sides. The Duke had fallen into a trap which Harper had laid for him. Turn- ing round he saw Brett, the London captain, with all his men, and with Harper at his side, advancing and shouting, ' A Wyatt ! a Wyatt ! we are all English- men ! ' The first impulse was to turn the gun upon them ; the second, and more prudent, was to spring on his horse, and gallop with half a dozen others for his life. His whole force had deserted, and guns, money,
1 Norfolk to the Council from Gravesend, Sunday, January 28, Mon- day, January 29 : MS. Domestic, Mary, State Paper Office.
J32
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY,
[CH. 31.
baggage, and five hundred of the best troops in London fell into the insurgents' hands, and swelled their ranks.
No sooner was the Duke gone, than Wyatt in person came out over the bridge. 'As many as will tarry with us/ he cried, ' shall be welcome ; as many as will depart, let them go.' Yery few accepted the latter offer. Three parts, even of Norfolk's private attendants, took service with the rebel leader.
The prestige of success decided all who were waver- ing in the county. Abergavenny was wholly forsaken T Southwell escaped to the Court ; Cheyne wrote to the council that he was no longer sure of any one ; ' the abominable treason of those that came with the Duke of Norfolk had infected the whole population.' 1 Cobham continued to hold off, but his sons came into Rochevster the evening of the Duke's flight; and Wyatt sent a message to the father expressing his sorrow that he had been hitherto backward ; promising to forgive him, however, and re- quiring him to be in the camp the next day, when the army would march on London. Cobham still hesitating, two thousand men were at the gates of his house2 by day- break the next morning. He refused to lower the drawbridge, but the chains were cut with a cannon-shot, the gates were blown open, and the
Jan. 30.
1 * It is a great deal more than strange,' he added, ' to see the beast- liness of the people, to see how earnestly they be bent in this their most Hevilish enterprise, and will by no means be persuaded the contrary but that it is for the commonweal of
all the realm.' — Cheyne to the Conn, cil : MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. iii.
2 Cowling Castle, a place already famous in English Reforming his- tory as the residence of Sir John Oldcastle.
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THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
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Jan. 31.
rebels were storming in when his servants forced him to surrender. The house was pillaged; an oath was thrust on Cobham that he would join, which he took with the intention of breaking it ; and the rebels, per- haps seeing cause to distrust him, carried him off to Wyatt as a prisoner.1 That night the insur- gents rested at Gravesend. The next day they reached Dartford. Their actual numbers were in- significant, but their strength was the disaffection of London, where the citizens were too likely to follow the example which had been set at Rochester.
Mary's situation was now really alarming : she was without money, notwithstanding the Jews : she had no troops ; of all her ministers Paget alone was sincerely anxious to do her service ; for Gardiner, on the subject of the marriage, was as unwilling as ever. It was rumoured that the King of Denmark intended to unite with the French in support of the revolutionists, and Renard began calmly to calculate that, should this re- port prove true, the Queen could not be saved. Pem- broke and Clinton offered to raise another force in the
1 He contrived to send a letter to the Queen the evening of the day on which his house was taken. Af- ter describing the scene, he added : ' If your Grace will assemble forces in convenient numbers, they not being above 2000 men, and yet not 500 of them able and good armed men, but rascals and rakehells such as live by spoil, I doubt not but your Grace shall have the victory.'
— Cobham to the Queen : MS. State Paper Office. But Cobham under-estimated the numbers, and undervalued the composition of Wyatt's forces, perhaps intention- ally, lienard, who is generally ac- curate, says that the rebels at this time amounted to three thousand ; Noailles says, twelve or fifteen thou- sand.
334 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31.
city and fight Wyatt ; but so far as Mary could tell, they would be as likely to turn against her as to fight in her defence ; and she declined their services. Renard offered Gardiner assistance from the Low Countries — Gardiner replied with extreme coldness that he had no desire to see Flemish soldiers in England — and the council generally were ' so strange ' in their manner, and so languid in their action, that the ambassador could not assure himself that they were not Wyatt 's real instigators. Not a man had been raised to protect the Queen, and part of her own guard had been among the deserters at Rochester. She appealed to the honour of the Lords to take measures for her personal safety ; but they did nothing, and, it seemed, would do nothing ; if London rose, they said merely, she must retire to Windsor.
The aspect of affairs was so threatening that Renard believed that the marriage at least would have to be re- linquished. It seemed as if it could be accomplished only with the help of an invading army ; and although Mary would agree to any measure which would secure Philip, the presence of foreign troops, as the Emperor himself was aware, could only increase the exasperation.1 The Queen's resolution, however, grew with her dif- ficulties. If she could not fight she would not yield ; and, taking matters into her own hands, she sent Sir Thomas Cornwallis and Sir Edward Hastings to Dart- ford, with directions to speak with Wyatt, if possible,
1 Renard to the Emperor, Janu- I Emperor to Renard, February 4 : ary 29 : Rolls House MSS. The | Granvelk Papers, vol. iv. p. 204.
IS54-]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
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alone ; to tell him that she 'mar veiled a this demeanour,' ' rising as a subject to impeach her marriage ;' she was ready to believe, however, that he thought himself act- ing in the interests of the commonwealth ; she would appoint persons to talk over the subject with him, and if it should appear that the marriage would not, as she supposed, be beneficial to the realm, she would sacrifice her wishes.1
The message was not strictly honest, for the Queen had no real intention of sacrificing anything. She de- sired merely to gain time ; and, should Wyatt refuse, as she expected, she wished to place herself in a better position to appeal to her subjects for help.2 But the move under this aspect was skilful and successful ; when Cornwallis and Hastings discharged their commission, Wyatt replied that he would rather be trusted than trust ; he would argue the marriage with pleasure, but he required first the custody of the Tower, and of the Queen's person, and four of the council must place themselves in his hands as hostages.3
Had Wyatt, said Noailles, been able to reach Lon- don simultaneously with this answer, he would have found the gates open and the whole population eager to give him welcome. To his misfortune he lingered on the way, and the Queen had time to use his words against him. The two gentlemen returned indignant
1 Instructions to Sir Thomas Cornwallis and Sir Edward Hast- ings : MS. State Paper Office.
2 Renard to the Emperor : Rolls House MSS.
3 HOLINSHED; NOAILLES.
33* REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31.
at his insolence. The next morning: Count Feb. i.
Egmont waited on Mary to say that he and
his companions were at her service, and would stand by her to their death. Perplexed as she was, Egmont said he found her ' marvellously firm/ The marriage, she felt, must, at all events, be postponed for the present ; the Prince could not come till the insurrection was at an end ; and, while she was grateful for the offer, she not only thought it best to decline the ambassador's kind- ness, but she recommended them, if possible, to leave London and the country without delay. Their party was large enough to irritate the people, and too small to be of use. She bade Egmont, therefore, tell the Emperor that from the first she had put her trust in God, and that she trusted in Him still ; and for them- selves, she told them to go at once, taking her best wishes with them. They obeyed. Six Antwerp mer- chant sloops were in the river below the bridge, waiting to sail. They stole on board, dropped down the tide, and were gone.
The afternoon of the same day the Queen herself, with a studied air of dejection,1 rode through the streets to the Guildhall, attended by Gardiner and the remnant of the guard. In St Paul's Churchyard she met Pem- broke, and slightly bowed as she passed him. Gardiner was observed to stoop to his saddle. The hall was
1 Vous, asseurant, sire, comme celluy qui 1'a veu, que scai chant la dicte dame aller au diet lieu, je me deliberay en cape de veoir de quelle visaige elle et sa compaignie y alloi-
ent ; que je congneus estre aussy triste et desploree qu'ilse peult pen- ser. — Noailles to the King of France. Feb. i.
IS54-] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 337
crowded with citizens : some brought there by hatred, some by respect, many by pity, but more by curiosity. When the Queen entered she stood forward on the steps, above the throng, and, in her deep man's voice, she spoke to them.1
Her subjects had risen in rebellion against her, she said ; she had been told that the cause was her intended marriage with the Prince of Spain ; and, believing that it was the real cause, she had offered to hear and to re- spect their objections. Their leader had betrayed in his answer his true motives ; he had demanded posses- sion of the Tower of London and of her own person. She stood there, she said, as lawful Queen of England, and she appealed to the loyalty of her great city to save her from a presumptuous rebel, who, under specious pretences, intended to ' subdue the laws to his will, and to give scope to rascals and forlorn persons to make general havoc and spoil.' As to her marriage, she had supposed that so magnificent an alliance could not have failed to be agreeable to her people. To herself, and, she was not afraid to say, to her council, it seemed to promise high advantage to the commonwealth. Mar- riage, in itself, was indifferent to her ; she had been invited to think of it by the desire of the country that she should have an heir ; but she could continue happy in the virgin state in which she had hitherto passed her life. She would call a Parliament and the subject should be considered in all its bearings : if, on mature
La voce grossa et quasi di huomo. — Giovanni Michele : ELLIS, vol. ii.
i
series ii.
VOL. v. 22
338 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [011.31.
consideration, the Lords and Commons of England should refuse to approve of the Prince of Spain as a fitting husband for her, she promised, on the word of a Queen, that she would think of him no more.
The spectacle of her distress won the sympathy of her audience ; the holdness of her bearing commanded their respect ; the promise of a Parliament satisfied, or seemed to satisfy, all reasonable demands : and among the wealthy citizens there was no desire to see London in possession of an armed mob, in whom the Anabaptist leaven was deeply interfused. The speech, therefore, had remarkable success. The Queen returned to West- minster, leaving the corporation converted to the pru- dence of supporting her. Twenty-five thousand men were enrolled the next day for the protection of the Crown and the capital ; Lord William Howard was associated with the mayor in the command ; and Wyatt, who had reached Greenwich on Thursday, and had wasted two days there, uncertain whether he should not cross the river in boats to Blackwall, arrived Saturday, on Saturday morning at Southwark, to find Feb. 3. the gates closed on London Bridge, and the drawbridge flung down into the water.
Noailles, for the first time, believed now that the insurrection would fail. Success or failure, in fact, would turn on the reception which the midland coun- ties had given to the Duke of Suffolk ; and of Suffolk authentic news had been brought to London that morning.
On the flight of the Duke being known at the Court,
1554-J
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it was supposed immediately that lie intended to pro- claim his daughter and Guilford Dudley. Rumour, indeed, turned the supposition into fact,1 and declared that he had called on the country to rise in arms for Queen Jane. But Suffolk's plan was identical with Wyatt's ; he had carried with him a duplicate of Wyatt's proclamation, and accompanied by his brother, he pre- sented himself in the market-place at Leicester on the morning of Monday the 29th. Lord Hunt- Monday, ingdon had followed close upon his track from Jan- 29- London ; but he assured the Mayor of Leicester that the Earl of Huntingdon was coming,, not to oppose, but to join with him. No harm was intended to the Queen ; he was ready to die in her defence ; his object was only to save England from the dominion of foreigners.
In consequence of these protestations, he was allowed to read his proclamation ; the people were indifferent ; but he called about him a few scores of his tenants and retainers from his own estates in the country ; and on Tuesday morning, while the insurgents in Kent were attacking Cowling Castle, Suffolk rode out of Leicester, in full armour, at the head of his troops, intending first to move on Coventry, then to take Kenilworth and Warwick, and so to advance on London. The garrison at Warwick had been tampered with, and was reported to be ready to rise. The gates of Coventry he expected
1 ' The Duke has raised evil-dis- posed persons, minding her Grace's destruction, and to advance the Lady Jane, his daughter, and Guilford Dudley, her husband'— Royal Pro-
clamation : MS. State Paper Office. Printed in the additional Notes to Mr NICHOLS'S Chronicle of Queen Mary. Baoardo says that the Duke actually proclaimed Lady Jane.
34o REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31.
to find open. He had sunt his proclamation thither the day before, by a servant, and he had friends within the walls who had undertaken to place the town at his dis- posal.
The state of Coventry was probably the state of most other towns in England. The inhabitants were divided. The mayor and aldermen, the fathers of families, and the men of property, were conservatives, loyal to the Queen, to the mass, and to ' the cause of order/ The young and enthusiastic, supported by others who had good reasons for being in opposition to established au- thorities, were those who had placed themselves in cor- respondence with the Duke of Suffolk.
Suffolk's servant (his name was Thomas Rampton), on reaching the town, on Monday evening, made a mis- take in the first person to whom he addressed himself, and received a cold answer. Two others of the towns- men, however, immediately welcomed him, and told him that ' the whole place was at his lord's command- ment, except certain of the town council, who feared that, if good fellows had the upper hand, their extremi- ties heretofore should be remembered.'1 They took Rampton into a house, where, presently, another man entered of the same way of thinking, and, in his own eyes, a man of importance. ' My Lord's quarrel is right well known,' this person said, ' it is God's quarrel, let him come; let him come, and make no stay, for this
Office.
1 Hampton's Confession : MS. Domestic, Mary, vol. iii. State Paper
i 5 54- 1 THE SPANISH MARRIA GE. 341
town is his own. I say to you assuredly this town is his own. I am it.J
It was now night; no time was to be lost, the townsmen said. They urged Hampton to return at once to Suffolk, and hasten his movements. They would themselves read the proclamation at the market-cross forthwith, and raise the people. Rampton, who had ridden far, and was weary, wished to wait till the morn- ing ; if they were so confident of success, a few hours could make no difference : but it appeared shortly tha^ the ' good fellows ' in .Coventry were not exclusively under the influence of piety and patriotism. If a rising commenced in the darkness, it was admitted that ' un- doubted spoil and peradventure destruction of many rich men would ensue/ and with transactions of this kind the Duke's servant was unwilling to connect him- self.
Thus the hours wore away, and no resolution was arrived at ; and, in the mean time, the town council had received -a warning to be on their guard. Before day- break the constables were on the alert, the decent citi- zens took possession of the gates, and the conspirators had lost their opportunity. In the afternoon Suffolk arrived with a hundred horse under the walls, but there was no admission for him. Whilst he was hesitating what course to pursue, a messenger came in to say that the Earl of Huntingdon was at Warwick. The plot for "the revolt of the garrison had been detected, and the whole country was on the alert. The people had no desire to see the Spaniards in England ; but sober quiet
342 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31,
farmers and burgesses would not rise at the call of the friend of Northumberland, and assist in bringing back the evil days of anarchy.
The Greys had now only to provide for their per- sonal safety.
Suffolk had an estate a few miles distan^, called Astley Park, to which the party retreated from Coven- try. There the Duke shared such money as he had with him among his men, and bade them shift for them- selves. Lord Thomas Grey changed coats with a serv- ant, and rode off to "Wales to .join Sir James Crofts. Suffolk himself, who was ill, took refuge with his bro- ther, Lord John, in the cottage of one of his gamekeep- ers, where they hoped to remain hidden till the hue and cry should be over, and they could escape abroad.
The cottage was considered insecure. Two bowshots south of Astley Church there stood in the park an old decaying tree, in the hollow of which the father of Lady Jane Grey concealed himself ; and there, for two winter days and a night, he was left without food. A pro- clamation had been put out by Huntingdon for Suffolk's apprehension, and the keeper, either tempted by the reward, or frightened by the menace against all who should give him shelter, broke his trust — a rare example of disloyalty — and going to Warwick Castle, undertook to betray his master's hiding-place. A party of troopers were despatched, with the keeper for a guide ; and, on arriving at Astley, they found that the Duke, unable to endure the cold and hunger longer, had crawled out of the tree, and was warming himself
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by the cottage fire. Lord John was discovered buried under some bundles of hay.1 They were carried off at once to the Tower, whither Lord Thomas Grey and Sir James Crofts, who had failed as signally in Wales, soon after followed them.2
The account of his confederates' failure saluted Wyatt on his arrival in Southwark, on the Saturday, 3rd of February. The intelligence was being Feb* 3* published, at the moment, in the streets of London ; "Wyatt himself, at the same time, was proclaimed traitor, and a reward of a hundred pounds was offered for his capture, dead or alive. The peril, however, was far from over ; Wyatt replied to the proclamation by wear- ing his name, in large letters, upon his cap ; the success of the Queen's speech in the city irritated the council, who did not choose to sit still under the imputation of having approved of the Spanish marriage. They de- clared everywhere, loudly and angrily, that they had not approved of it, and did not approve; in the city itself public feeling again wavered, and fresh parties of the train-bands crossed the water and deserted. The behaviour of Wyatt 's followers gave the lie to the Queen's charges against them : the prisons in South- wark were not opened ; property was respected scru- pulously ; the only attempt at injury was at Winchester House, and there it was instantly repressed ; the iii-
1 Renard to the Emperor : Rolls House MSS.
2 I follow Baoardo in the ac- count of the Duke's capture. Re- nard says that he was found in the
tree by a little dog : ' qu'a este" grand commencement du miracle pour le succes prospeve des affaires de la dicte dame.' — Renard to the Emperor, February 8 : MS.
344 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31.
habitants of the Borough entertained them with warm hospitality ; and the Queen, notwithstanding her efforts, found herself as it were besieged, in her principal city, by a handful of commoners, whom no one ventured, or no one could be trusted, to attack. So matters continued through Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Tho lawyers at Westminster Hall pleaded in harness, and the judges wore harness under their robes ; Doctor Weston sang mass in harness before the Queen ; tradesmen at- tended in harness behind their counters. The metropolis, on both sides of the water, was in an attitude of armed expectation, yet there was no movement, no demonstra- tion on either side of popular feeling. The ominous strangeness of the situation appalled even Mary herself.1 By this time the intercepted letter of Noailles had been decyphered. It proved, if more proof was wanted, the correspondence between the ambassador and the conspirators ; it explained the object of the rising — the Queen was to be dethroned in favour of her sister ; and it was found, also, though names were not mentioned, that the plot had spread far upwards among the noblemen by whom Mary was surrounded. Evidence of Elizabeth's complicity it did not contain ; while, to Gardiner's mortification, it showed that Cour- tenay, in his confessions to himself, had betrayed the guilt of others, but had concealed part of his own. In an anxiety to shield him the chancellor pronounced the cypher of Courtenay's name to be unintelligible. The
1 NOATLLES.
1 5 54.] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 345
Queen, placed the letter in tlie hands of Renard, by whom it was instantly read, and the chancellor's humour was not improved ; Mary had the mortification of feel- ing that she was herself the last object of anxiety either to him or to any of her council ; though Wyatt was at the gates of London, the council could only spend the time in passionate recriminations ; Paget blamed Gar- diner for his religious intolerance ; Gardiner blamed Paget for having advised the marriage; some exclaimed against Courtenay, some against Elizabeth ; but, of acting, all alike seemed incapable. If the Queen was in danger, the council said, she might fly to Windsor, or to Calais, or she might go to the Tower. ' What- ever happens/ she exclaimed to Eenard, ' I am the wife of the Prince of Spain ; crown, rank, life, all shall go before I will take any other husband/1
The position, however, could not be of long con- tinuance. Could Wyatt once enter London, he assured himself of success ; but the gates on the Bridge con- tinued closed. Cheyne and Southwell had collected a body of men on whom they could rely, and were coming up behind from Rochester. Wyatt desired to return and fight them, and then cross the water at Greenwich, as had been before proposed ; but his followers feared that he meant to escape ; a backward movement would not be permitted, and his next effort was to ascertain whether the passage over the Bridge could be forced.
London Bridge was then a long, narrow street. The
1 Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS. February 5-
346 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31.
gate was at the South wark extremity ; the drawbridge was near the middle. On Sunday or Monday night Wy&tt scaled the leads of the gatehouse, climbed into a window, and descended the stairs into the lodge. The porter and his wife were nodding over the fire. The rebel leader bade them on their lives be still, and stole along in the darkness to the chasm from which the draw- bridge had been cut away. There, looking across the black gulf where the river was rolling below, he saw the dusky mouths of four gaping cannon, and beyond them, in the torch-light, Lord Howard himself, keeping watch with the guard : neither force nor skill could make a way into the city by London Bridge.
The course which he should follow was determined for him. The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, a soldier and a Catholic, had looked over the water with angry eyes at the insurgents collected within reach of his guns, and had asked the Queen for per- mission to fire upon them. The Queen, afraid of pro- voking the people, had hitherto refused ; on the Mon- day, however, a Tower boat, passing the Southwark side of the water, was hailed by Wyatt' s sentries ; the water- men refused to stop, the sentries fired, and one of the men in the boat was killed. The next morning (whether permission had been given at last, or not, was never known), the guns on the White Tower, the Devil's Tower, and all the bastions, were loaded and aimed, and notice was sent over that the fire was about to open. The inhabitants addressed themselves, in agitation, to Wyatt ; and Wyatt, with a sudden resolu-
1 5 54-] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 347
tion, half felt to be desperate, resolved to march for Kingston Bridge, cross the Thames, and come back on London. His friends in the city promised to receive him, . could he reach Ludgate by daybreak on Wed- nesday.
On Tuesday morning, therefore, Shrove Tuesday, which the Queen had hoped to spend more happily than in facing an army of insurgents, "Wyatt, accompanied by not more than fifteen hundred men, pushed out of Southwark. He had cannon with him, which delayed his march, but at four in the afternoon he reached Kingston. Thirty feet of the bridge were broken away, and a guard of three hundred men were on the other side ; but the guard fled after a few rounds from the guns, and Wyatt, leaving his men to refresh themselves in the town, went to work to repair the passage. A row of barges lay on the opposite bank ; three sailors swam across, attached ropes to them, and towed them over; and, the barges being moored where the bridge was broken, beams and planks were laid across them, and a road was made of sufficient strength to bear the cannon and the waggons.
By eleven o'clock at night the river was crossed, and the march was resumed. The weather was still wild, the roads miry and heavy, and through the winter night the motley party plunged along. The Rochester men had, most of them, gone home, and those who remained were the London deserters, gentlemen who had com promised themselves too deeply to hope for pardon, or fanatics, who believed they were fighting the Lord's
348
REIGN OF QUEEN MAR Y.
[cir. 31.
battle, and some of the Protestant clergy. Ponet, the late Bishop of Winchester, was with them ; William Thomas, the late clerk of the council ; Sir George Har- per, Anthony Knyvet, Lord Cobham's sons, Pejham, who had been a spy of Northumberland's on the Con- tinent,1 and others more or less conspicuous in the worst period of the late reign.
From the day that Wyatt came to Southwark the whole guard had been under arms at Whitehall, and a number of them, to the agitation of the Court ladies, were stationed in the Queen's ante-chamber. But the guard was composed of dangerous elements. Sir Hum- frey Radcliff, the lieutenant, was a ' favourer of the gospel ; ' 2 and the ' Hot Gospeller ' himself, on his re- covery from his fever, had returned to his duties.3 No
1 The Regent Mary to the Am- bassadors in England : Granvelle Papers, vol . iv.
2 UNDERBILL'S Narrative.
3 Underbill, however, was too notorious a person to be allowed to remain on duty at such a time of danger.
'When Wyatt -was come to Southwark,' be says, ' the pension- ers were commmded to watch in armour that night at the Court. . . . After supper, I put on my armour, as the rest did, for we were appointed to watch all the night. So, being all armed, we came up into the chamber of presence with our pole- axes in our bands, wherewith the ladies were very fearful. Some la- menting, crying, and wringing their
hands, said, Alas ! there is some great mischief toward : we shall all be de- stroyed this night. What a sight is this, to see the Queen's chamber full of armed men : the like was never seen nor beard of! Mr Norris, chief usher of Queen Mary's privy chamber, was appointed to call the watch to see if any Avere lacking ; unto whom, Moore, the clerk of our check, delivered the book of our names ; and when be came to my name, What, said he, what doth be here ? Sir, said the clerk, he is here ready to serve as the rest be. Nay, by God's body, said he, that heretic shall not watch here. Givo me a pen. So he struck my name out of the book.'
1 554.] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 349
additional precautions had been taken, nor does it seem that, on Wyatt's departure, his movements were watched. Kingston Bridge having been broken, his immediate approach was certainly unlocked for ; nor was it till past midnight that information came to the palace that the passage had been forced, and that the insurgents were coming directly back upon London. Between two and three in the morning the Queen was called from her bed. Gardiner, who had been, with others of the council, arguing with her in favour of Courtenay the preceding day, was in waiting ; he told her that her barge was at the stairs to carry her up the river, and she must take shelter instantly at Windsor.
Without disturbing herself, the Queen sent for Re- nard. Shall I go or stay ? she asked.
Unless your Majesty desire to throw away your crown, Renard answered, you. will remain here till the last extremity ; your flight will be known, the city will rise, seize the Tower, and release the prisoners ; the heretics will massacre the priests, and Elizabeth will be proclaimed Queen.
The Lords were divided. Gardiner insisted again that she must and should go. The others were uncer- tain, or inclined to the opinion of Renard. At last Mary said that she would be guided by Pembroke and Clinton. If those two would undertake to stand by her, she would remain and see out the struggle.1
They were not present, and were sent for on the
1 Renard to Charles V., February 8 : Rolls House MSS.
$$b REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [en. 3t
spot. Pembroke for weeks past had certainly wavered ; Lord Thomas Grey believed at one time that he had gained him over, and to the last felt assured of his neu- trality. Happily for Mar}^ happily, it must be said, for England — for the Reformation was not a cause to be won by such enterprises as that of Sir Thomas Wyatt — he decided on supporting the Queen, and pro- mised to defend her with his life. At four o'clock in the morning drums went round the city, calling the train-bands to an instant muster at Charing Cross. Pembroke's conduct determined the young lords and gentlemen about the Court, who with their servants were swiftly mounted and under arms ; and by eight, more than ten thousand men were stationed along the ground, then an open field, which slopes from Piccadilly to Pall Mall. The road or causeway on which Wyatt was expected to advance, ran nearly on the site of Pic- cadilly itself. An old cross stood near the head of St James's Street, where guns were placed ; and that no awkward accident like that at Rochester might happen on the first collision, the gentlemen, who formed four squadrons of horse, were pushed forwards towards Hyde Park Corner.
Wyatt, who ought to have been at the gate of the city two hours before, had been delayed in the mean time by the breaking down of a gun in the heavy road at Brentford. Brett, the captain of the city deserters, Ponet, Harper, and others, urged Wyatt to leave the gun where it lay and keep his appointment. "Wyatt, however, insisted on waiting till the carriage could be
1554-1 THE SPANISH MARR1AG&. 3$!
repaired, although in the eyes of every one but himself the delay was obvious ruin. Harper, seeing him obsti- nate, stole away a second time to gain favour for him- self by carrying news to the Court. Ponet, unambi- tious of martyrdom, told him he would pray God for his success, and, advising Brett to shift for himself, made away with others towards the sea and Germany.1 It was nine o'clock before Wyatt brought the draggled remnant of his force, wet, hungry, and faint with their night march, up the hill from Knightsbridge. Near Hyde Park Corner a lane turned off; and here Pem- broke had placed a troop of cavalry. The insurgents straggled on without order. When half of them had passed, the horse dashed out, and cut them in two, and all who were behind were dispersed or captured. Wyatt, caring now only to press forward, kept his immediate fol- lowers together, and went straight on. The Queen's guns opened, and killed three of his men ; but, lower- ing his head, he dashed at them and over them ; then, turning to the right, to avoid the train-bands, he struck down towards St James's, where his party again separ- ated. Knyvet, and the young Cobhams, leaving St James's to their left, crossed the park to Westminster. Wyatt went right along the present Pali-Mall, past the line of the citizens. They had but to move a few steps to intercept his passage, close in, and take him; but not a man advanced, not a hand was lifted ; where the way was narrow they drew aside to let him pass. At
1 Letter of William Markham : Tanner MSS. Bodleian Library, Compare STOW.
352 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31.
Charing Cross Sir John Gage was stationed, with part of the guard, some horse, and among them Courtenay, who in the morning had been heard to say he would not obey orders ; he was as good a man as Pembroke. As Wyatt came up Courtenay turned his horse towards Whitehall, and began to move off, followed by Lord Worcester. ' Fie ! my Lord/ Sir Thomas Cornwallis cried to him, ' is this the action of a gentleman ? ' 1 But deaf, or heedless, or treacherous, he galloped off, calling Lost, lost ! all is lost ! and carried panic to the Court. The guard had broken at his flight, and came hurrying behind him. Some cried that Pembroke had played false. Shouts of treason rung through the palace. The Queen, who had been watching from the palace gallery, alone retained her presence of mind. If others durst not stand the trial against the traitors, she said, she herself would go out into the field and try the quarrel, and die with those that would serve her.2
At this moment Knyvet and the Cobhams, who had gone round by the old palace, came by the gates as the fugitive guard were struggling in. Infinite confusion followed. Gage was rolled in the dirt, and three of the judges with him. The guard shrunk away into the offices and kitchens to hide themselves. But Knyvet's men made no attempt to enter. They contented them- selves with shooting a few arrows, and then hurried on to Charing Cross to rejoin Wyatt. At Charing Cross, however, their way was now closed by a company of
1 Renard to Charles V., February 8 : Rolls House MSS.
2 HOLINSHED.
1 5 54. ] THE SPA NISH MARRIA GE. 353
archers, who had been sent back by Pembroke to pro- tect the Court. Sharp fighting followed, and the cries rose so loud as to be heard on the leads of the White Tower. At last the leaders forced their way up the Strand ; the rest of the party were cut up, dispersed, or taken.1
Wyatt himself, meanwhile, followed by three hun- dred men, had hurried on through lines of troops who still opened to give him passage. He passed Temple Bar, along Fleet Street, and reached Ludgate. The gate was open as he approached, when some one seeing a number of men coming up, exclaimed, ' These be Wyatt's antients.' Muttered curses were heard among the by-standers ; but Lord Howard was on the spot ; the gates, notwithstanding the murmurs, were instantly closed ; and when Wyatt knocked, Howard's voice an- swered, ' Avaunt ! traitor ; thou shalt not come in here/ * I have kept touch,' Wyatt exclaimed ; but his enter- prise was hopeless now. He sat down upon a bench outside the Belle Sauvage Yard. His followers scat- tered from him among the by-lanes and streets ; and, of the three hundred, twenty-four alone remained, among whom were now Knyvet and one of the young Cobhams. With these few he turned at last, in the forlorn hope that the train-bands would again open to let him pass. Some of Pembroke's horse were coming up. He fought
1 The dress of the Londoners who came with "Wyatt being the city uniform, they were distinguished by
night march. The cry of Pembroke's men in the fight was 'Down with the daggle-tails ! '
the dirt upon their legs from their
VOL v. 23
354 &EIGN OF Q UEEN MA& Y. [CH. 3 i .
his way through them to Temple Bar, where a herald cried, 'Sir, ye were best to yield; the day is gone against you ; perchance ye may find the Queen merci- ful/ Sir Maurice Berkeley was standing near him on horseback, to whom, feeling that further resistance was useless, he surrendered his sword ; and Berkeley, to save him from being cut down in the tumult, took him up upon his horse. Others in the same way took up Kny- vet and Cobham, Brett and two more. The six prison- ers were carried through the Strand back to Westminster, the passage through the city being thought dangerous ; and from Whitehall Stairs, Mary herself looking on from a window of the palace, they were borne off in a barge to the Tower.
The Queen had triumphed, triumphed through her own resolution, and would now enjoy the fruits of vic- tory.
Had Wyatt succeeded, Mary would have lost her husband and her crown ; and had the question been no more than a personal one, England could have well dis- pensed both with her and Philip. But Elizabeth would have ascended a throne under the shadow of treason. The Protestants would have come back to power in the thoughtless vindictiveness of exasperated and success- ful revolutionists ; and the problem of the Reformation would have been farther than ever from a reasonable solution. The fanatics had made their effort, and they had failed ; they had shaken the throne, but they had not overthrown it ; the Queen's turn was come, and, as the danger had been great, so was the resentment. She
J554-]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
355
had Renard at one ear protesting that, while these tur- bulent spirits were uncrushed, the precious person of the Prince could not be trusted to her. She had Gardi- ner, who, always pitiless towards heretics, was savage at the frustration of his own schemes. Renard in the closet, Gardiner in the pulpit, alike told her that she must show no more mercy.1 On Ash Wednesday even- ing, after Wyatt's surrender, a proclamation . forbade all persons to shelter the fugitive insurgents under pain of death. The ' poor caitiffs ' were brought out of the houses where they had hidden themselves, and were given up by hundreds. Huntingdon came in on Satur- day with Suffolk and his brothers. Sir James Crofts, Sir Henry Isly, and Sir Gawen Carew followed. The common prisons overflowed into the churches, where crowds of wretches were huddled together till the gib- bets were ready for their hanging ; the Tower wards were so full that Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were packed into a single cell ; and all the living representa- tives of the families of Grey and Dudley, except two young girls, were now within the Tower walls, sentenced, or soon to be sentenced, to death.
1 ' On Sunday, the I ith of Feb- ruary, the Bishop of "Winchester preached in the chapel before the Queen.' ' The preachers for the 7 years last past, he said, by divid- ing of words and other their own additions, had brought in many errours detestable unto the Church of Christ.' ' He axed a boon of the Queen's Highness, that, like as she faad beforetime extended her mercy
particularly and privately, [and] so through her lenity and gentleness much conspiracy and open rebellion was grown .... she would now be merciful to the body of the common- wealth and conservation thereof, which could not be unless the rotten and hurtful members thereof were cut off and consumed.' — Chronicle of Queen Mary, p. 54.
356 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY, [CH. 31.
The Queen's blood is up at last, Renard wrote ex- ultingly to the Emperor on the 8th of Feb- ruary ; * ' the Duke of Suffolk, Lord Thomas Grey, and Sir James Crofts have written to ask for mercy, but they will find none ; their heads will fall, and so will Courtenay's and Elizabeth's. I have told the Queen that she must be especially prompt with these two. "We have nothing now to hope for except that France will break the peace, and then all will be well/ On the I2th of February the ambassador was still better satisfied. Elizabeth had been sent for, and was on her way to London. A rupture with France seemed inevitable, and as to clemency, there was no danger of it. ' The Queen,' he said, ' had told him that Anne of Cleves was implicated ; ' but for himself he was sure that the two centres of all past and all possible conspiracies were Elizabeth and Cotirtenay, and that when their heads, and the heads of the Greys, were once off their shoulders, she would have nothing more to fear. The prisoners were heretics to a man ; she had a fair plea to despatch them, and she would then settle the country as she pleased ; 2 ' The house of Suffolk would soon be extinct.'
The house of Suffolk would be extinct : that too, or almost that, had been decided on. Jane Grey was guiltless of this last commotion ; her name had not been so much as mentioned among the insurgents ; but she was guilty of having been once called Queen, and Mary,
1 Rolls House MSS. 2 Renard to Charles V., February 12 : Rolls House MSS.
1 554-] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 357
who before had been generously deaf to the Emperor's advice, and to Renard's arguments, yielded in her pre- sent humour. Philip was beckoning in the distance ; and while Jane Grey lived, Philip, she was again and again assured, must remain for ever separated from her arms.
Jane Grey, therefore, was to die — her execution was resolved upon the day after the victory ; and the first intention was to put her to death on the Friday immedi- ately approaching. In killing her body, however, Mary
desired to have mercy on her soul ; and she
Feb. 9. sent the message of death by the excellent
Feckenham, afterwards Abbot of Westminster, who was to bring her, if possible, to obedience to the Catholic faith.
Feckenham, ajjnan full of gentle and tender human- ity, felt to the bottom of his soul the errand on which he was despatched. He felt as a Catholic priest — but he felt also as a man.
On admission to Lady Jane's room he told her that she was to die the next morning, and he told her, also, for what reason the Queen had selected him to com- municate the sentence.
She listened calmly. The time was short, she said; too short to be spent in theological discussion ; which, if Feckenham would permit, she would decline.
Believing, or imagining that he ought to believe, that, if she died unreconciled, she was lost, Feckenham hurried back to the Queen to beg for delay ; and the Queen, moved with his entreaties, respited the execu-
358
REIGN OF QUEEN MAR Y.
[CH. 31.
tion till Monday, giving him three more days to pursue his labour. But Lady Jane, when he returned to her, scarcely appreciated the favour ; she had not expected her words to be repeated, she said ; she had given up all thoughts of the world, and she would take her death patiently whenever her Majesty desired.1
Feckenham, however, still pressed his services, and courtesy to a kind and anxious old man, for- bade her to refuse them. He remained with her to the end ; and certain arguments followed on faith and justification, and the nature of sacraments; a record of which may be read by the curious in Foxe.2 Lady Jane was wearied without being convinced. The te- dium of the discussion was relieved, perhaps, by the now more interesting account which she gave to her unsuccessful confessor of the misfprtune which was bringing her to her death.3 The night before she suf- fered she wrote a few sentences of advice to her sister on the blank leaf of a New Testament. To her father, knowing his weakness, and knowing, too, how he would be worked upon to imitate the recantation of Northum- berland, she sent a letter of exquisite beauty, in which the exhortations of a dying saint are tempered with the reverence of a daughter for her father.4
The iron-hearted Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John
1 BAOARDO. The writer of the Chronicle of Queen Mary, says, ' She was appointed to have been put to death on Friday, but was stayed — for what cause is not known.' Baoardo supplies the explanation.
2 Vol. vi. pp. 415 — 417.
5 The story told by Baoardo, to whom, it would seem, Feckenham related it.
4 FOXE, vol. vi.
'554-]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE,
359
Brydges, had been softened by the charms of his pri- soner, and begged for some memorial of her in writing. She wrote in a manual of English prayers the following words : —
' Forasmuch as you have desired so simple a woman to write in so worthy a book, good Master Lieutenant, therefore I shall, as a friend, desire you, and as a Chris- tian, require you to call upon God to incline your heart to his laws, to quicken you in his way, and not to take the word of truth utterly out of your mouth. Live still to die, that by death you may purchase eternal life, and remember how Methuselah, who, as we read in the Scriptures, was the longest liver that was of a man, died at the last ; for, as the Preacher saith, there is a time to be born and a time to die ; and the day of death is better than the day of our birth. Yours, as the Lord knoweth, as a friend, Jane Dudley/1
1 Chronicle of Qtteen Mary, p. 57, note. In the same manual are a few words in Guilford Dudley's hand, addressed to Suffolk, and a few words also addressed to Suffolk by Lady Jane. Mr Nichols sup- poses that the book (it is still ex- tant among the Harleian MSS.} was used as a means of communicating with the Duke when direct inter- course was unpermitted. If this conjecture is right, Lady Jane's letter, perhaps, never reached her father at all. There is some diffi- culty about the memorial which the Lieutenant of the Tower obtained from her. BAOARDO says, that she
gave him a book, in which she had written a few words in Greek, Latin, and English.
'La Greca era tale. La morte dara la pena al mio corpo del fallo ma la mia anima giustificara inanzi al conspetto di Dio la innocenza mia.
' La Latina diceva. Se la gius- titia ha luogo nel corpo mio 1' anima mia 1'havera nella misericordia di Dio.
' La Inglese. II fallo e degno di morte ma il modo della mia ig- noranza doueva meritar pieta e ex- cusatione appresso il mondo e alle leggi.'
36o
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 3I
Her husband was also to die, and to die before her. The morning on which they were to suffer he begged for a last interview and a last embrace. It was left to herself to consent or refuse. If, she replied, the meet- ing would benefit either of their souls, she would see him with pleasure ; but, in her own opinion, it would only increase their trial. They would meet soon enough in the other world.
He died, therefore, without seeing her again. She saw him once alive as he was led to the scaffold, and again as he returned a mutilated corpse in the death- cart. It was not wilful cruelty. The officer in com- mand had forgotten that the ordinary road led past her window. But the delicate girl of seventeen was as masculine in her heart as in her intellect. When her own turn arrived, Sir John Brydges led her down to the green ; her attendants were in an agony of tears, but her own eyes were dry. She prayed quietly till she reached the foot of the scaffold, when she turned to Feckenham, who still clung to her side. ' Go now/ she said ; ' God grant you all your desires, and accept my own warm thanks for your attentions to me ; although, indeed, those attentions have tried me more than death can now terrify me.'1 She sprung up the steps, and said briefly that she had broken the law in accepting the crown ; but as to any guilt of
1 Andate : che nostro Signore Dio vi content! d'ogni vostro de- siderio, e siate sempre infinitamentc ringratiato della compagnia che
m'havete fatta avcnga che da quella sia stata molto piu noiata che hora non mi spaventa la morte. — BAO- ARDO.
1554] THE SPANISH MARRIA GE. 36 1
intention, she wrung her hands, and said she washed them clean of it in innocency before God and man. She entreated her hearers to bear her witness that she died a true Christian woman ; that she looked to be saved only by the mercy of God and the merits of his Son : and she begged for their prayers as long as she was alive. Feckenham had still followed her, not- withstanding his dismissal. ' Shall I say the Miserere psalm ? ' she said to him.1 When it was done she let- down her hair with her attendants' help, and uncovered her neck. The rest may be told in the words of the chronicler : —
' The hangman kneeled down and asked her forgive- ness, whom she forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the straw, which doing, she saw the block. Then she said, I pray you despatch me quickly. Then she kneeled down, saying, Will you take it off before I lay me down ? and the hangman answered, No, madam. She tied a kercher about her eyes ; then, feel- ing for the block, she said, What shall I do ; where is it ? One of the bystanders guiding her thereunto, she laid her head down upon the block, and stretched forth her body, and said, Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. And so ended.'2
The same day Oourtenay was sent to the Tower, and a general slaughter commenced of the common prisoners. To spread the impression, gibbets were erected all over London, and by Thursday evening eighty or a hundred
1 The 5 1st: ' Have mercy on I 2 Chronicle of Queen Mary, pp me, oh Lord, after thy goodness.' | 58, 59.
362
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH.
bodies1 were dangling in St Paul's Churchyard, on London Bridge, in Fleet Street, and at Charing Cross, in Southwark and Westminster. At all crossways and in all thoroughfares, says Noailles, ' the eye was met with the hideous spectacle of hanging men ; ' while Brett and a fresh batch of unfortunates were sent to suffer at Rochester and Maidstone. Day after day, week after week, commissioners sat at Westminster or at the Guildhall trying prisoners, who passed with a short shrift to the gallows. The Duke of Suffolk was sen- tenced on the i yth ; on the 23rd he followed his daughter, penitent for his rebellion, but constant, as she had implored him to be, in his faith. His two brothers and Lord Cobham's sons were condemned. William Thomas, to escape torture, stabbed himself, but recov- ered to die at Tyburn. Lord Cobham himself, who was arrested notwithstanding his defence of his house, Wyatt, Sir James Crofts, Sir William St Lowe, Sir Nicholas Arnold, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, and, as the council expressed it, 'a world more/ were in various prisons waiting their trials. Those who were suspected of being in Elizabeth's confidence were kept with their fate impending over them — to be tempted either with hopes of pardon, or fear of the rack, to betray their secrets.2
1 Renard says : ' A hundred were hanged in London and a hun- dred in Kent.' STOW says : 'Eighty in London and twenty-two in Kent.' The Chronicle of Queen Mary does not mention the number of execu-
tions in London, hut agrees with Stow on the number sent to Kent. The smaller estimate, in these cases, is generally the right one.
2 On Sunday the nth of Feb- ruary, the day on which he exhorted
1 554-] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 363
13 ut, sooner or later, the Queen was determined that every one who could be convicted should die,1 and be- yond, and above them all, Elizabeth. Elizabeth's ill- ness, which had been supposed to have been assumed, was real, and as the feeling of the people towards her compelled the observance of the forms of justice and decency, physicians were sent from the Court to attend upon her. On the i8th of February they reported that she could be moved with safety ; and, escorted by Lord William Howard, Sir Edward Hastings, and Sir Thomas Cornwallis, she was brought by slow stages, of six or seven miles a day, to London.2 Renard had described her to the Emperor as probably enceinte through some vile intrigue, and crushed with remorse and disappointment.3
To give the lie to all such slanders, when she entered the city, the Princess had the covering of hei litter thrown back ; she was dressed in white, her face was pale from her illness, but the expression was lofty, scornful, and magnificent.4 Crowds followed her along
the Queen to severity from the pulpit, Gardiner wrote to Sir Wil- liam Petre, 'To-morrow, at your going to the Tower, it shall be good ye be earnest with one little Wyatt there prisoner, who by all likelihood can tell all. He is but a bastard, and hath no substance ; and it might stand with the Queen's Highness's pleasure there were no great account to be made whether ye pressed him to say truth by sharp punishment or promise of life.' — MS. Domestic, Mary, vol. iii. State Paper Office. I
do not know to whom Gardiner re- ferred in the words ' little Wyatt.' 1 Renard to Charles V.: Soils House MSS.
a The Order of my Lady Eliza- beth's Grace's Voyage to the Court : MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. iii. State Paper Office..
3 Renard to Charles V. : Feb- ruary 17 : Rolls House MSS.
4 ' Pour desguyser le regret qu'elle a,' says Renard, unable to relinquish his first conviction.
364
REIGN OF QUEEN MAR Y.
[CH. 31-
tlie streets to Westminster. The Queen, when she arrived at Whitehall, refused to see her; a suite of rooms was assigned for her confinement in a corner of the palace, from which there was no egress except by passing the guard, and there, with short attendance, she waited the result of Gardiner's investigations. Wyatt, by vague admissions, had already partially compromised her, and, on the strength of his words, and the discovery of the copy of her letter in the packet of Noailles, she would have gone direct to the Tower, had the Lords permitted. The Emperor urged instant and summary justice both on her and on Courtenay ; the irritation, should irritation arise, could be allayed afterwards by an amnesty.1 The Lords, however, insisted obstinately on the forms of law, the necessity of witnesses and of a trial ; and Renard watched their unreasonable humours with angry misgivings. It was enough, he said, that the conspiracy was undertaken in Elizabeth's interests ; if she escaped now, the Queen would never be secure.2 In fact, while Elizabeth lived, the Prince could not venture among the wild English spirits, and Charles was determined that the marriage should not escape him.
1 Renard was instructed to ex- hort the Queen : ' Que 1' execution et chastoy de ceulx qui le meritent se face tost; usant a 1'endroit de Madame Elizabeth et de Cortenay comme elle verra convenir a sa seurete, pour apres user de cle- mence en 1'endroit de ceulx qu'il luy semblera, afin de tost reassurer
le surplus.' — Charles V. to Renard : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. pp. 224, 225.
2 II est certain 1'enterprinse es- toit en sa faveur. Et certes, sire, si pendant que 1'occasion s'adonne elle ne la punyt et Cortenay, elle ne sera jamais asseuree. — Renard to Charles V. : TYTLEB, vol. ii. p. 311.
I554-]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
365
As soon as the rebellion was crushed,
March.
Egmont, attended by Count Horn, returned to complete his work. He brought with him the dis- pensations in regular form. He brought also a fresh and pressing entreaty that Elizabeth should be sacrificed. An opportunity had been placed in the Queen's hand, which her duty to the Church required that she should not neglect ; and Egrnont was directed to tell her that the Emperor, in trusting his son in a country where his own power could not protect him, relied upon her honour not to neglect any step essential to his security.1 Egmont gave his message. The unhappy Queen required no urging ; she protested to Henard, that she could neither rest nor sleep, so ardent was her desire for the Prince's safe arrival.2 Courtenay, if necessary, she could kill ; against him the proofs were complete ; as to Elizabeth, she knew her guilt ; the evidence was grow- ing ; and she would insist to the council that justice should be done.
About the marriage itself, the Lords had by this time agreed to yield. Courtenay 's pretensions could no longer be decently advanced, and Gardiner, abandoning a hopeless cause, and turning his attention to the restoration of the Church, would consent to anything, if, on his side, he might emancipate the clergy from the control of the civil power, and re-establish per-
1 Henard to the Emperor, March 8: Rolls House MSS.
2 La quelle me respondit et afferme qu'elle ne dort ny repose
pour le soucy elle tient de la seure venue de son Altesse. — Renard to the Emperor : TYTLEK, vol. ii.
366 RE2GN' OF QUEEN MAR Y. [en. 31.
secution. Two factions, distinctly marked, were now growing in the council — the party of the states- men, composed of Paget, Sussex, Arundel, Pembroke, Lord William Howard, the Marquis of Winchester, Sir Edward Hastings, and Cornwallis : the party of the Church, composed of Gardiner, Petre, Ro- chester, Gage, Jerningham, and Bourne. Divided on all other questions, the rival parties agreed only no longer to oppose the coming of Philip. The wavering few had been decided by the presents and promises which Egmont brought with him from Charles. Pensions of two thousand crowns had been offered to, and were probably accepted by, the Earls of Pembroke, Arundel, Derby, and Shrewsbury ; pensions of a thousand crowns were given to Sussex, Darcy, Winchester, Rochester, Petre, and Cheyne ; pensions of five hundred crowns to Southwell, Waldegrave, Inglefield, Wentworth, and Grey ; l ten thousand crowns were distributed among the officers and gentlemen who had distinguished them- selves against Wyatt. The pensions were large, but, as Renard observed, when Charles seemed to hesitate, several of the recipients were old, and would soon die ; and, as to the rest, things in England were changing from day to day, and means of some kind would easily be found to put an early end to the payments.2
Unanimity having been thus secured, Renard, on the day of Egmont's arrival, demanded an audience of the Lords, and in the Queen's presence requested their
1 Oranvclle Papers, vol. iv. p. 267. 8 Renard to Charles V., March 8 : Molls House MSS.
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE,
36?
opinion whether the condition of England allowed the completion of the contract. The life of the Prince of Spain was of great importance to Europe \ should they believe in their hearts that he would be in danger, there was still time to close the negotiation. The rebellion having broken out and having failed, the Lords replied that there was no longer any likelihood of open violence. Arundel hinted, again, that the Prince must bring his own cook and butler with him ; 1 but he had nothing else to fear, if he could escape the French cruisers.
These assurances, combined with the Queen's secret promises about Elizabeth, were held sufficient ; and on the 6th of March, at three o'clock in the after- noon, the ambassadors were conducted by Pembroke into the presence chamber. The Queen, kneeling before the sacrament, called it to witness that, in consenting to the alliance with the Prince of Spain, she was moved by no carnal concupiscence, but only by her zeal for the welfare of her realm and subjects ; and then, rising up, with the bystanders all in tears, she gave her hand to Egmont as Philip's representative. The blessing was pronounced by Gfardiner, and the proxy marriage was completed.2 The Prince was to be
March 6.
1 Arundel nous dit qu'il con- venoit que son alteze amena ses cuy- seniers, sommeliers du cave, et autres officicrs pour son bouche, que quant aux antres luy y pourvoyeroit selon les coustumesd'Angleterre. — Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
2 Puis par la main de 1'Evesque
les de pra3seuti, furent dictes et pro- noncees intelligiblement par la diet Egmont seul et la dicte Dame. — Ibid. Compare TYTLEB, vol. ii. p. 327. The great value of Mr Tytler's work is diminished by the many omissions which he has permitted himself to make in the letters which he has edited.
368
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31
sent for without delay, and Southampton was chosen as the port at which he should disembark, ' being in the country of the Bishop of Winchester/ where the people were, for the most part, good Catholics.
Parliament was expected to give its sanction with- out further difficulty; the opposition of the country having been neutralized by the same causes which had influenced the council. The Queen, indeed, in going through the ceremony before consulting Parliament, though she had broken the promise which she made in the Guildhall, had placed it beyond their power to raise difficulties ; but other questions were likely to rise which would not be settled so easily. She herself was longing to show her gratitude to Providence by restor- ing the authority of the Pope ; and the Pope intended, if possible, to recover his first-fruits and Peter's pence, and to maintain the law of the Church which forbade the alienation of Church property.1 The English laity were resolute on their side to keep hold of what they had got ; and to set the subject at rest, and to prevent unpleasant discussions on points of theology, Paget, with his friends, desired that the session should last but a few days, and that two measures only should be
1 Pole's first commission granted him powers only ' concordandi et transigendi cum possessoribus bono- rum ecclesiasticorum, (restitutis pri- us si expedire videtur immobilibus per eos indebite detentis,) super fruc- tibus male perceptis ac bonis mobili- bus consumptis.' — Commission grant-
ed to Reginald Pole : WILKINS'S Concilia, vol. iv. Cardinal Morone, writing to Pole as late as June, 1554, said that the Pope was still unable to resolve on giving his sanction to the alienation.— BURNET'S Collec- tanea.
I554-] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 369
brought forward ; the first for the confirmation of the treaty of marriage, the second to reassert the validity of the titles under which the Church estates were held by their present owners. If the Queen consented to the last, her title of Head of the Church might be dropped informally, and allowed to fall into abeyance.1
Gardiner, however, saw in the failure of the insur- rection an opportunity of emancipating the Church, and of extinguishing heresy with fire and sword.2 He was preparing a bill to restore the ancient rigorous tyranny of the ecclesiastical courts; and by his own authority he directed that, in the writs for the Parlia- ment, the summons should be to meet at Oxford,3 where the conservatism of the country would be released from the dread of the London citizens. The spirit which, thirteen years before, had passed the Six Articles Bill by acclamation, continued to smoulder in the slow minds of the country gentlemen, and was blazing freely among the lately persecuted priests. The Bishop of Winchester had arranged in his imagination a splendid melodrama. The session was to begin on the 2nd of April ; and the ecclesiastical bill was to be the first to be passed. On the 8th of March, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were sent down to the University to be tried before a Committee of Convocation which had already decided on its verdict ; and the Fathers of the Reformation were either to recant or to suffer the flam-
Paget to Renard: TYTLEB,
vol. ii.
2 Par feug et sang.— Renard to
Charles V., March 14 : Rolls House MSS.; partially printed by TYTLEK. 3 Ibid.
VOL. v. 24
370
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31.
ing penalties of heresy in the presence of the Legis- lature, as the first-fruits of a renovated Church disci- pline.
Vainly Renard protested. In the fiery obstinacy of his determination, Gardiner was the incarnate expression of the fury of the ecclesiastical faction, smarting, as they were, under their long degradation, and under the ir- ritating consciousness of those false oaths of submission which they had sworn to a power which they loathed. Once before, in the first reaction against Protestant excesses, the Bishop of Winchester had seen the Six Articles Bill carried — but his prey had then been snatched from his grasp. Now, embittered by fresh oppression, he saw his party once more in a position to revenge their wrongs when there was no Henry any longer to stand between them and their enemies. He would take the tide at the flood, forge a weapon keener than the last, and establish the Inquisition.1 Paget swore it should not be.2 Charles Y. himself, dreading a fresh interruption to the marriage, insisted that this extravagant fervour should be checked ; 3 and the Bishop of Arras, the scourge of the Netherlands, interceded for moderation in England. But Gardiner and the clergy were not to be turned from the hope of their hearts by the private alarms of the Imperialists ; and in the heart of the Queen religious orthodoxy was Philip's solitary
1 Establir forme d' Inquisition contre les heretiques. — Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
a Ibid.
3 La chaleur exhorbitante. — Charles V. to Renard : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 229.
1554-1
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
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rival. Renard urged her to be prudent in religion and cruel to the political prisoners. Gardiner, though eager as Renard to kill Elizabeth, would buy the privilege of working his will upon the Protestants by sparing Cour- tenay and Courtenay's friends. Mary listened to the worst counsels of each, and her distempered humour settled into a confused ferocity. So unwholesome ap- peared the aspect of things in the middle of March that, notwithstanding the formal contract, Renard almost advised the Emperor to relinquish the thought of com- mitting his son among so wild a people.1
As opposition to extreme measures was anticipated in the House of Lords, as well as among the Commons, it was important to strengthen the Bench of Bishops. The Pope had granted permission without difficulty to fill the vacant Sees ; and on the ist of April six new prelates were consecrated at St Mary Overies, while Sir John Brydges and Sir John Williams of Thame were raised to the peerage.
The Protestants, it must be admitted, had exerted themselves to make Gardiner's work easy to him. On the 1 4th of March the -wall of a house in Aldgate became suddenly vocal, and seventeen thousand persons were collected to hear a message from Heaven pro- nounced by an angel. When the people said ' God save Queen Mary/ the wall was silent ; when they said ' God save Queen Elizabeth/ the wall said * Amen ! ' When
1 Pour estre la plus part des Angloys sans foy, sans loy, confuz en la religion, doubles, inconstans,
et de nature jaloux et abhorrissans estrangiers. — Rolls Home MSS.
3 72 REIGN OF Q UEEN MAR Y. [CH. 3 r .
they asked, 'What is the mass?' the wall said, 'It is idolatry/ As the nation was holding its peace, the stones, it seemed, were crying out against the reaction But the angel, on examination, turned out to be a girl concealed behind the plaster. Shortly after, the in- habitants of Cheapside, on opening their shop windows in the morning, beheld on a gallows, among the bodies of the hanged insurgents, a cat in priestly robes, with crown shaven, the fore-paws tied over her head, and a piece of paper clipped round between them, representing the wafer.
More serious were the doings of a part of the late conspirators who had escaped to France. Peter Carew, when he left Weymouth, promised soon to return, and he was received at Paris with a cordiality that answered his warmest hopes. Determined, if possible, to prevent Philip from reaching England, the French had equipped every vessel which they possessed available for sea, and Carew was sent again to the coast of the Channel to tempt across into the French service all those who, like himself, were compromised in the conspiracy, or whose blood was hotter than their fathers'. Every day the Queen was chafed with the news of desertions to the dangerous rendezvous. Young men of honourable families, Pickerings, Strangwayses, Killegrews, Staffords, Stauntons, Tremaynes, Courtenays, slipped over the water, carrying with them hardy sailors from the western harbours. The French supplied them with arms, ships, and money ; and fast-sailing, heavily-armed privateers, officered by these young adventurers in the
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cause of freedom, were cruising on their own account, plundering Flemish and Spanish ships, and swearing that the Prince of Spain should set no foot on English shores.1
1 The French and Calais corre- spondence in the State Paper Office contains a vast number of letters on this subject. The following ex- tracts are specimens : —
On the 24th of March Thomas Corry writes to Lord Grey that 'two hundred vessels be in readi- ness ' in the French harbours. ' There is lately arrived at Caen in Normandy Sir Peter Carew, Sir William Pickering, Sir Edward Courtenay, John Courtenay, Brian Fitzwilliam, and divers other Eng- lish gentlemen. It is thought Sir Peter Carew shall have charge of the fleet. There be three ships of Englishmen, which be already gone to sea with Killegrew, which do report that they serve the King to prevent the coming of the King of Spain.'— Calais MSS.
On the 28th of March, Edgar Hormolden writes from Guisnes to Sir John Bourne : ' The number of Sir Peter Carew's retinue increaseth in France by the confluence of such English qui potius alicHj'ws pr&clari facinoris quam artis bonce famam qucerunt ; and they be so entreated there as it cannot be otherwise con- jectured but that they practise with France : insomuch I have heard credible intelligence that the said Carew used this persuasion, 'of late,
to his companions : Are not we, said he, allianced with Normandy ; yea ! what ancient house is either there or in France, but we claim by them and they by us ? why should we not rather embrace their love than sub- mit ourselves to the servitude of Spain ? ' — Ibid.
April 17, Dr Wotton writes in cypher from Paris to the Queen : 'Yesterday, an Italian brought a letter to my lodging, and delivered it to a servant of mine, and went his way, so that I know not what he is. The effect of his letter is, that for because he taketh it to be the part of every good Christian man to fur- ther your godly purpose and Ca- tholic doings, he hath thought good to advertise me that those fugitives of England say to their friends here that they have intelligence of great importance in England with some of the chiefest on the realm, which shall appear on the arrival of the Prince of Spain. "Within few days they go to Normandy to embark themselves there, so strong, that, if they do not let the Prince of Spain to land, as they will attempt to do, yet they will not fail, by the help of them that have intelligence with them, to let him come to London. — French MSS. bundle xi.
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 3I.
The Queen indignantly demanded explanations of Noailles, and, through, her ambassador at Paris, she required the French Government to seize * her traitors/ and deliver them to her. Noailles, alarmed, perhaps, for his own security, suggested that it might be well to conceal Carew, and to affect to make an attempt tc arrest him. But Henry, at once more sagacious and more bold, replied to the ambassador that ' he was not the Queen's hangman : ' 'these men that you require/ he said, ' deny that they have conspired anything against the Queen ; marry, they say they will not be oppressed by mine enemy, and that is no just cause why I should owe them ill- will.'1 He desired Noailles, with quiet irony, to tell her Majesty ' that there was nothing in the existing treaties to forbid his accepting the services of English volunteers in the war with the Emperor : her Majesty might remember that he had invited her to make a new treaty, and that she had refused : ' * he would act by the just letter of his obligations.' 2
Would her subjects have permitted, the Queen would have replied by a declaration of war. As it was, she could only relieve herself with indignant words.3
1 "Wotton to the Queen : French MSS. bundle xi. State Paper Office.
2 Noailles to the King of France ; Ambassades, vol. iii.
3 ' When the Ambassador re- plied that his master minded to do justly, her Grace remembering how those traitors be there aided, espe- cially such of them as had con-
spired her death and were in arms in the field against her ; and being not able to bear those words, so con- trary to their doings, told the Am- bassador that, for her own part, her Majesty minded simply and plainly to perform as she had promised, and might with safe conscience swear she ever meant so ; but, for their part, her Grace would nut swear so,
1554-]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
37?
But Carew and his friends might depend on support so long as they would make themselves useful to France. Possessed of ships' and arms, they were a constant men- ace to the Channel, and a constant temptation to the disaffected; and, growing bitter at last, and believing that Elizabeth's life was on the point of being sacrificed, they were prepared to support Henry in a second at- tempt to seize the Isle of Wight, and to accept the French competitor for the English crown in the person of the Queen of Scots.1 Thus fatally the friends of the Reformation played into the hands of its enemies. By the solid mass of Englishmen the armed interference of France was more dreaded than even a Spanish sovereign ; and the heresy became doubly odious which was tamper- ing with the hereditary enemies of the realm. In Lon- don only the revolutionary spirit continued vigorous, and broke out perpetually in unexpected forms. At the beginning of March three hundred schoolboys met in a meadow outside the city walls : half were for Wyatt and for France, half for the Prince of Spain ; and, not
and being those arrant traitors ao entertained there as they be, she could not have found in her heart to have used, in like matter, the sem- blable part towards his master for the gain of two realms, arid with those words she departed.' — Gardi- ner to Wotton : French MSS. bundle xi.
1 On the 2Qth of April Wotton wrote in a cypher to Mary ; ' To- wards the end of the summer the French King, by Peter Carew' s
provocation, intendeth to land the rebels, with a number of Scots, in Essex, and in the Isle of Wight, where they mean to land easily, and either go on, if any number of Englishmen resort unto them, as they say many will, or else fortify themselves there. They council the French King to make war against your Highness in the right and title of the young Queen of Scots.' — MS, Ibid.
376 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY [CH. 31.
all in play (for evidently they chose their sides by their sympathies), they joined battle, and fought with the fierceness of grown men. The combat ended in the capture of the representative of Philip, who was dragged to a gallows, and would have been hanged upon it, had not the spectators interfered.1 The boys were laid hands upon. The youngest were whipped, the elder im- prisoned. It was said that the Queen thought of gib- beting one of these innocents in real fact, for an exam- ple ; or, as Noailles put it, as an expiation for the sins of the people.2
Over Elizabeth, in the mean time, the fatal net ap- peared to be closing ; Lord Russell had received a letter for her from Wyatt, which, though the Princess de- clared that it had never been in her hands, he said that he had forwarded ; and Wyatt himself was flattered with hopes of life if he would extend his confession. Henard carried his ingenuity farther ; he called in the assistance of Lady Wyatt, and promised her that her husband should be spared ; he even urged the Queen to gain over, by judicious leniency, a man whose apostasy would be a fresh disgrace to his cause, and who might be as useful as a servant as he had been dangerous as a foe.3 Wyatt, being a man without solidity of heart,
1 The execution was commenced in earnest. The Prince, saysNoailles, ' fust souldainement mesne au gibet par ceulx de la part du Roy et de M. Wyatt; et sans quelques hommes qui tout a propoz y accoururent, ils I'eussent estrangle ; ce que se peult clairement juger par les marques
qu'il en a et aura encores d'icy d long temps au col.' — Noailles to Montmorency : Ambaxsadcs, vol. iii.
2 Diet on qu'elle veult que 1'ung d'eulx soit sacrifie pour tout le peuple. — Ibid.
3 Ce qui faict juger a beaulcoup de gens que Wyatt ne mourra point,
'554-1
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
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showed signs of yielding to what was required of him , but his revelations came out slowly, and to quicken his confession he was brought to his trial on the I5th of March. He pleaded guilty to the indictment, and he then said that Courtenay had been the instigator of the conspiracy ; he had written to Elizabeth, he said, to ad- vise her to remove as far as possible from London, and Elizabeth had returned him a verbal message of thanks. This being not enough, he was sentenced to death ; but he was made to feel that he might still earn his pardon if he would implicate Elizabeth more deeply ; and though he said nothing definite, he allowed himself to drop vague hints that he could tell more if he pleased.1
mais que la dicte dame le rendra tant son oblige par ceste grace de luy rendre la vie qu'elle en pourra tirer beaulcoup de bons et grandes services. Ce qui se faict par le moyen dudict ambassadeur de 1'Em- pereur par 1'advis duquel se condui- sent aujourdhuy toutes les opinions d'icelle dame, et lequel traicte ceste composition avecques la femme dudict "Wyatt a laquelle comme 1'on diet il a asseure la vie de son diet rnari. — Noailles to the Constable of France, March 31. Eenard's secrets were betrayed to Noailles by ' a corrupt secretary ' of the Flemish embassy. — "Wotton to the Queen: French MSS. bundle xi. State Paper Office.
1 Noailles says; Wyatt a este condamne a mourir ; toutesfois il n'est encores execute et avant que luy pronon<;er sa sentence on luy
avoit promis tant de belles choses que vaincu par leur doulces paroles oultre sa deliberation, il a accuse beaulcoup de personnages et parle au desadvantage de mylord de Courtenay et de Madame Elizabeth. — Noailles to d'Oysel, March 29. The different parties were so much interested in "Wyatt's confession, that his very last words are sc wrapped round with contradictions, that one cannot tell what they were. It is certain, however, that he did implicate Elizabeth to some extent ; it is certain, also, that he did not say enough for the purposes of the Court, and that the Court believed he could say more if he would, for, on Easter Sunday he communicated, and the Queen was distressed that he should have been allowed to partake, while his confession was incomplete. As to Courtenay, Renard said he
378
OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31.
At all events, however, sufficient evidence had been obtained in the opinion of the Court for the committal of the Princess to the Tower. On the day of Wyatt's trial, the council met, but separated without a resolution ; on Friday, the i6th, Elizabeth was examined before them in person, and when she withdrew, Gardiner re- quired that she should be sent to the Tower instantly. Paget, supported by Sussex, Hastings, and Cornwallis, said that there was no evidence to justify so violent a measure.1 Which of you, then, said Gardiner, with dexterous ingenuity, will be reponsible for the safe keep- ing of her person ?
The guardian of Elizabeth would be exposed to a hundred dangers and a thousand suspicions ; the Lords answered that Gardiner was conspiring their destruction. No one could be found courageous enough to undertake the charge, and they gave their reluctant consent to his demand. The same night Elizabeth's attendants were removed, a hundred soldiers were picketed in the garden below her window, and on Saturday morning the Marquis of Winchester and Lord Sussex waited on her to communicate her destination, and to attend her to a barge.
March 17.
had communicated enough, ' mais quant a Elizabeth Ton ne poult en- cores tomber en preuves suffisantes pour les loys d'Angleterre contre elle.' — Renard to Charles V. : Rolls House MSS.
1 Holinshed says that a certain lord exclaimed that there would be no safety for the realm until Eliza-
beth's hea'd was off her shoulders ; and either Holinshed himself, or his editor, wrote in the margin opposite, the words : ' The wicked advice of Lord Paget.' — Kenard describes so distinctly the attitude of Paget, that there can be no doubt whatever of the injustice of such a charge against him.
1554-1 THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 379
The terrible name of the Tower was like a death- knell ; the Princess entreated a short delay till she could write a few words to the Queen ; the Queen could not know the truth, she said, or else she was played upon by Gardiner. Alas ! she did not know the Queen : Winchester hesitated ; Lord Sussex, more generous, ac- cepted the risk, and promised, on his knees, to place her letter in the Queen's hands.
The very lines traced by Elizabeth in that bitter moment may still be read in the State Paper Office,1 and her hand was more than usually firm.
' If ever any one/ she wrote, ' did try this old saying that a King's word was more than another man's oath, I most humbly beseech your Majesty to verify it in me, and to remember your last promise, and my last demand, that I be not condemned without answer and due proof, which it seems that I now am : for that without cause proved I am by your council from you commanded to go unto the Tower, a place more wonted for a false traitor than a true subject : which, though I know I deserve it not, yet in the face of all this realm appears that it is proved ; which I pray God that I may die the shamefullest death that any died, afore I may mean any such thing : and to this present hour I protest, afore God who shall judge my truth, whatsoever malice shall devise, that I never practised, counselled, nor consented to anything that might be prejudicial to your person any way, or dangerous to the State by any means. And
' MS. Mary, Domestic, vol iv. Printed by ELLIS, 2nd series, vol. ii P- 255-
380 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [en. 31.
I therefore humbly beseech your Majesty to let me an- swer afore yourself, and not suffer me to trust to your councillors ; yea, and that afore I go to the Tower, if it is possible ; if not, afore I be further condemned. How- beit, I trust assuredly your Highness will give me leave to do it afore I go, for that thus shamefully I may not be cried out on, as now I shall be, yea, and without cause. Let conscience move your Highness to take some better way with me, than to make me be condemned in all men's sight, afore my desert known. Also, I most humbly beseech your Highness to pardon this my bold- ness, which innocency procures me to do, together with hope of your natural kindness, which I trust will not see me cast away without desert : which what it is I would desire no more of God than that you truly knew ; which thing, I think and believe, you shall never by report know, unless by yourself you hear. I have heard in my time of many cast away for want of coming to the presence of their prince ; and in late days I heard my Lord of Somerset say that, if his brother had been suffered to speak with him, he had never suffered ; but the persuasions were made to him so great, that he was brought in belief that he could not live safely if the admiral lived, and that made him give his consent to his death. Though these persons are not to be com- pared to your Majesty, yet I pray God as evil persua- sions persuade not one sister against the other, and all for that they have heard false reports, and not hearken to the truth known ; therefore, once again kneeling with all humbleness of my heart, because I am not suf-
1554-5
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
fered to bow the knees of my body, I humbly crave to speak with your Highness, which I would not be so bold to desire if I knew not myself most clear, as I know myself most true. And as for the traitor Wyatt, he might peradventure write me a letter, but on my faith I never received any from him ; and for the copy of my letter sent to the French King, I pray God con- found me eternally if ever I sent him word, message, token, or letter by any means : l and to this my truth I will stand to my death your Highnesses most faithful subject that hath been from the beginning, and will be
to the end.
' ELIZABETH.
'I humbly crave but one word of answer from yourself/
Had Elizabeth known the history of those words of the Queen to her, to which she appealed, she would have spared herself the trouble of writing this letter. Sussex fulfilled his promise, and during the delay the tide turned, and the barge could not pass London Bridge till the following day. The Queen could not venture to send the Princess through the streets; and in dread lest, at the last moment, her prey should be snatched from, her, she answered the appeal only by storming at the bearer, and at his friends in the council. ' They
1 As soon as Noailles learnt that his enclosure formed part of the case against Elizabeth, lie came forward to acquit her of having furnished him with it; 'jurant et blaspheraant
tous les sermens du monde pour la justification de la dicte Dame Eliza- beth.'—Renard to Charles V., April 3 : Rolls House MSS.
3<te REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31.
were going no good way/ she said, ' for their lives they durst not have acted so in her father's time ; she wished that he was alive and among them but for a single month/ l
At nine o'clock the next morning — it was Sunday, Palm Sunday — the two Lords returned to Elizabeth to tell her that her letter had failed. As she crossed the garden to the water she threw up her eyes to the Queen's window, but there was no sign of recognition. What do the Lords mean, she said, that they suffer me thus to be led into captivity ? The barge was too deep to approach sufficiently near to the landing-place at the Tower to enable her to step upon the causeway without wetting her feet ; it was raining too, and the petty inconveniences, fretting against the dreadful associations of the Traitors' Gate, shook her self-command. She refused to land ; then sharply re- jecting an offer of assistance, she sprung out upon the mud. ( Are all those harnessed men there for me ? ' she said to Sir John Gage, who was waiting with the Tower guard. ' No, madam/ Gage answered. ' Yes/ she said, ' I know it is so ; it needed not for me, being but a weak woman. I never thought to have come in here a prisoner/ she went on, turning to the soldiers ; ' I pray you all good fellows and friends, bear me wit- ness that I come in no traitor, but as true a woman to the Queen's Majesty as any is now living, and thereon will I take my death/ She threw herself down upon a
1 RBNARD.
1 5 54-] THE SPANISH MARRfAGE. 383
wet stone ; Lord Chandos begged her to come under shelter out of the rain : ' better sitting here than in a worse place/ she cried ; ' I know not whither you will bring me.'
But it was not in Elizabeth's nature to protract a vain resistance ; she rose, and passed on, and as she approached the room intended for her, the heavy doors along the corridor were locked and barred behind her. At the grating of the iron bolts the heart of Lord Sus- sex sank in him : Sussex knew the Queen's true feel- ings, and the efforts which were made to lash her into cruelty ; ' What mean ye, my Lords,' he said to Chan- dos and Grage, ' what will you do ? ' ' she was a King's daughter, and is the Queen's sister ; go no further than your commission, which I know what it is.' 1
The chief danger was of murder — of some swift des- perate act which could not be undone : the Lords who had so reluctantly permitted Elizabeth to be imprisoned would not allow her to be openly sacrificed, or indeed permit the Queen to continue in the career of vengeance on which she had entered. The executions on account of the rebellion had not ceased even yet. In Kent, London, and in the midland counties, day after day, one, two, or more persons had been put to death ; six gentlemen were, at that very moment, on their way to Maidstone and Rochester to suffer. The Lords, on the day of Elizabeth's committal, held a meeting while Gardiner was engaged elsewhere ; they determined to
1 Contemporary Narrative : Harleian MSS. 419. Chronicle of Queen Mary, p. 71. HOLINSHED.
384 REIGN OF QUEEN MAR Y. [CH. 31.
remonstrate, and, if necessary, to insist on a change of course, and Paget undertook to be the bearer of the message. He found Mary in her oratory after vespers ; he told her that the season might remind a sovereign of other duties besides revenge ; already too much blood had been shed ; the noble house of Suffolk was all but destroyed ; and he said distinctly that if she attempted any more executions, he and his friends would interfere ; the hideous scenes had lasted too long, and, as an earnest of a return to mercy, he demanded the pardon of the six gentlemen.
Mary, as she lamented afterwards to Reiiard, was unprepared ; she was pressed in terms which showed that those who made the request did not intend to be refused — and she consented.1 The six gentlemen escaped ; and, following up this beginning, the council, in the course of the week, extorted from her the release of Northampton, Cobham, and one of his sons, with five others. In a report to the Emperor, Henard admitted that, if the Queen attempted to continue her course of justice, there would be resistance ; and the party of the chancellor, being the weakest, would in that case be overwhelmed. It was the more necessary, therefore, that, by one means or another, Elizabeth should be dis- posed of. The Queen had condescended to apologize to him for her second act of clemency, which she excused as being an Easter custom. He said that he had re- plied, It was not for him to find fault, if her Majesty was
1 Rcnard to Cities V., March 22 ; Rolls House MSS
r 5 54-1 THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 385
pleased to show mercy at the holy season ; but it was his duty to remind her that he doubted whether the Prince could be trusted with her.
This argument never failed to drive Mary to mad- ness ; and, on the other side, Renard applied to Gar- diner to urge despatch in bringing Elizabeth to trial : as long as she lived, there was no security for the Queen, for the Prince, or for religion. Gardiner echoed the same opinion. If others, he said, would go to work as roundly as himself, all would be well.1
In this condition of the political atmosphere Parlia- ment assembled on the 2nd of April. The Oxford scheme had been relinquished as im- practicable. The Lord Mayor informed the Queen that he would not answer for the peace of the city in the absence of the Court; the Tower might be surprised and the prisoners released ; and to lose the Tower would be to lose the crown. The Queen said that she would
1 II me repliqua que vivant Eliza- beth il n'a espoir a la tranquillite du Royaulme, que quant a luy si chas- cun alloit si rondement en besoyn comme il fait, les choses se porteroi- ent mieux. — Renardto the Emperor, April 3 : Rolls House MSS. From these dark plotters, what might not be feared ? Holinshed says that, while Elizabeth was in the Tower, a writ was sent down for her execution devised, as was believed, by Gardi- ner ; and that Lord Chandos (Sir
and in the form in which it is told by Holinshed, it was very likely un- true: yet, in the presence of these infernal conversations, I think it highly probable that, as the hope of a judicial conviction grew fainter, schemes were talked of, and were perhaps tried, for cutting the knot in a decisive manner. In revolutionary times men feel that if to-day is theirs, to-morrow may be their enemies' ; and they are not particularly scru- pulous. The anxious words of Sus-
John Brydges, the Lieutenant of the sex did not refer to the merely bar- Tower) refused to put it in force, ring a prisoner's door. The story has been treated as a fable, I
VOL. v. 25
$6 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31.
not leave London while her sister's fate was undeter- mined.1 The Houses met, therefore, as usual, at West- minster, and the speech from the throne was read in Mary's presence by the chancellor.
Since the last Parliament, Gardiner said, the people of England had given proofs of unruly humour. The Queen was their undoubted sovereign, and a measure would be submitted to the Lords and Commons to de- clare, in some emphatic manner, her claim to her sub- jects' obedience.
Her Majesty desiring, further, in compliance with her subjects' wishes, to take a husband, she had fixed her choice on the Prince of Spain, as a person agreeable to herself and likely to be a valuable friend to the realm : the people, however, had insolently and ignorantly pre- sumed to mutiny against her intentions, and, in her affection for the commonwealth, her Majesty had con- sented to submit the articles of the marriage to the ap- proval of Parliament.
Again, her Majesty would desire them to take into their consideration the possible failure of the blood royal, and adopt necessary precautions to secure an un- disturbed succession to the crown. It would be for the Parliament to decide whether the privilege which had been granted to Henry VIII. of bequeathing the crown by will might not be, with propriety, extended to her present Majesty.2
Finally, and at great length, the chancellor spoke
1 RENARD 3 NOAILLES, vol. iii. p. 141.
1554-1 THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 387
of religion. The late rebellion, he said, was properly a religious rebellion : it was the work of men who de- spised the sacraments, and were the enemies of truth, order, and godliness. A measure would be laid before the legislature for the better restraint of irregular license of opinion.
The marriage was to pass quietly. Those of the Lords and Commons who persevered in their disap- proval were a small minority, and did not intend to ap- pear.1 The bill, therefore, passed both Houses by the i ^th of April.2 The marriage articles were those ori- ginally offered by the Emperor, with the English clauses attached, and some explanatory paragraphs, that no room might be left for laxity of interpretation.5 Lord Bedford and Lord Fitzwalter had already gone to Ply- mouth, where a ship was in readiness to carry them to Spain.' They waited only till the parliamentary forms were completed, and immediately sailed. Lord William Howard would go to sea with the fleet, at his earliest convenience, to protect the passage, and the Prince might be expected in England by the end of May. The bill for the Queen's authority was carried also without objection. The forms of English law running only in the name of a king, it had been pretended that a queen could not be a lawful sovereign. A declara- tory statute explained that the kingly prerogative was the same, whether vested in male or female.4 Here.
1 Eenard to Charles V., April 7. 2 i Mary, cap. ii.
3 See the treaty of marriage between Philip and Mary in RYMER.
Mary, cap. i.
388
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31
however, unanimity was at an end. The paragraph about the succession in the Queen's speech being obvi- ously aimed at Elizabeth, produced such an irritation in the council, as well as in Parliament, that Reiiard ex- pected it would end in actual armed conflict.1
From the day of Elizabeth's imprisonment Gardiner had laboured to extort evidence against her by fair means or foul.2 She had been followed to the Tower by her servants. Sir John Gage desired that her food should be dressed by people of his own. The servants refused to allow themselves to be displaced,3 and, to the distress of Renard, angry words had been addressed to Gage by Lord Howard, so that they could not be re- moved by force.4
The temptation of life having failed, after all, to induce Wyatt to enlarge his confession beyond his first acknowledgments, it was determined to execute him. On the i ith of April he was brought out of his cell, and on his way to the scaffold he was con- fronted with Courtenay, to whom he said something, but how much or what it is impossible to ascertain.5
ii.
1 Y a telle confusion que 1'on ri'attend sinon que la qucrelle se demesle par les armes et tumults. — .Renard to Charles V., April 22.
2 Holinshed says, Edmund Tre- mayne was racked, and I have al- ready quoted Gardiner's letter to Petre, suggesting the racking of ' little Wyatt.'
3 Her Grace's cook said to him, My Lord, I will never suffer any stranger to come about her diet but
her own sworn men as long as I live. — Harkian MSS. 419, and see HOLINSHED.
4 L' Admiral s'est colere au grand chamberlain de la Royne que a la garde de la dicte Elizabeth et luy a dit qu'elle feroit encores trancher tant de testes que luy et autres s'en repentiroient. — Renard to Charles V., April 7 : Rolls House MSS.
5 Lord Chandos stated the same day in the House of Lords that he
1 554.]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
389
Finding that his death was inevitable, he determined to make the only reparation which was any longer in his power to Elizabeth. When placed on the platform, after desiring the people to pray for him, lamenting his crime, and expressing a hope that he might be the last person to suffer for the rebellion, he concluded thus : —
' Whereas it is said abroad that I should accuse my Lady Elizabeth's Grace and my Lord Courtenay ; it is not so, good people, for I assure you neither they nor any other now yonder in hold or durance was privy of my rising or commotion before I began/ l
The words, or the substance of them, were heard by every one. . Weston, who attended as confessor, shouted, < Believe him not, good people ! he confessed otherwise before the council.' ' That which I said then I said/ answered Wyatt, ' but that which I say now is true/ The executioner did his office, and Wyatt' s work, for good or evil, was ended.
All that the Court had gained by his previous con-
threw himself at Courtenay's feet and implored him to confess the truth. The sheriffs of London, on the other hand, said that he en- treated Courtenay to forgive him for the false charges which he had brought against him and against Elizabeth.— FOXE, vol. vi. Com- pare Chronicle of Queen Mary, p. 72, note.
1 So far the Chronicle of Queen Mary, Holinshed, Stow, and the narratives among the HarleianMSS. essentially agree. But the chronicle followed by Stow makes Wyatt add,
'As I have declared no less to the Queen's council; ' whereas Foxe says that he admitted that he had spoken otherwise to the council, but had spoken untruly. Noailles tells all that was really important in a letter to d'Oysel : * M. Wyatt eust la teste coupee, dischargeant advant que de mourir Madame Elizabeth et Cour- tenay qu'il avoit aulparavant charge de s'estre entendus en son entre- prinse sur promesses que Ton luy avoit faictes de luy saulver la vie.' — NOAILLES, vol. iii.
390
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31.
fessions was now more than lost. London rang with the story that "Wyatt, in dying, had cleared Courtenay and Elizabeth.1 Gardiner still thundered in the Star Chamber on the certainty of their guilt, and pilloried two decent citizens who had repeated Wyatt' s words ; but his efforts were vain, and the hope of a legal convic- tion was at an end. The judges declared that against Elizabeth there was now no evidence ; 2 and, even if there had been evidence, Renard wrote to his master, that the Court could not dare to proceed further against her, from fear of Lord William Howard, who had the whole naval force of England at his disposal, and, in indignation at Elizabeth's treatment, might join the French and the exiles.3 Perplexed to know how to dispose of her, the ambassador and the chancellor thought of sending her off to Pomfret Castle ; doubtless, if once within Pomfret walls, to find the fate of the Second Richard there ; but again the spectre of Lord Howard terrified them.
The threatened escape of her sister, too, was but the beginning of the Queen's sorrows. On the iyth of April Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was tried at the Guild- hall for having been a party to the conspiracy. The
1 Courtenay, however, certainly was guilty ; and had "Wyatt ac- quitted Elizaheth without naming Courtenay, his words would have been far more effective than they were. This, however, it was hard for Wyatt to do, as it would have been equivalent to a repetition of
his accusations.
2 Les gens de loy ne treuvent matiere pour la condamner. — Re- nard to Charles V., April 22 : TYT- LEU, vol. ii.
3 Ibid. And see a passage in the MS., which Mr Tytler has omit- ted.
'554-J
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
confessions of many of the prisoners had more or less implicated Throgmorton. Cuthbert Yaughan, who was out with "VVyatt, swore in the Court that Throgmorton had discussed the plan of the insurrection with him; and Throgmorton himself admitted that he had talked to Sir Peter Carew and Wyatt about the probability of a rebellion. He it was, too, who was to have conducted Courtenay to Andover on his flight into Devonshire ; and the evidence1 leaves very little doubt that he was concerned as deeply as any one who did not actually take up arms. Sir Nicholas, however, defended himself with resolute pertinacity ; he fought through all the charges against him, and dissected the depositions with the skill of a practised pleader; and in the end the jury returned the bold verdict of ' Not guilty.' Sir Thomas Bromley urged them to remember themselves. The foreman answered they had found the verdict ac- cording to their consciences.
Their consciences probably found less difficulty in the facts charged against Throgmorton than in the guilt to be attached to them. The verdict was intended as a rebuke to the cruelty with which the rebellion had been punished, and it was received as an insult to the Crown. The crowd, as Throgmorton left the Court, threw up their caps and shouted. The Queen was ill for three days with mortification,2 and insisted that the jurors should be punished. They w^ere arrested, and kept as
1 It is printed at length in Ho-
LINSHED.
2 Q,ue tant altere la dicte dame
qu'elle a este trois jours malade. c.t n'est encore bien d'elle. — Ilenard to diaries V. : TYTLEB, vol. ii. p. 374.
392 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. LOU. 31.-
prisoners till the following winter, when they were re- leased on payment of the ruinous fine of 2OOO/. Throg- morton himself was seized again on some other pretext, and sent again to the Tower. The council, or Paget' s party there, remonstrated against the arrest ; they yielded, however, perhaps that they might make the firmer stand on more important matters.
Since Elizabeth could not be executed, the Court were the more anxious to carry the Succession Bill. Gardiner's first desire was that Elizabeth should be ex- cluded by name ; but Paget said that this was impossi- ble.1 As little could a measure be passed empowering the Queen to leave the crown by will, for that would be but the same thing under another form. Following up his purpose, notwithstanding, Gardiner brought out in the House of Lords a pedigree, tracing Philip's descent from John of Gaunt ; and he introduced a bill to make offences against his person high treason. But at the second reading the important words were introduced, 'during the Queen's lifetime;'2 the bill was read a third time, and then disappeared ; and Paget had been the loudest of its opponents.3
Beaten on the succession, the chancellor, in spite of Kenard's remonstrances, brought forward next his Re-
1 He whom you wrote of comes i would give no consent to such a to me with a sudden and strange ! scheme.— Paget to Renard : TYT-
proposal, that, since matters against Madame Elizabeth do not take the turn which was wished, there should be an Act brought into Parliament
LER, vol. ii. p. 382.
2 Lords1 Journals.
8 Renard complains of Paget's conduct bitterly.— Renard to Charles
to disinherit her. I replied that I j V., May i : TYTLEE, vol. ii.
1 5 54-J THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 393
ligious Persecution Bills. The House of Commons went with him to some extent ; and, to secure success in some form or other, he introduced three separate measures, either of which would answer his purpose — a Bill for the restoration of the Six Articles, a Bill to re-enact the Lollard Statute of Henry IV., De Heretico Comburendo, and a Bill to restore (in more than its original vigour) the Episcopal Jurisdiction. The Six Articles had so bad a name that the first bill was read once only, and was dropped ; the two others passed the Commons,1 and, on the 26th of April, the Bishops' Authority Bill came be- fore the Lords. Lord Paget was so far in advance a his time that he could not hope to appeal with a chancv of success to his own principles of judicious latitudinari- anism ; but he determined, if possible, to prevent Gar- diner's intended cruelties from taking effect, and he spread an alarm that, if the bishops were restored to their unrestricted powers, under one form or other the holders of the abbey lands would be at their mercy. To allay the suspicion, another bill was carried through the Commons, providing expressly for the safety of the holders of those lands ; but the tyranny of the Episcopal Courts was so recent, and the ecclesiastics had shown themselves uniformly so little capable of distinguishing between right and wrong when the interests of religion were at stake, that the jealousy, once aroused, could not be checked. The irritation became so hot and so general as to threaten again the most dangerous consequences ;
Commons' Journals.
394 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [ca. 31.
and Paget, pretending to be alarmed at the excitement \vliich he had raised, urged Henard to use his influence with the Queen to dissolve Parliament.1
Henard, who was only anxious that the marriage should go off quietly, agreed in the desirableness of a dissolution. He told the Queen that the reform of re- ligion must be left to a better opportunity ; and the Prince could not, and should not, set his foot in a coun- try where parties were for ever on the edge of cutting each other's throats. It was no time for her to be in- dulging Gardiner in humours which were driving men mad, and shutting her ears to the advice of those who could ruin her if they pleased ; she must think first of her husband. The Queen protested that Gardiner was acting by no advice of hers ; Gardiner, she said, was obstinate, and would listen to no one ; she herself was helpless and miserable. But Renard was not to be moved by misery. At all events, he said, the Prince should not come till late in the summer, perhaps not till autumn, not, in fact, till it could be seen what form these wild humours would assume ; summer was the dangerous time in England, when the people's blood was apt to boil.2
Gardiner, however, was probably not acting without Mary's secret approbation. Both the Queen and the minister especially desired, at that moment, the passing
1 Paget to Renard; TKTLER, vol. ii. p. 382. And compare Renard's correspondence with the Emperor during the month of April. — li'dls House MSS.
2 Pour ce qui ordiriairement les huineurs des Angloys boulissent plus en Peste que en autre temps.
i 5 54. j THE SPANISH MARRIA GE. 395
of the Heresy Bill, and Renard was obliged to content himself with a promise that the dissolution should be as early as possible. Though Parliament could not meet at Oxford, a committee of Convocation had been sitting there, with Dr Weston, the adulterous Dean of Windsor, for a president. Cranmer, Ridley, and Lati- mer had been called upon to defend their opinions, which had been pronounced false and damnable. They had been required to recant, and, having refused, they were sentenced, so far as the power of the
April 20.
court extended, to the punishment of heretics.
Cranmer appealed from the judgment to Go.d Al- mighty, in whose presence he would soon stand.
Ridley said the sentence would but send them the sooner to the place where else they hoped to go.
Latimer said, ' I thank God that my life has been prolonged that I may glorify God by this kind of death/
Hooper, Ferrars, Coverdale, Taylor, Philpot, and Sandars, who were in the London prisons, were to have been simultaneously tried and sentenced at Cambridge. These six, however, drew and signed a joint refusal to discuss their faith in a court before which they were to be brought as prisoners ; and for some reason the pro- ceedings against them were suspended. But whether they refused or consented was of little moment to the Bishop of Winchester; they were in his hands — he could try them when he pleased. A holocaust of he- resiarchs was waiting to be offered up, and before a faggot could be lighted, the necessary powers had to be obtained from Parliament.
396
REIGN OF QUEEN- MARY.
[CH. 31.
The Bishop, therefore, was determined, if possible, to obtain those powers. He had the entire bench of prelates on his side; and Lord Howard, the Earl of Bedford, and others of the lay lords who would have been on the side of humanity, were absent. The op- position had to be conducted under the greatest diffi- culties. Paget, however, fought the battle, and fought it on broad grounds : the Bishops' bill was read twice ; May i. on the third reading, on the 1st of May, he May 2. succeeded in throwing it out : the Lollards' bill came on the day after, and here his difficulty was far greater ; for toleration was imperfectly understood by Catholic or Protestant, and many among the peers, who hated the bishops, equally hated heresy. Paget, however, spoke out his convictions, and protested against the iniquity of putting men to death for their opinions.1 The bill was read a first time on the day on which it was introduced ; on the 4th of May it was read again,2 but it went no further. The next day Parliament was dissolved. The peers assured the Queen that they had no desire to throw a shield over heresy ; the common law existed independent of statute, and the common law prescribed punishments which could still be in- flicted.3 But, so long as heresy was undefined, Ana-
1 Quant Ton a parle de la peyne des heretiques, il a sollicite les sieurs pour non y consentir, y donner lieu apeynede mort. — Renurd to Charles V., May i.
3 Lords* Journals.
3 There can, I think, be no
doubt that it was this which the peers said. The statute of Henry IV. was not passed ; yet the Queen told Renard, ' que le peyne antienne centre les heretiques fut agree par toute la noblesse, et qu'ilz fairent dire expressement et publiquement
1554-]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
397
baptists, Socinians, or professors of the more advanced forms of opinion, could alone fall within the scope of punishments merely traditional.
Renard wrote that the tempers of men were never worse than at that moment. In the heat of the debate, on the 28th of April, Lord Thomas Grey was executed as a defiance to the liberal party. Gardiner persuaded the Queen, perhaps not without reason, that he was himself in danger of being arrested by Paget and Pembroke ; l and an order was sent to the Lieutenant of the Tower that if the chancellor was brought thither under warrant of the council only, he was not to be received.2
On the other hand, twelve noblemen and gentlemen undertook to stand by Mary if she would arrest Paget and Pembroke. The chancellor, Sir Robert Rochester,
qu'ilz entendoient 1'heresie estre extirpee et punie.' The chancellor informed Renard that, 'Although the Heresy Bill was lost, there were penalties of old standing against heretics which had still the form of law, and could be put in execution.' And, on the 3rd of May, the privy council directed the judges and the Queen's learned counsel to be called together, and their opinions demand- ed, ' what they think in law her Highness may do touching the cases of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, being already, by both the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, judged to be obstinate heretics, which matter is the rather to be consulted upon, for that the said Cranmer is already at-
tainted.' — MS. Privy Council Register. The answer of the judges I have not found, but it must have been unfavourable to the intentions of the Court. Joan Bocher was burnt under the common law, for her opinions were condemned by all parties in the Church, and were looked upon in the same light as witchcraft, or any other profession definitely devilish. But it was difficult to treat as heresy, under the common law, a form of belief which had so recently been sanctioned by Act of Parliament.
1 Renard to Charles V., May 13: Rolls House MSS.
2 NOAILLES.
398 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 31.
and the Marquis of Winchester discussed the feasibility of seizing them ; but Lord Howard and the Channel fleet were thought to present too formidable an obstacle. With the Queen's sanction, however, they armed in secret. It was agreed that, on one pretence or another, Derby, Shrewsbury, Sussex, and Huntingdon should be sent out of London to their counties. Elizabeth, if it could be managed, should be sent to Pom fret, as Gar- diner had before proposed ; Lord Howard should be kept at sea ; and, if opportunity offered, Arundel and Paget might, at least, be secured.1
But Pomfret was impossible, and vexation thickened on vexation. Lord Howard was becoming a bugbear at the Court. Report now said that two of the Staffords, whom he had named to command in the fleet, had join- ed the exiles in France ; and for Lord Howard himself the Queen could feel no security, if he was provoked too far. She was haunted by a misgiving that, while the Prince was under his convoy, he might declare against her, and carry him prisoner to France ; or if Howard could himself be trusted, his fleet could not. On the eve of sailing for the coast of Spain, a mutiny broke out at Plymouth. The sailors swore that if they were forced on a service which they detested, both the admiral and the Prince should rue it. Lord Howard, in reporting to the Queen the men's misconduct, said that his own life was at her Majesty's disposal, but he advised her to reconsider the prudence of placing the
1 Renard tc Charles V., May 13- : TITLES, vol. ii.
I554-]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
399
Prince in their power. Howard's own conduct, too, was far from reassuring. A few small vessels had been sent from Antwerp to join the English fleet, under the Flemish admiral Chappelle. Chappelle complained that Howard treated him with indifference, and insulted his ships by ' calling them cockle-shells/ If the crews of the two fleets were on land anywhere together, the English lost no opportunity of making a quarrel, ' hust- ling and pushing ' the Flemish sailors ; l and, as if finally to complete the Queen's vexation, Lord Bedford wrote that the Prince declined the protection of her subjects on his voyage, and that his departure was post- poned for a few weeks longer.
The fleet had to remain in the Channel ; it could not be trusted elsewhere ; and the necessity of releasing Elizabeth from the Tower was another annoyance to the Queen. A confinement at Woodstock was the furthest stretch of severity that the country would, for the pre- sent, permit. On the 1 9th of May, Elizabeth was taken up the river. The Princess believed herself that she was being carried off tanqnam ovis, as she said — as a sheep for the slaughter. But the world thought that she was set at liberty, and as her barge passed under the Bridge Mary heard, with indignation, from the palace windows, three salvoes of artillery fired from the Steelyard, as a sign of the joy of the people.2 A letter
1 Les ont provoque a debatz, les cerrans et poulsans. — Renard to Charles V. : TYTLER, vol. ii. p. 413.
2 Samedy dernier Elizabeth f'ut
tire"e de la Tour et menfce a Rich- mond ; et dois ledict Richmond Ton 1'a conduit a Woodstock pour y estre gardee surement jusques 1'on
4oo
RETGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 31.
from Philip would have been a consolation to her in the midst of the troubles which she had encountered for his sake ; but the languid lover had never written a line to her ; or, if he had written, not a line had reached her hand ; only a ship which contained despatches from him for Renard had been taken, in the beginning of May, by a French cruiser, and the thought that precious words of affection had, perhaps, been on their way to her and were lost, was hard to bear.
In vain she attempted to cheer her spirits with the revived ceremonials of Whitsuntide. She marched day after day, in procession, with canopies and banners, and bishops in gilt slippers, round St James's, round St Martin's, round Westminster.1 Sermons and masses alternated now with religious feasts, now with Diriges for her father's soul. But all was to no purpose ; she could not cast off her anxieties, or escape from the sha- dow of her subjects' hatred, which clung to her steps. Insolent pamphlets were dropped in her path and in the offices of Whitehall ; she trod upon them in the passages of the palace ; they were placed by mysterious hands in the sanctuary of her bedroom. At length, chafed with a thousand irritations, and craving for a husband who showed so small anxiety to come to her, she fled from
la fasse aller a Pomfret. Et s'est resjouy le peuple de sa departye, pensant qu'ello fut en liberte, et passant par devant la Maison dcs Stillyards ilz tirerent trois coups d'artillerie en signe d'allegrie, que la reyne et son conseil ont prins a
desplaisir et regret, et estimons que Ton en fera demonstration. — Renard to Charles V. : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.
1 Machyn's Diary ; Memorials of the Reformation.
1 554-] THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 40!
London, at the beginning of June, to Bich- mond.
The trials of the last six months had begun to tell upon Mary's understanding : she was ill with hysterical longings ; ill with the passions which Gardiner had kindled and Paget disappointed. A lady who slept in her room told Noailles that she could speak to no one without impatience, and that ;;he believed the whole world was in a league to keep her husband from her. She found fault with every one — even with the Prince himself. Why had he not written ? she asked again and again. Why had she never received one courteous word from him ? If she heard of merchants or sailors arriving from Spain, she would send for them and ques- tion them ; and some would tell her that the Prince was said to have little heart for his business in England ; others terrified her with tales of fearful fights upon the seas ; and others brought her news of the French squad- rons that were on the watch in the Channel.1 She would start out of her sleep at night, picturing a thou- sand terrors, and among them one to which all else were insignificant, that her Prince, who had taken such wild possession of her imagination, had no answering feeling
1 Le doubte luy est souvent augmentee par plusieurs marchants mariniers et aultres malcontens de son marriage qui veuans de France et Espaign luy desguisent et luy con- trouvent un infinite de nouvelles es- tranges, les ungs du peu de volunt6
que le prince a de venir par de9a, les aultres d' avoir ouy et entendus com- bats sur la raer, et plusieurs d' avoir descouvert grand nombre de voisles Francises avec grand appareil. — Noailles to the King of France Ambassades, vol. iii. p. 253.
VOL. v. 26
402
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 3*.
for herself — that, with her growing years and wasted figure, she could never win him to love her.1
1 The unfortunate Queen/ wrote Henry of France, ' will learn the truth at last. She will wake too late, in misery and remorse, to know that she has filled the realm with blood for an object which, when she has gained it, will bring nothing but affliction to herself or to her people/ 2
But the darkest season has its days of sunshine, and Mary's trials were for the present over. If the states- men were disloyal, the clergy and the Universities ap- preciated her services to the Church, and, in the midst of her trouble, Oxford congratulated her on having been raised up for the restoration of life and light to England.3 More pleasant than this pleasant flattery was the arrival, on the I9th of June, of the Marquis do las Navas from Spain, with the news that by that time the Prince was on his way.
It was even so. Philip had submitted to his un-
1 L'on m'a diet que quelques heurcs de la nuict elle entre en tclle resverie de ses amours et passions que bien souvent elle se met hors de soy, et croy que la plus grande occa- sion de sa douleur vieut du desplaisir qu'elle a de veoir sa personne si di- minuee et ses ans multiplier en telle nombre qu'ilz luy courent tous les jours a grande interest. — Noailles to the King of France : Ambassades, vol. iii. p. 252.
2 Ibid. p. 255.
* Nuper cum litterarum studia
pene extincta jacerent cum salus omnium exigua, spe dubiaque pen- deret quis. non fortune incertos eventus extimescebat ? Quis non in- gemuit et arsit dolore ? Pars studia deserere cogebantur ; pars buc illuc- que quovis momento rapiebantur ; nee ulli certus ordo suumve proposi- tum diu constabat. — The happy change of the last year was then contrasted with proper point and prolixity. — The University of Oxford to the Queen : MS. Domestic, Mary, vol. iv.
1554-1 THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 403
welcome destiny, and six thousand troops being required pressingly by the Emperor in the Low Countries, they attended him for his escort. A paper of advices was drawn for the Prince's use by Henard, directing him how to accommodate himself to his barbarous fortune. Neither soldiers nor mariners would be allowed to land. The noblemen, therefore, who formed his retinue, were advised to bring Spanish musketeers, disguised in liveries, in the place of pages and lacqueys. Their arms could be concealed amidst the baggage. The war would be an excuse for the noblemen being armed them- selves, and the Prince, on landing, should have a shirt of mail under his doublet. As to manner, he must en- deavour to be affable : he would have to hunt with the young lords, and to make presents to them ; and, with whatever difficulty, he must learn a few words of Eng- lish, to exchange the ordinary salutations. As a friend, Renard recommended Paget to him ; he would find Paget ' a man of sense.' 1
Philip, who was never remarkable for personal courage, may be pardoned for having come reluctantly to a country where he had to' bring men-at-arms for servants, and his own cook for fear of being poisoned. The sea, too, was hateful to him, for he suffered miser- ably from sickness. Nevertheless, he was coming, and with him such a retinue of gallant gentlemen as the world has rarely seen together. The Marquis de los Yalles, Gonzaga, d'Aguilar, Medina Celi, Antonio de
1 'Homrae d' esprit.' — Instruc- I d'Espagne : Granvelle Papers, vol. donnees a Philippe, Prince | iv. p. 267.
404
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[cu. 31.
Toledo, Diego de Mendoza, the Count de Feria, the Duke of Alva, Count Egmont, and Count Horn — men whose stories are written in the annals of two worlds : some in letters of glorious light, some in letters of blood which shall never be washed out while the history of mankind survives. Whether for evil or good, they were not the meek innocents for whom Renard had at one time asked so anxiously
In company with these noblemen was Sir Thomas Gresham, charged with half a million of money in bullion, out of the late arrivals from the New World ; which the Emperor, after taking security from the London merchants, had lent the Queen, perhaps to enable her to make her marriage palatable by the re- storation of the currency.1
Thus preciously freighted, the Spanish fleet, a hun- dred and fifty ships, large and small, sailed from Co- runna at the beginning of July. The voyage was weary and wretched. The sea- sickness prostrated both the Prince and the troops, and to the sea- sickness was added the terror of the French — a terror, as it happened, needless, for the English exiles, by whom the Prince was to have been intercepted, had, in the last few weeks, melted away from the French service, with the excep- tion of a few who were at Scilly. Sir Peter Carew, for some unknown reason, had written to ask for his pardon, and had gone to Italy ; 2 but the change was recent and
1 Gresham's Correspondence : Flanders MSS. State Paper Office. The bullion was afterwards drawu
in procession in carts through the London streets. - Wotton' s Correspondence: French
1 5 54-] THP: SPANISH MARRIAGE. 405
unknown, and the ships stole along in silence, the orders of the Prince being that not a salute should be fired to catch the ear of an enemy.1 At last, on the I9th of July, the white cliffs of Freshwater were sighted ; Lord Howard lay at the Needles with the English fleet ; and on Friday, the soth, at three o'clock in. the
July 20.
afternoon, the flotilla was safely anchored in Southampton Water.
The Queen was on her way to Winchester, where she arrived the next morning, and either in attendance upon her, or waiting at Southampton, was almost the entire peerage of England. Having made up their minds to endure the marriage, the Lords resolved to give Philip the welcome which was due to the husband of their sovereign, and in the uncertain temper of the people, their presence might be necessary to protect his person from insult or from injury.
It was an age of glitter, pomp, and .pageantry ; the anchors were no sooner down, than a barge was in readiness, with twenty rowers in the Queen's colours of green and white ; and Arundel, Pembroke, Shrewsbury, Derby, and other lords went off to the vessel which carried the royal standard of Castile. Philip's natural manner was cold and stiff, but he had been schooled into graciousness. Exhausted by his voyage, he ac- cepted delightedly the instant invitation to go on shore,
MSS. State Paper Office. The title of the Queen of Scots was, per- haps, the difficulty ; or Carew may have felt that he could do nothing of real consequence, while he might
increase the difficulty of protecting
Elizabeth.
Noailles to the King of France,
July 23 : Ambassades, vol. iii
4o6 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [crt. 31.
and he entered the barge accompanied by the Duke of Alva. A crowd of gentlemen was waiting to receive him at the landing-place. As he stepped out — -not per- haps without some natural nervousness and sharp glances round him — the whole assemblage knelt. A salute was fired from the batteries, and Lord Shrews- bury presented him with the order of the Garter.1 An enthusiastic eye-witness thus describes Philip's appear- ance :—
' Of visage he is well favoured, with a broad forehead and grey eyes, straight-nosed and of manly countenance. From the forehead to the point of his chin his face groweth small. His pace is princely, and gait so straight and upright as he loseth no inch of his height ; with a yellow head and a yellow beard ; and thus to conclude, he is so well proportioned of body, arm, leg, and every other limb to the same, as nature cannot work a more perfect pattern, and, as I have learned, of the age of 28 years. His Majesty I judge to be of a stout stomach, pregnant-witted, and of most gentle nature.'2
Sir Anthony Brown approached, leading a horse with a saddle-cloth of crimson velvet, embroidered with
Antiquaries dispute whether I Office.
Philip received the Garter on board his own vessel or after he came on shore. Lord Shrewsbury himself settles the important point. « I, the Lord Steward,' Shrewsbury wrote to "Wotton, ' at his coming to land, presented the Garter to him.' — French MSS. Mary, State Paper
2 John Elder to the Bishop of Caithness : Queen Jane and Queen Mary, appendix 10. Elder adds that his stature was about that of a certain ' John Hume, my Lord of Jedward's kinsman,' which does not help our information. Philip, how- ever, was short,
I554-J THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 407
gold and pearls. He presented the steed with a Latin speech, signifying that he was his Highness's Master of the Horse ; and Philip mounting, went direct to South- ampton church, the English and Spanish noblemen at- tending bareheaded, to offer thanks for his safe arrival. From the church he was conducted to a house which had been furnished from the royal stores for his re- ception. Every thing was, of course, magnificent. Only there had been one single oversight. Wrought upon the damask hangings, in conspicuous letters, were observed the ominous words, ' Henrj^, by the Grace of God, King of England, France, and Ireland, and Supreme Head of the Church of England/ 1
Here the Prince was to remain till Monday to re- cover from his voyage ; perhaps to ascertain, before he left the neighbourhood of his own fleet, the humour of the barbarians among whom he had arrived. In Latin (he was unable to speak French) he addressed the Lords on the causes which had brought him to England, the chief among those causes being the manifest will of God, to which he felt himself bound to submit. It was noticed that he never lifted his cap in speaking to any one,2 but he evidently endeavoured to be courteous. With a stomach unrecovered from the sea, and disdaining pre- cautions, he sat down on the night of his arrival to a public English supper ; he even drained a tankard of ale, as an example, he said, to his Spanish companions.3
1 BAOAKDO.
2 Non bavendo mai levato la berretta a persona. — BAOARDO. 3 NOAILLES.
4o8
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[en. 31.
July 21.
The first evening passed off well, and he retired to seek such rest as the strange land and strange people, the altered diet, and the firing of guns, which never ceased through the summer night, would allow him.
Another feature of his new country awaited
Philip in the morning ; he had come from the sunny plains of Castile; from his window at South- ampton he looked out upon a steady downfall of July rain. Through the cruel torrent1 he made his way .to the church again to mass, and afterwards Gardiner came to him from the Queen. In the afternoon the sky cleared, and the Duchess of Alva, who had ac- companied her husband, was taken out in a barge upon Southampton Water. Both English and Spaniards ex- erted themselves to be mutually pleasing ; but the situation was not of a kind which it was desirable to protract. Six thousand Spanish troops were cooped in the close uneasy transports, forbidden to land lest they should provoke the jealousy of the people ; and when,
on Sunday, his Highness had to undergo a
public dinner, in- which English servants only were allowed to attend upon him, the Castilian lords, many of whom believed that they had come to England on a bootless errand, broke out into murmurs.2
Monday came at last ; the rain fell again,
and the wind howled. The baggage was sent
July 22.
July 23.
1 Crudele pioggia. — BAOARDO.
2 La Dominica Mattina se n'ando a messa ct tomato a casa mangio in publico servito da gli officiali eke gli haveva data la Roina con mala sa-
tisfattione degli Spagruioli, i quali dubitando che la cosa non andassc a lungo, mormoravauo assai tra di loro. — BAOAHDO.
1 5 54. ] THE SPANISH MARRIA GE. 409
forward in the morning in the midst of the tempest. Philip lingered in hopes of a change ; but no change came, and after an early dinner the trumpet sounded to horse. Lords, knights, and gentlemen had thronged into the town, from curiosity or interest, out of all the counties round. Before the Prince mounted it was reckoned, with uneasiness, that as many as four thou- sand cavaliers, under no command, were collected to join the procession.
A grey gelding was led up for Philip ; he wrapped himself in a scarlet cloak, and started to meet his bride — to complete a sacrifice the least congenial, perhaps, which ever policy of state extracted from a prince.
The train could move but slowly. Two miles be- yond the gates a drenched rider, spattered with chalk mud, was seen galloping towards them ; on reaching the Prince he presented him with a ring from the Queen, and begged his Highness, in her Majesty's name, to come no further. The messenger could not explain the cause, being unable to speak any language which Philip could understand, and visions of commotion instantly presented themselves, mixed, it may be, with a hope that the bitter duty might yet be escaped. Alva was immediately at his master's side ; they reined up, and were asking each other anxiously what should next be done, when an English lord exclaimed in French, with courteous irony, ' Our Queen, sire, loves your Highness so tenderly that she would not have you come to her in such wretched weather.'1 The hope, if hope there had 1 ' Sire, la Nostra Keina ama tanto I'Altezza vostra ch'clla non vo-
4io REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [ctt. 31.
been, died in its birth ; before sunset, with drenched garments and draggled plume, the object of so many anxieties arrived within the walls of Winchester.
To the cathedral he went first, wet as he was. Whatever Philip of Spain was entering upon, whether it was a marriage or a massacre, a state intrigue or a midnight murder, his opening step was ever to seek a blessing from the holy wafer. He entered, kissed the crucifix, and knelt and prayed before the altar ; then taking his seat in the choir, he remained while the cho- risters sang a Te Deum laudamus, till the long aisles grew dim in the summer twilight, and he was conducted by torchlight to the Deanery.
The Queen was at the Bishop's palace, but a few hundred yards distant. Philip, doubtless, could have endured the postponement of an interview till morning ; but Mary could not wait, and the same night he was conducted into the presence of his haggard bride, who now, after a life of misery, believed herself at the open gate of Paradise. Let the curtain fall over the meeting, let it close also over the wedding solemnities which fol- lowed with due splendour two days later. There are scenes in life which we regard with pity too deep for words. The unhappy Queen, unloved, unlovable, yet with her parched heart thirsting for affection, was fling- ing herself upon a breast to which an iceberg was warm ; upon a man to whom love was an unmeaning word, ex- cept as the most brutal of passions. For a few months
rebbe chc pigliasse disagio di caminar per tempi cosi tristi.' — BAOARDO.
1 554-1 THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 41 1
she created for herself an atmosphere of unreality. She saw in Philip the ideal of her imagination, and in Philip's feelings the reflex of her own ; but the dream passed away — her love for her husband remained ; but remained only to be a torture to her. With a broken spirit and bewildered understanding, she turned to Heaven for comfort, and, instead of heaven, she saw only the false roof of her creed painted to imitate and shut out the sky.
The scene will change for a few pages to the Low Countries. Charles Y. more than any other person was responsible for this marriage. He had desired it not for Mary's sake, not for Philip's sake, not for religion's sake ; but that he might be able to assert a decisive pre- ponderance over France ; and, to gain his end, he had already led the Queen into a course which had forfeited the regard of her subjects. She had murdered Lady Jane Grey at the instigation of his ambassador, and under the same influence she had done her best to de- stroy her sister. Yet Charles, notwithstanding, was one of nature's gentlemen. If he was unscrupulous in the sacrifice of others to his purposes, he never spared him- self ; and in the days of his successes he showed to less advantage than now, when, amidst failing fortunes and ruined health, his stormy career was closing.
In the spring he had been again supposed to be dying. His military reputation had come out tarnished from his failure at Metz, and while he was labouring with imperfect success to collect troops for a summer's campaign, Henry of France, unable to prevent the
4 1 2 REIGN OF Q UEEN MAR Y. [CH. 3 1 .
English marriage, was preparing to strike a blow so heavy, as should enable him to dictate peace on his own terms before England was drawn into the quarrel.
In June two French armies took the field. Pietro Strozzi advanced from Piedmont into Tuscany. Henry himself, with Guise, Montmorency, and half the peerage of France, entered the Low Countries, sweeping all op- position before him. First Marienbourg fell, then Di- nant fell, stormed with especial gallantry. The young French nobles were taught that they must conquer or die : a party of them flinched in the breach at Dinant, and the next morning Henry sat in judgment upon them sceptre in hand ; some were hanged, the rest de- graded from their rank : ' and whereas one privilege of the gentlemen of France was to be exempt from taylles payable to the Crown, they were made tayllable as any other villains/1
From Dinant the French advanced to Namur. When Namur should have fallen, Brussels was the next aim ; and there was nothing, as it seemed, which could stop them. The Imperial army under the Prince of Savoy could but hover, far outnumbered, on their skirts. The reinforcements from Spain had not arrived, and a battle lost was the loss of Belgium.
In the critical temper of England, a decisive supe- riority obtained by France would be doubly dangerous ; and Charles, seeing Philibert perplexed into uncertain ipovements which threatened misfortune, disregarding
1 Wotton to the Queen ; cypher : French JfSS. Man/, bundle \i.
1554-]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
the remonstrances of his physicians, his ministers, and his generals, started from his sick bed, flew to the head of his troops, and brought them to JSTamur, in the path of the advancing French. Men said that he was rush- ing upon destruction ; that the headstrong humour which had already worked him so heavy injury was again dragging him into ruin.1 But fortune had been disarmed by the greatness with which Charles had borne up against calamit}^, or else his supposed rashness was the highest military wisdom. Before Henry came up he had seized a position at an angle of the Meuse, where he could defend Namur, and could not be himself at- tacked, except at a disadvantage. The French ap- proached only to retire, and, feeling themselves unable to force the Imperial lines, commenced a retreat. Charles followed cautiously. An attack on Eenty
1 * You shall understand that the Emperor hath suddenly caused his army to march towards Namur, and that himself is gone after in person ; the deliberation -whereof, both of the one and the other, is against the ad- vice of his council, and all other men to the staying of him. Where- in Albert the Duke of Savoy, John Baptiste Castaldo, Don Hernando de Gonzaga, and Andrea Doria have done their best, as well by letter as by their coming from the camp to this town, viva voce alleging to him the puissance of his enemy, the un- ableness as yet of his army to en- counter with them, the danger of the chopping of them between him and this town, the hazard of himself, his
estate, and all these countries, in case, being driven to fight, their army should have an overthrow ; in the preservation whereof standeth the safety of the whole, and twenty other arguments. Yet was there no remedy, but forth he would, and commanded them, that they should march sans plm repliquer. His headiness hath often put him. to great hindrance, specially at Metz, and another time at Algiers. This enterprise is more dangerous than they both. God send him better fortune than multi ominantur.' — Mason to Petre, Brussels, July 10 ; German MSS. Mary, bundle 16, State Paper Office.
4*4
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
tea. 31.
brought on an action in which the French claimed the victory ; but the Emperor held his ground, and the town could not be taken ; and Henry's army, from which such splendid results had been promised, fell back on the frontier and dispersed. The voices which had ex- claimed against the Emperor's rashness were now as loud in his praise, and the disasters which he was ac- cused of provoking, it was now found that he only had averted.1 Neither the French nor the Imperialists, in their long desperate struggle, can claim either approval or sympathy ; the sufferings which they inflicted upon mankind were not the less real, the selfishness of their rivalry none the less reprehensible, because the dis- union of the Catholic powers permitted the Reformation to establish itself. Yet, in this perplexed world, the deeds of men may be without excuse, while, neverthe- less, in the men themselves there may be something to love, and something more to admire.
1 ' The Emperor, in these nine or ten days following of his enemy, hath showed a great courage, and no less skilfulness in the war ; but much more notably showed the same when, with so small an army as he then had, he entered into Namur, a town of no strength, but commodious for the letting of his enemy's pur- pose, against the advice and persua-
sion of all his captains ; which, if he had not done, out of doubt first Liege, and after, these countries, had had such a foil as would long after have been remembered. By his own wisdom and unconquered courage the enemy's meaning that way was frustrated.' — Mason to the Council, Aug. 13: German MSS. Mary, bundle 16, State Paper Office.
415
CHAPTER XXXII.
RECONCILIATION WITH ROMU.
MARY had restored Catholic orthodoxy, and her passion for Philip had been gratified. To com- plete her work and her happiness, it remained to bring back her subjects to the bosom of the Catholic Church. Reginald Pole had by this time awakened from some part of his delusions. He had persuaded himself that he had but to appear with a pardon in his hand to be welcomed to his country with acclamation : he had as- certained that the English people were very indifferent to the pardon, and that his own past treasons had created especial objections to himself. Even the Queen herself had grown impatient with him. He had fretted her with his importunities ; his presence in Elanders had chafed the Parliament and made her marriage more difficult ; while he was supposed to share with the Eng- lish nobles their jealousy of a foreign sovereign. So general was this last impression about him, that his nephew, Lord Stafford's son, who was one of the refugees, went to seek him in the expectation of countenance and
416
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
sympathy : and, further, he had been in correspondence with Gardiner, and was believed to be at the bottom of the chancellor's religious indiscretions.1 Thus his anxiety to be in England found nowhere any answering desire ; and Renard, who dreaded his want of wisdom, never missed an opportunity of throwing difficulties in the way. In the spring of 1554 Pole had gone to Paris, where, in an atmosphere of so violent opposition to the marriage, he had not thought it necessary to speak in favour of it. The words which Dr Wotton heard that he had used were reported to the Emperor; and, at last, Renard went so far as to suggest that the scheme of sending him to England* had been set on foot at Rome by the French party in the Consistory, with a view of provoking insurrection and thwarting the Imperial policy.2
The Emperor, taught by his old experiences of Pole, acquiesced in the views of his ambassador. If England was to be brought back to its allegiance, the negotiation would require a delicacy of handling for which the present legate was wholly unfit ; and Charles wrote at last to the Pope to suggest that the commission should be transferred to a more competent person. Impatient language had been heard of late from the legate's lips, contrasting the vexations of the world with the charms
1 RENARD.
2 Que pourroit estre Ton auroit mis en avant au consistoire cette commission par affection particu- liere pour plustot nuire, que servir aux consciences ; attendu qu'ilz sont
partiaulx pour les princes Chrestiens, et souvent meslent les cboses secu- lieres et proplianes avec les conseils divins et ecclesiastiques. — Renard to Philip : Granrclle Papers, vol. iv.
1 554.] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 417
oi devotional retirement. To soften the harshness of the blow, the Emperor said that he understood Pole was himself weary of his office, and wished to escape into privacy.
The respect of Julius for the legate's understanding was not much larger than the Emperor's; but he would not pronounce the recall without giving him an op- portunity of explaining himself. Cardinal Morone wrote to him to inquire whether it was true that he had thought of retirement ; he informed him of the Em- peror's complaints ; and, to place his resignation in the easiest light (while pointing, perhaps, to the propriety of his offering it), he hinted at Pole's personal unpopu- larity, and at the danger to which he would be exposed by going to England.
But the legate could not relinquish the passionate desire of his life ; while, as to the marriage, he was, after all, unjustly suspected. He requested Morone, in reply, to assure the Pope that, much as he loved retire- ment, he loved duty more. He appealed to the devotion of his life to the Church as an evidence of his zeal and sincerity ; and, although he knew, he said, that God could direct events at his will and dispense with the service of men, yet, so long as he had strength to be of use, he would spend it in his Master's cause. In going to England he was venturing upon a stormy sea; he knew it well;1 but, whatever befell him, his life was in God's hands.
1 He begged Morone not to sup- I mare d'lnghil terra nel quale io ho pose him ignorant, ' quale sia il | da nangare et che fortuna et tia- VOL. v. 27
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
May 25.
A fortnight after, lie wrote again, replying more elaborately to the Emperor's charges. It was true, he admitted, that in his letters to the Queen he had dwelt more upon her religious duties than upon her marriage : it was true that he had been backward in his demonstrations of pleasure, because he was a per- son of few words. But, so far from disapproving of that marriage, he looked upon it as the distinct work of God ; and when his nephew had come with complaints to him, he had forbidden him his presence. He had spoken of the rule of a stranger in England as likely to be a lesson to the people ; but he had meant only that, as their disasters had befallen them through their own King Henry, their deliverance would be wrought for them by one who was not their own. When the late Parliament had broken up without consenting to the restoration of union, he had consoled the Queen with assuring her that he saw in it the hand of Providence ; the breach of a marriage between an English king and a Spanish princess had caused the wound which a re- newed marriage of a Spanish King and an English Queen was to heal.1
vagli potrei haver a sostinere per condurre la navi in porto.'— Pole to Morone ; Epist. REG. POL. vol. iv. I have not seen Moron e's first letter. The contents are to be gathered, however, from Pole's answer, and from a second letter of apology which Morone wrote two months later.
1 Serissi alia IteiHua non la
volendo contristare condolermi di cio, che io interpretava et intendeva che questa tardita non veuisse tanto da lei quanto delle Providentia di Dio, il qual habbia ordinato che si come per discordia matrimoniale d'un Re Inglese et d'una Regina Hispana fu levata 1'obedientia della chiesa de quel Regno cosi dalla con- cordia matrimoniale d'un Re His-
«554-]
RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.
419
The defence was elaborate, and, on the whole, may have been tolerably true. The Pope would not take the trouble to read it, or even to hear it read ; 1 but the substance, as related to him by Morone, convinced him that the Emperor's accusations were exaggerated : to recall a legate at the instance of a secular sovereign was an undesirable precedent ; 2 and the commission was al- lowed to stand. Julius wrote to Charles, assuring him that he was mistaken in the legate's feelings, leaving the Emperor at the same time, however, full power to keep him in Flanders or to send him to England at his own discretion.
Pole was to continue the instrument of the reconcili- ation; the conditions under which the reconciliation could take place were less easy to settle. The Popes, whose powers are unlimited where the exercise of them is convenient for the interests of the Holy See, have uniformly fallen back upon their inability where they have been called on to make sacrifices. The canons of the Church forbade, under any pretext, the alienation of ecclesiastical property ; and until Julius could relin- quish ex animo all intention of disturbing the lay holders of the English abbey lands, there was not a chance that the question of his supremacy would
pano et d'una Eegina Inglese ella vi doversc ritornare. — Pole to Mo- rone : .Epist. EEQ. POL. vol. iv.
1 E benche S. Sanctita non havesse patienza secundo 1'ordinario suo di leggere o di udir la lettera, iioudiineno le dissi talraente la sum-
ma che mostro restate satisfattissima, e disse esser piti che certa che quella non haveva dato causa ne all' Im- peratore ne ad altri d' usar con lei termini cosi extravagant!. — Morone to Pole: BURNET'S Collectanea. 2 Ibid.
420
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
be so much, as entertained by either Lords or Commons.
The vague powers originally granted to the legate were not satisfactory ; and Pole himself, who was too sincere a believer in the Roman doctrines to endure that worldly objections should stand in the way of the salvation of souls, wrote himself to the Holy See, en- treating that his commission might be enlarged. The Pope in appearance consented. In a second brief, dated June 28th, he extended the legate's dispensing powers to real property as well as personal, and granted him general permission to determine any unforeseen diffi- culties which might arise.1 Ormaneto, a confidential agent, carried the despatch to Flanders, and on Orraa- neto's arrival, the legate, believing that his embarrass- ments were at last at an end, sent him on to the Bishop of Arras, to entreat that the perishing souls of the Eng- lish people might now be remembered. The Pope had given way ; the Queen was happily married, and the reasons for his detention were at an end.2
Both Arras and the Emperor, however, thought more of Philip's security than of perishing souls. Arras, who understood the ways of the Vatican better than the legate, desired that, before any steps were taken, he might be favoured with a copy of these enlarged powers. He wished to know whether the question of the pro- perty was fairly relinquished to the secular powers in England, and whether the Church had finally washed
1 Powers granted by the Pope to Cardinal Pole: BURNET'S Collecta-
2 Charles V. to Eenard : Gran- velle Papers, vol. iv.
I554-]
RECONCILIA TION WITH ROME.
421
July.
its hands of it ; J at all events, he must examine the brief. On inspection, the new commission was found to contain an enabling clause indeed, as extensive as words could make it ; but the See of Rome reserved to itself the right of sanctioning the settlement after it had been made ; 2 and the reserva- tion had been purposely made, in order to leave the Pope free to act as he might please at a future time. Morone, writing to Pole a fortnight after the date of the brief, told him that his Holiness was still unable to come to a resolution ; 3 while Ormaneto said openly to Arras, that, although the Pope would be as moderate as possible, yet his moderation must not be carried so far as to encourage the rest of Christendom in an evil ex- ample. Catholics must not be allowed to believe that they could appropriate Church property without offence, nor must the Holy See appear to be purchasing by con- cessions the submission of its rebellious subjects.4
1 Che gran differenza sarebbe se fosse stata commessa la cosa o al S. Cardinale, o alii Serenissimi Principi. — Ormaneto to Priuli, Jnly 31 : BUKNET'S Collectanea.
2 Salvo tamen in his, in quibus propter rerum magnitudinera et gravitatem haoc sancta sedes merito tibi videretur consulcnda, nostro et pra?fata3 sedis beneplacito et con- firmatione. — Powers granted by the Pope to Cardinal Pole : Ibid.
3 Nondimeno non si risolveva in tutto, com anco non si risolveva nella materia delli beni ecclesiastici, sopra la qual sua Sanctita ha parlato
molte volte variamente.— Morone to Pole, July 13 : Ibid.
4 II S9auroit bien user de mode- ration quant aux biens occupez ; mais que toutesfois il fauldroit que se fust de sorte que la reste de la Chrestiente n'en print malvais ex- emple ; et signarnment que aucuns Catholiques qui tiennent biens ec- clesiastiques soubz leur main ne voulsissent pretendre d'eulx appro- prier avec cest exemple ; et que de vouloir laisser les biens a ceulx qui les occupent, il ne conviendroit pour ce qu'il sembleroit que ce seroit racheter, comme a deniers comptans
422
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32
August 3.
August 6.
This language was not even ambiguous;
Pole was desired to wait till an answer could be received from England ; and the Emperor wrote to Renard, desiring him to lay the circumstances before the Queen and his son. He could believe, he said, that the legate himself meant well, but he had not the same confidence in those who were urging him forward, and the Pope had given no authority for haste or precipitate movements.1
The Emperor's letter was laid before a
Council of State at Windsor, on the 6th of August ; and the council agreed with Charles that the legate's anxieties could not for the present be gratified. He was himself attainted, and Parliament had shown no anxiety that the attainder should be removed. The re-imposition of the Pope's authority was a far more ticklish matter than the restoration of orthodoxy,2 and the temper of the people was uncertain. The Cardinal had, perhaps, intelligence with persons in England of a suspicious and dangerous kind, and the execution of his commission must depend on the pleasure of the next Parliament. He was not to suppose that he might in- troduce changes in the constitution of the country by
1'auctorite du siege apostolique en ce coustel-la. — The Emperor to Re- nard : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. pp. 282, 283.
1 Nous s^avons que le diet Car- dinal n'a commission de presser si chauldement en cette affaire — ains avons heu soubz main advertisse- ment du nunce propi-e de sa Sainc-
tete que la resolution de la commis- sion dudict Cardinal est que toutes choses se traictent comm'il nous semblera pour le mieulx et qu'il tienne cecy pour regie. — Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.
2 Trop plus chastolleux que ccluy de la vraye religion. — Renard to the Emperor : Ibid. p. 287.
I554-] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 423
the authority of a Papal commission, or try experiments which might put in peril the sacred person of the Prince.1
Once more the cup of hope was dashed to the ground, and Reginald Pole was sent back to his monastery at Dhilinghen like a child unfit to be trusted with a dan- ger ous plaything. In times of trial his pen was his refuge, and in an appeal to Philip he poured out his characteristic protest.
'For a whole year/ he wrote, 'I have been now knocking at the door of that kingdom, and no person will answer, no person will ask, Who is there ? It is one who has endured twenty years of exile that the partner of your throne should not be excluded from her rights, and I come in the name of the vicar of the King of kings, the Shepherd of mankind. Peter knocks at your door ; Peter himself. The door is open to all besides. Why is it closed to Peter ? Why does not that nation make haste now to do Peter reverence ? Why does it leave him escaped from Herod's prison, knocking ?
' Strange, too, that this is the house of Mary. Can it be Mary that is so slow to open ? True, indeed, it is, that when Mary's damsel heard the voice she opened not the door for joy ; she ran and told Mary. But Mary came with those that were with her in the house: and though at first she doubted, yet, when Peter con- tinued knocking, she opened the door ; she took him in, she regarded not the danger, although Herod was yet alive, and was King.
Renard to the Emperor : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 287.
424
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
' Is it joy which now withholds Mary, or is it fear ? She rejoices, that I know, but she also fears. Yet why should Mary fear now when Herod is dead ? The pro- vidence of God permitted her to fear for awhile, because God desired that you, sire, who are Peter's beloved child, should share the great work with her. Do you, there- fore, teach her now to cast her fears away. It is not I only who stand here — it is not only Peter — Christ is here — Christ waits with me till you will open and take him in. You who are King of England, are defender of Christ's faith ; yet, while you have the ambassadors of all other princes at your Court, you will not have Christ's am- bassador ; you have rejected your Christ.
'Go on upon your way. Build on the foundation of worldly policy, and I tell you, in Christ's words, that the rain will fall, the floods will rise, the winds will blow, and beat upon that house, and it will fall, and great will be the fall thereof.'1
The pleading was powerful, yet it could bear no fruits — the door could not open till the Pope pronounced the magic words which held it closed. Neither Philip nor Mary was in a position to use violence or force the bars.
After the ceremony at Winchester, the King and Queen had gone first to Windsor, and thence the second week in August they went to Richmond. The entry into London was fixed for the i8th ; after which, should it pass off without disturbance, the Spanish fleet might
1 Pole to Philip : EpisL REG. Poi..
vol.
1554
RECONCILIA TION WITH ROME.
425
sail from Southampton Water. The Prince himself had as yet met with no discourtesy ; but disputes had broken out early between the English and Spanish retinues, and petty taunts and insolences had passed among them.1 The Prince's luggage was plundered, and the property stolen could not be recovered nor the thieves detected. The servants of Alva and the other lords, who preceded their masters to London, were insulted in the streets, and women and children called after them that they need not have brought so many things, they would be soon gone again. The citizens refused to give them lodgings in their houses, and the friars who had accom- panied Philip were advised to disguise themselves, so intense was the hatred against the religious orders.2 The council soon provided for their ordinary comforts, but increase of acquaintance produced no improvement of feeling.
The entry passed off tolerably. Grog and Magog stood as warders on London Bridge, and there were the usual pageants in the city. Renard conceived that the impression produced by Philip had been rather favour- able than otherwise ; for the people had been taught to expect some monster but partially human, and they saw instead a well-dressed cavalier, who had learnt by this time to carry his hand to his bonnet. Yet, al- though there were no open signs of ill-feeling, the day
1 Avecques d'aultres petits dep- portements de mocquerie qui crois- sent tous les jours d'nng couste et d'aultre. — Noailles to the King of
France, August i.
2 NOAILLES, and compare Pole to Miranda, Oct. 6 : Epicf. REG. POL. vol. v.
42<S REIGN OF QUEEN MAR Y. [CH. 32.
did not end without a disagreeable incident. The con- duit in Gracechurch Street had been newly decorated : ' the nine Worthies ' had been painted round the wind- ing turret, and among them were Henry VIII. and Edward. The first seven carried maces, swords, or pole- axes. Henry held in one hand a sceptre, in the other he was presenting a book to his son, on which was written Verbitm Dei. As the train went by, the unwel- come figure caught the eye of Gardiner. The painter was summoned, called ' knave, traitor, heretic,' an enemy to the Queen's Catholic proceedings. The offens- ive Bible was washed out, and a pair of gloves inserted in its place.1
Nor did the irritation of the people abate. The Spaniards, being without special occupation, were seen much in the streets ; and a vague fear so magnified their numbers that four of them, it was thought, were to be met in London for one Englishman.2 The halls of the city companies were given up for their use ; a fresh provocation to people who desired to be provoked. A Spanish friar was lodged at Lambeth, and it was said at once he was to be Archbishop of Canterbury ; at the
beginning of September twelve thousand September. .
Spanish troops were reported to be coming to
' fetch the crown.' Rumour and reality inflated each other. The peers, who had collected for the marriage, dispersed to their counties ; and on the loth of Septem-
1 Chronicle of Queen Mary. Contemporary Narrative : MS. Harleian, 419.
2 Chronicle of Queen Mary.
554-1 RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 427
ber, Pembroke, Shrewsbury, and Westmoreland believed to have raised a standard of revolt at York. Frays were continually breaking out in the streets, and there was a scandalous brawl in the cloisters at West- minster. Brief entries in diaries and council books tell continually of Englishmen killed, and Spaniards hanged, hanged at Tyburn, or hanged more conspicuously at Charing Cross ; and on the 1 2th, Noailles reported that the feeling in all classes, high and low, was as bad as possible.
There was dread, too, that Philip was bent on draw- ing England into the war. The French ambassador had been invited to be present at the entry into Lon- don ; but the invitation had been sent informally by a common messenger not more than half an hour before the royal party were to appear. The brief notice was intended as an affront, and only after some days Noailles appeared at Court to offer his congratulations. When he came at last, he expressed his masters hope to Philip that the neutrality of England would continue to be observed. Philip answered with cold significance, that he would keep his promise and maintain the treaties, as long as by doing- so he should consult the interests of the realm.1
Other menacing symptoms were also showing them- selves : the claim for the pensions was spoken of as likely to be revived ; the English ships in the Channel were making the neutrality one-sided, and protecting
1 Tant et si longuement que se seroit 1'utilite et commodite de ce diet Royaulme d' Angle terre. — Noailles to the King- of France.
428 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32
the Spanish and Flemish traders ; and Philip, already weary of his bride, was urging on Eenard the propriety of his hastening, like an obedient son, to the assistance of his father. Under pretence of escort he could take with him a few thousand English cavalry and men-at- arms, who could be used as a menace to France, and whose presence would show the attitude which England was about to assume. Sick, in these brief weeks, of maintaining the show of an affection which he did not feel, and sick of a country where his friends were in- sulted if he was treated respectfully himself, he was already panting for freedom, and eager to utilize the instruments which he had bought so dearly.1
Happily for the Queen's peace of mind, Renard was not a man to encourage impatience. The factions in the council were again showing themselves ; Elizabeth lay undisposed of at Woodstock. Pomfret, Belgium, even Hungary, had been thought of as a destination for her, and had been laid aside one after the other, in dread of the people. If she was released, she would again be dangerous, and it was uncertain how long Lord Howard would endure her detention. A plan suggested by Lord Paget seemed, after all, to promise the best — to marry her to Philibert of Savoy, and thus make use of her as a second link to^ connect England with the House of Austria. But here the difficulty would be with the Queen, who in that case would have to recognize her sister's rank and expectations.
1 Renard to Charles V., Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 294.
I554-] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 429
The question ought in Renard's opinion to be settled before Philip left England, and he must have faced Parliament too, and, if possible, have been crowned. If he went now, he could never come back ; he must court the people ; he must play off the working classes against the Lords ; there was ill blood be- tween the rich and poor, let him use the oppor- tunity.
The state of public feeling did not improve when, at the end of September, Bonner commenced an inqui- sition into the conduct and opinions of the clergy of his diocese. In every parish he appointed a person or persons to examine whether the minister was or ever had been married ; whether, if married and separated from his wife, he continued in secret to visit her; whether his sermons were orthodox ; whether he was a ' brawler, scolder, hawker, hunter, fornicator, adulterer, drunkard, or blasphemer ; ' whether he duly exhorted his parish- ioners to come to mass and confession ; whether he as- sociated with heretics, or had been suspected of associat- ing with them ; his mind, his habits, his society, even the dress that he wore, were to be made matter of close scrutiny.
The points of inquiry were published in a series of articles which created an instantaneous ferment. Among the merchants they were attributed to the King, Queen, and Gardiner, and were held to be the first step of a con- spiracy against English liberties. A report was spread at the same time that the King meditated a seizure of the Tower ; barriers were forthwith erected in the great
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
thoroughfares leading into the city, and no one was allowed to pass unchallenged.1
The Bishop of London was called to account for having ventured so rash a step without permission of crown or council. He replied that he was but doing his duty ; the council, had he communicated with them, would have interfered with him, and in the execution of his office he must be governed by his own conscience.2 But the attitude of the city was too decided even for the stubborn Bonner ; he gave way sullenly, and sus- pended the execution of his order.
Worse clouds than these nevertheless had many times gathered over the Court and dispersed again. It was easy to be discontented ; but when the discontent would pass into action, there was nothing definite to be done ; and between the leading statesmen there were such large differences of opinion, that they could not co-operate.3 The Court, as Renard saw, could accom- plish everything which they desired with caution and prudence. The humours of the people might flame out on a sudden if too hastily irritated, but the opposite tendencies of parties effectually balanced each other ; and even the Papal difficulty might be managed, and Pole might in time be brought over, if only there was no precipitation, and the Pope was compelled to be reasonable.
1 Reuard to the Bishop of Ar- ras : Granvclle Papers, p. 330.
2 Same to the Emperor: Ibid. p. 321.
3 Entre les seigneurs et gens de la noblesse et de credit et adminis- tration, il y a telle partialite que 1'un ne se fie de 1'autre. — Ibid.
RECONCILIA TION WITH ROME.
43*
But prudence was the first and last essential ; the
legate must be content to wait, and also Philip
. rv. October,
must wait. Ine winter was coming on, and
the Court, Renard said, was giving balls ; the English and Spanish noblemen were learning to talk with one another, and were beginning to dance with each other's wives and daughters. The ill-feeling was gradually abating ; and, in fact, it was not to be believed that God Almighty would have brought about so consider- able a marriage without intending that good should come of it.1 The Queen believed herself enceinte, and if her hopes were well founded, a thousand causes of restlessness would be disposed of ; but Philip must not be permitted to harass her with his impatience to be gone. She had gathered something of his intentions, and was already pretending more uncertainty than in her heart she felt, lest he should make the assurance of her prospects an excuse for leaving her. In a remark able passage, Renard urged the Emperor on no account to encourage him in a step so eminently injudicious, from a problematic hope of embroiling England and France. ' Let Parliament meet/ he said, ' and pass off quietly, and in February his Highness may safely go.
1 Les choses se vont accommoder a quoy sert la saison de 1'hiver et cc que en la court Ton y danse souvent ; quo les Espaignolz et Angloys com- mencent a converser les ungs avec
les aultres et n'y a per-
Bonne qui puisse iraaginer que Dieu ait voulu ung si grand marriage et
de telz princes, pour en esperer sinon ung grand bien publique pour la Chrestiente, et pour restablir et as- seurer les estatz de vostre majeste troublez par ses ennemia. — Renard to the Emperor ; Granvelle vol. iv. p. 319.
132 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
Irreparable injury may and will follow, however, should he leave England before. Religion will be overthrown, the Queen's person will be in danger, and Parliament will not meet. A door will be opened for the practices of France ; the country may throw itself in self-protec- tion on the French alliance, and an undying hatred will be engendered between England and Spain. As things now are, prudence and moderation are more than ever necessary ; and we must allow neither the King nor the Queen to be led astra}^ by unwise impatient advisers, who, for the advancement of their private opinions, or because they cannot have all the liberty which they de- sire, are ready to compromise the commonwealth.' l
So matters stood at the beginning of October, when Parliament was about to be summoned, and the great experiment to be tried whether England would consent to be re-united to Catholic Christendom. The writs went out on the 6th, and circulars accompanied them, addressed to those who would have the conduct of the elections, stating that, whatever false reports might have been spread, no ' alteration was intended of any man's possessions.' At the same time the Queen re- quired the mayors of towns, the sheriffs, and other in- fluential persons to admonish the voters to choose from among themselves ' such as, being eligible by order of the laws, were of a wise, grave, and Catholic sort ; such as indeed meant the true honour of God and the pros- perity of the commonwealth.' 2 These general directions
1 Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 320. 2 Royal Circular; printed in BURNET'S Collectanea.
1554] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME, 433
were copied from a form which had been in use under Henry VII., and the citizens of London set the example of obedience in electing four members who were in every way satisfactory to the Court.1 In the country the decisive failure of Carew, Suffolk, and Crofts show- ed that the weight of public feeling was still in favour of the Queen notwithstanding the Spanish marriage ; and the reaction against the excesses of the Reformation had not yet reached its limits. On the accession of Mary, the restoration of the mass had appeared impos- sible, but it had been effected safely and completely al- most by the spontaneous will of the people. In the spring the Pope's name could not be mentioned in Par- liament ; now, since the Queen was bent upon it, and as she gave her word that property was not to be meddled with, even the Pope seemed no longer absolutely intoler- able.
The reports of the elections were everywhere favour- able. In the Upper House, except on very critical points, which would unite the small body of the lay peers, the Court was certain of a majority, being sup- ported of course by the bishops, — and the question of Pole's coming over, therefore, was once more seriously considered. The Pope had been given to understand that, however inconsistent with his dignity he might
1 Les lettres de la convocation du parleraent sont este pourjectees sur la vieille forme dont 1'ou usoit au temps du Roy Henry septieme pour avoir en icelluy gens de bien
Cuthcliques : et a propos et selon ce
VOL. v. 28
ceulx de Londre en publique assem- blee out choisiz quatre personnaiges que Ton tient estre fort saiges et modestes. — Rciiard to the Emperor : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 324.
434 REIGN OF QUEEN MAR Y. [OH. 32.
consider it to appear to purchase English submission by setting aside the canons of the Church, he must consent to the English terms, or there was no hope whatever that his supremacy would be recognized. If in accept- ing these terms he would agree to a humiliating recon- ciliation, only those who objected on doctrinal grounds to the Papal religion were inclined to persist in refusing a return of his friendship. The dream of an independ- ent orthodox Anglicanism which had once found favour with Gardiner was fading away. The indifferent and the orthodox alike desired to put an end to spiritual anarchy ; and the excommunication, though lying lightly on the people/and despised even by the Catholic powers, had furnished, and might furnish, a pretext for inconvenient combinations. Singularity of position, where there was no especial cause for it, was always to be avoided.
These influences would have been insufficient to have brought the English of themselves to seek for a reunion. They were enough to induce them to accept it with indifference when offered them on their own conditions, or to affect for a time an outward appearance of acquiescence.
Philip, therefore, consulted Renard, and Charles in- vited Pole to Brussels. Renard, to whom politics were all-important, and religion useful in its place, but in- convenient when pushed into prominence, adhered to his old opinion. He advised the ' King to write privately to the Pope, telling him that he had already so many embarrassments on his hands that he could not afford
I554-]
RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.
435
Oct. 15.
to increase them ; ' ' the changes already made were in- sincere, and the legatine authority was odious, not only in England, but throughout Europe;' ' the Queen, on her accession, had promised a general toleration,1 and it was useless to provoke irritation, when not absolutely necessary/ Yet even Henard spoke less positively than before. ' If the Pope would make no more re- servations on the land question — if he would volunteer a general absolution, and submit to conditions, while he exacted none — if he would sanction ever^y ec- clesiastical act which had been done during the schism, the marriages and baptisms, the ordinations of the clergy, and the new creations of episcopal sees — above all, if he would make no demand for money under any pretence, the venture might, perhaps, be made/ But, continued Renard, ( his Holiness, even then, must be cautious in his words ; he must dwell as lightly as possible on his authority, as lightly as possible on his claims to be obey- ed : in offering absolution, he must talk merely of piety and love, of the open arms of the Church, of the exam- ple of the Saviour, and such other generalities/ 2 Finally, Eenard still thought the legate had better remain abroad. The reconciliation, if it could be effected at
1 Le mandement et declaration que vostre Majeste a faict publier sur le point de la religion, laissant la liberte a ling chacun pour tenir quelle religion Ton vouldra. — Re- nard to Philip and Mary : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 327.
2 Et que sa Sainctete le fonde in
pietate Christiana et ecclesiastica quia nunquam Ecclesia claudit gre- mium, semper indulget exemplo Sal- vatoris, et Bvangelium semper con- solatur, semper remittit, et sur plu- sieurs aultres fondemens genera ulx. — Ibid. p. 326.
43^ REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
all, could be managed better without his irritating pre- sence.
Pole himself had found the Emperor more gracious. Charles professed the greatest anxiety that the Papal authority should be restored. He doubted only if the difficulties could be surmounted. Pole replied that the obstacles were chiefly two — one respecting doctrine, on which no concession could be made at all ; the other respecting the lands, on which his Holiness would make every concession. He would ask for nothing, he would exact nothing ; he would abandon every shadow of a claim.
If this was the case, the Emperor said, all would go well. Nevertheless, there was the reservation in the brief, and the Pope, however generous he might wish to be, was uncertain of his power. The doctrine was of no consequence. People in England believed one doc- trine as little as another ; 1 but they hated Rome, they hated the religious orders, they hated cardinals ; and as to the lands, could the Church relinquish them ?2 Pole might believe that she could ; but the world would be more suspicious, or less easy to convince. At all events, the dispensing powers must be clogged with no reserv- ations ; nor could he come to any decision till he heard again from England.
The legate was almost hopeless ; yet his time of
1 Perciocche quanto alia Doc- trina disse che poco se ne curavano questo tali non credendo ne all' una ne all' altra via. — Pole to the Pope, October 13: BUENKT'S Collectanea,
2 Disse ancbe che essendo stati qucsti beni dedicati a Dio non era da concedere cosi og-na cosa a quelli che le tcnevano.— Ibid.
1554- RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 437
triumph. — such triumph as it was — had nearly arrived. The Queen's supposed pregnancy had increased her in- fluence ; and, constant herself in the midst of general indecision, she was able to carry her point. She would not mortify the legate, who had suffered for his con- stancy to the cause of her mother, with listening to Re- nard's personal objections ; and when the character of the approaching House of Commons had been ascer- tained, she gained the consent of the council
• » v /i November.
a week before the beginning of the session, to
send commissioners to Brussels to see Pole and inspect his faculties. With a conclusive understanding on the central question, they might tell him that the hope of his life might be realized, and that he might return to his country. But the conditions were explicit. He must bring adequate powers with him, or his coming would be worse than fruitless. If those which he already possessed were insufficient, he must send them to Rome to be enlarged ; l and although the Court would receive
1 The greatest and only means to procure the agreement of the noblemen and others of our council was our promise that the Pope's Holiness would, at our suit, dispense with all possessors of any lands or goods of monasteries, colleges, or other ecclesiastical houses, to hold and enjoy their said lands and goods without any trouble or scruple ; without which promise it had been impossible to have had their consent, and shall be utterly impossible to have any fruit and good concord ensue. For which purpose you shall
earnestly pray our said, cousin to use all possible diligence, and say that if he have not already, he may so receive authority from the See Apostolic to dispense in this manner as the same, being now in good to- wardness, may so in this Parliament take the desired effect ; whereof we see no likelihood except it may be therewithal provided for this matter of the lands and goods of the Church. — Instructions to Paget and Hast- ings, November 5 ; TYTLER, vol. ii. p. 446.
43*
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[en. 32.
him as legate de latere, he had better enter the country only as a cardinal and ambassador, till he could judge of the state of things for himself.1 On these terms the commissioners might conduct him to the Queen's pre- sence.
The bearers of this communication were Lord Paget and Sir Edward Hastings, accompanied, it is curious to observe, by Sir William Cecil.2
1 TYTLER, vol. ii. p. 446.
2 Cecil had taken no formal part in Mary's Government, but his handwriting can be traced in many papers of State, and in the Irish de- partment he seems to have given his assistance throughout the reign. In religion Cecil, like Paget, was a latitudinarian. His conformity un- der Mary has been commented upon bitterly ; but there is no occasion to be surprised at his conduct — no occasion, when one thinks seriously of his position, to blame his conduct. There were many things in the Catholic creed of which Cecil disap- proved ; and when his opportunity came, he gave his effectual assistance for the abolition of them ; but as long as that creed was the law of the land, as a citizen he paid the law the respect of external obedi. ence.
At present religion is no longer under the control of law, and is left to the conscience. To profess openly, therefore, a faith which we do not believe is justly condemned as hy- pocrisy. But wherever public law extends, personal responsibility is
limited. A minority is not per- mitted to resist the decisions of the legislature on subjects in which the legislature is entitled to interfere ; and in the sixteenth century opinion was as entirely under rule and pre- scription as actions or things. Men may do their best to improve the laws which they consider unjust. They are not, under ordinary cir- cumstances, to disobey them so long as they exist. However wide the basis of a Government, questions will ever rise between .the indi- vidual and the State — questions, for instance, of peace or war, in which the conscience has as much a voice as any other subject; where, nevertheless, individuals, if they are in the minority, must sacri- fice their own opinions ; they must contribute their war taxes with- out resistance ; if they are sol- diers, they must take part as com- batants for a cause of which they are convinced of the injustice. That is to say, they must do things which it would be impious and wicked in them to do, were they as free iu their obligations as citizens as they
1554-]
RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.
They presented themselves to the Emperor, who, after the report which they brought with them, made no more difficulty. The enlarged powers had been sent for three weeks before ; but there was no occasion to wait for their arrival. They might be expected in ten days or a fortnight, and could follow the legate to Eng- land.1
The effect on Pole of the commissioners'
N"ov 1 1
arrival ' there needed not/ as they said them- selves, 'many words to declare/2 His eager tempera-
are now free in the religion which they will profess.
This was the view in which the mass was regarded by statesmen like Cecil, and generally by many men of plain straightforward understanding, who believed transubstantiation as little as he. In Protestantism, as acon- structive theology, they had as little interest as in Popery ; when the al- ternative lay between the two, they saw no reason to sacrifice themselves for either.
It was the view of common sense. It was not the view of a saint. To Latimer, also, technical theology was indifferent — indifferent in proportion to his piety. But he hated lies — legalized or unlegalized — he could not tolerate them, and he died sooner than seem to tolerate them. The counsels of perfection, however, lead to conduct neither possible, nor, perhaps, desirable for ordinary men.
1 Charles was particular in his inquiries of Mary's prospect of a
family. He spoke to Sir John Mason about it, who was then the resident ambassador : —
' Sir, quoth I,' so Mason reported the conversation, ' I have from her- self nothing to say, for she will not confess the mattej till it be proved to her face ; but by others I under- stand, to my great joy, that her gar- ments wax very straight. I never doubted, quoth he, of the matter, but that God, that for her had wrought so many miracles, would make the same perfect to the assist- ing of nature to his good and most desired work: and I warrant it shall be, quoth he, a man-child. Be it man, quoth I, or be it woman, welcome it shall be ; for by that we shall be at the least come to some certainty to whom God shall appoint by succession the government of our estates.' — Mason to the King and Queen, November 9 : TYTLEK, vol. ii. p. 444.
2 Paget and Hastings to the Queen ; Ibid. p. 459.
440
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
ment, for ever excited either with wild hopes or equally wild despondency, was now about to be fooled to the top of its bent. On the Pope's behalf, he promised every- thing ; for himself, he would come as ambassador, he would come as a private person, come in any fashion that might do good, so only that he might come.
Little time was lost in preparation. Parliament met on the I2th of November. The opening speech was read, as usual, by Gardiner, and was well received, although it announced that further measures would be taken for the establishment of religion, and the mean- ing of these words was known to every one. The first measure brought forward was the repeal of Pole's at- tainder. It passed easily without a dissentient voice, and no obstacle of any kind remained to delay his ap- pearance. Only the cautious Renard suggested that Courtenay should be sent out of the country as soon as possible, for fear the legate should take a fancy to him ; and the Prince of Savoy had been invited over to see whether anything could be done towards arranging the marriage with Elizabeth. Elizabeth, indeed, had pro- tested that she had no intention of marrying ; never- theless, Renard said, she would be disposed of, as the Emperor had advised,1 could the Queen be induced to consent.
England was ready therefore, and the happy legate set out from Brussels like a lover flying to his mistress. His emotions are reflected in the journal of an Italian
1 Neantmoins il sera necessaire achever avec elle selon 1' ad vis de vostre Majeste. — Renard to the Emperor : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.
1 554.] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 441
friend who attended him. The journey com-
/ Nov. 13.
menced on Tuesday, the 13th ; the retinues of
Paget and Hastings, with the Cardinal's household, making in all a hundred and twenty horse. The route was by Ghent, Bruges, and Dunkirk. On the I9th the party reached Gravelines, where, on the stream which formed the boundary of the Pale, they were re- ceived in state by Lord Wentworth, the Governor of Calais. In the eyes of his enthusiastic admirers the apostle of the Church moved in an atmosphere of mar- vel. The Calais bells, which rang as they entered the town, were of preternatural sweetness. The salutes fired by the ships in the harbour were ' wonderful/ The Cardinal's lodging was a palace, and as an august- omen, the watchword of the garrison for the night was 'God long lost is found.'1 The morning brought a miracle. A westerly gale had blown for many Tuesday, days. All night long it had howled through Nov- 20- the narrow streets ; the waves had lashed against the piers, and the fishermen foretold a week of storms. At daybreak the wind went down, the clouds broke, a light air from the eastward levelled the sea, and filled the sails of the vessel which was to bear them to England. At noon the party went on board, and their passage was a fresh surprise. They crossed in three hours and a half, and the distance, as it pictured itself to imagin- ation, was forty miles.2 At Dover the legate slept.
Dio gran tempo perduto e liora | 2 Imbarcatosi adunque sua S. R.
ritrovato. — Descriptio Reductionis Angliae : Epist. REG. POL. vol. v.
ad un hora di giorno, passo a Doure nell' Isola in tre liore et mezza che
442 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [cH. #.
The next day Lord Montague came with the Bishop of Ely, bringing letters of congratula- tion from the Queen and Philip, and an intimation that he was anxiously looked for. He was again on horse- back after breakfast ; and as the news of his arrival spread, respect or curiosity rapidly swelled his train. The Earl of Huntingdon, who had married his sister, sent his son Lord Hastings, with his tenants and servants^ as an escort. But there was no danger. Whatever might be the feelings of the people towards the Papal legate, they gave to Reginald Pole the welcome due to an English nobleman.
The November evening had closed in when the ca- valcade entered Canterbury. The streets were thronged, and the legate made his way through the crowd, amidst the cries of ' God save your Grace/ At the door of the house — probably the Archbishop's palace — where he was to pass the night, Harpsfeld, the Archdeacon, was standing to receive him, with a number of the clergy ; and with the glare of torches lighting up the scene, Harpsfeld commenced an oration as the legate alighted, so beautiful, so affecting, says Pole's Italian friend, that all the hearers were moved to tears. The Archdeacon spoke of the mercies of God, and the marvellous work- ings of his providence. He dwelt upon the history of the Cardinal whom God had preserved through a thou- sand dangers for the salvation of his country; and, firing up at last in a blaze of enthusiasm, he exclaimed,
fu caniino di quavanta miglia fatto con extraordinaria prestezza. — Epi {{KG. POJ-. vol. v.
1554-]
RECONCILIA TION WITH ROME.
443
' Thou art Pole, and thou art our Polar star, to light us to the kingdom of the heavens. * Sky, rivers, earth, these disfigured walls — all things — long for thee. While thou wert absent from us all things were sad, all things were in the power of the adversary. At thy coming all things are smiling, all glad, all tranquil.'1 The legate listened so far, and then checked the flood of the ador- ing eloquence. * I heard you with pleasure/ he said, ' while you were praising God. My own praises I do not desire to hear. Give the glory to Him.'
From Canterbury, Richard Pate, who, as titular Bishop of Worcester, had sat at the Council of Trent, was. sent forward to the Queen with an answer to her letter, and a request for further directions. The legate himself went on leisurely to Rochester, where he was entertained by Lord Cobham, at Cowling Castle. So far he had observed the instructions brought to him by Paget, and had travelled as an ordinary ecclesiastic, without distinctive splendour. On the night of the 23rd, however, Pate returned from the Court with a message that the legatine insignia might be displayed. A fleet of barges was in waiting at Gravesend, where Pole appeared early on the 24th ; and, as a gatur^ay further augury of good fortune, he found Nov- 24-
• ' Tu es Polus, qui aperis nobis Polum regni cselorum. Aer, flumina, terra, parietes ipsi, omnia denique te desiderant. Quamdiu abfuisti omnia fuerunt tristia et adversa. In ad- vcntu tuo, omnia rident, omnia laeta, omnia tranquilla.' I have endea- voured to preserve the play on the ;
word Polus, altering the meaning as little as the necessities of translation would allow. It has been suggested to me that the word ' parietes ' im- plies properly internal walls, and the allusion was to the defacement of the cathedral.
444 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [en. 32.
there Lord Shrewsbury, with his early friend the Bishop of Durham, who had come to meet him with the repeal of his attainder, to which the Queen had given her assent in Parliament the day before.
To the fluttered hearts of the priestly company the coincidence of the repeal, the informality of an Act of Parliament receiving the royal assent before the close of a session, were further causes of admiration. They embarked ; and the Italians, who had never seen, a tidal river, discovered, miracle of miracles, that they were ascending from the sea, and yet the stream was with them. The distance to London was soon accom- plished. They passed under the Bridge at one o'clock on the top of the tide, the legate's barge distinguished splendidly by the silver cross upon the bow. In a few minutes more they were at the palace-stairs at White- hall, where a pier was built on arches out into the river, and on the pier stood the Bishop of Winchester, with the Lords of the Council.
The King and Queen, were at dinner, the arrival not being expected till the afternoon. Philip rose instantly from the table, hurried out, and caught the legate in his arms. The Queen followed to the head of the grand staircase ; and when Pole reached her, she threw herself on his breast, and kissed him, crying that his coming gave her as much joy as the possession of her kingdom. The Cardinal, in corresponding ecstasy, exclaimed, in the words of the angel to the Yirgin, 'Ave Maria gratia plena, Doininus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieri-
I554-]
RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.
445
bus.'1 The first rapturous moments over, the King, Queen, and legate proceeded along the gallery, Philip and Pole supporting Mary on either side, and the legate expatiating on the mysteries of Providence.
' High thanks, indeed/ he exclaimed, 'your Majestj owes to the favour of the Almighty, seeing that, while he permits you to bring your godly desires to perfec- tion, he has united at this moment in your favour the two mightiest powers upon earth — the Majesty of the Emperor represented in the King your husband,* and the Pope's Holiness represented in myself/ The Queen, as she walked, replied ' in words of sweet hu- mility/ pouring out gentle excuses for past delays. The legate, still speaking with ecstatic metaphor, an- swered that it was the will of God ; God waited till the time was mature, till he could say to her Highness, 'Blessed be the fruit of thy womb.'2
In the saloon they remained standing together for another quarter of an hour. "When the Cardinal took his leave for the day, the King, in spite of remonstrance, re-attended him to the gate. Alva and the Bishop of Winchester were in waiting to conduct him to Lambeth
1 ' Cardinalis cum reginam salu- taret, nee ulla hum ana verba occur- rerent tali muliere digna, Sanctis Scripturaruin verbis abuti non vere- batur, sed in primo congressu iisdern quibus matrem Dei salutavit Ange- lus, Reginam Polus ulloquitur, Ave Maria,' &c.— Salkyns to Bullinger :
Epistola TIGUBIN.SE, p. 169.
2 ' II Signer Legato rispose che Dio havea voluto, che fusse tardato a tempo piu mature, perche egli havesse potuto dire a sua Altezza come diceva, Benedictus fructus ven- tris tui.' — Descriptio Reduction!*
446
REIGN' OF QUEEN- MARY.
[CH. 32.
Palace, which had been assigned him. for a residence. The See of Canterbury was to follow as soon as Cranmer could be despatched.
Arrived at Lambeth, he was left to repose after his fatigues and excitements. He had scarcely retired to his apartments when he was disturbed again by a mes- sage from the Queen. Lord Montague had hurried over with the news that the angelic salutation had been already answered. ' The babe had leapt in her womb.'1 Not a moment was lost in communicating the miracle to the world. Letters of council were drawn out for Te Deums to be sung in every church in London. The next day being Sunday, every pulpit was made to ring with the testimony of Heaven to the truth.
On Monday the 26th the Cardinal went to the palace for an audience, and again there was more matter for congratulation. As he was approaching the King's cabinet, Philip met him with a packet of despatches. The last courier sent to Rome had returned with un- heard-of expedition, and the briefs and commissions in which the Pope relinquished formally his last reserva- tions, had arrived. Never, exclaimed the Catholic en- thusiast, in a fervour of devout astonishment — never since the days of the apostles had so many tokens of divine approbation been showered upon a human enter- prise. The moment of its consummation had arrived.2
1 Descriptio Reductionis Angliae.
2 The Queen's assurances re- specting her child were so emphatic, that even Noailles believed her.
Profane persons were still incredul- ous. On Sunday the 25th, the day after the Te Deums, Noailles says, 'S'esttrouve ung placard attach^ &
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Since the thing was to be, no one wished for delay. Three days sufficed for the few necessary preparations, and the two Houses of Parliament were invited to be present unofficially at Whitehall on the afternoon of Wednesday the 28 th. In the morning there was a procession in the city and a Te Deum at St Paul's. After dinner, the Great Chamber was thrown open, and the Lords and Commons crowded in as they could find room. Philip and Mary entered, and took their seats under the cloth of state ; while Pole had a chair assigned him on their right hand, beyond the edge of the canopy. The Queen was splendidly dressed, and it was observed that she threw out her person to make her supposed condition as conspicuous as possible.1 When all were in their places, the chancellor rose.
' My Lords of the Upper House/ he said, ' and you my masters of the Nether House, here is present the Right Reverend Father in God. the Lord Cardinal Pole, come from the Apostolic See of Rome as ambas- sador to the King's and Queen's Majesties, upon one of the weightiest causes that ever happened in this realm, and which pertaineth to the glory of God and your universal benefit ; the which embassy it is their Majesties' pleasure that it be signified unto you all by his own mouth, trusting that you will accept it in as benevolent and thankful wise as their Highnesses have done, and
la porte de son palais, y estant ces mots en substance : ' serons nous si bestes, oh nobles Angloys, que croy renotre reyne estre enceinte si non
d'un marmot ou d'un dogue ? ' '
1 Contemporary Diary : MS. Harkian, iv. 19.
448 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
that you will give an attent and inclinable ear to him.' The legate then left his chair and came forward. He was now fifty-four years old, and he had passed but little of his life in England ; yet his features had not wholly lost their English character. He had the arched eye-brow, and the delicately- cut cheek, and prominent eye of the beautiful Plantagenet face ; a long, brown, curling beard flowed down upon his chest, which it almost covered ; the mouth was weak and slightly open, the lips were full and pouting, the expression difficult to read. In a low voice, audible only to those who were near him, he spoke as follows : — ' My Lords all, and you that are the Commons of this present Par- liament assembled, as the cause of my repair hither hath been wisely and gravely declared by my Lord Chancellor, so, before I enter into the particulars of my commission, I have to say somewhat touching myself, and to give most humble and hearty thanks to the King's and Queen's Majesties, and after them to you all — which of a man exiled and banished from this commonwealth, nave restored me to be a member of the same, and of a man having no place either here or else whore within this realm, have admitted me to a place where to speak and where to be heard. This I protest unto you all, that though I was exiled my native country without just cause, as God knoweth, yet the ingratitude could not pull from me the affection and desire that I had to your profit and to do you good. ' But, leaving the rehearsal hereof, and coming more near to the matter of my commission, I signify unto
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you all, that my principal travail is for the restitution of this noble realm to the antient nobility, and to de- clare unto you that the See Apostolic, from whence I come, hath a special respect to this realm above all others ; and riot without cause, seeing that God him- self, as it were, by providence hath given to this realm prerogative of nobility above others, which to make plain unto you, it is to be considered that this island first of all islands received the light of Christ's religion.'
Going into history for a proof of this singular pro- position, the legate said that the Britons had been con- verted by the See Apostolic, 'not one by one, as in other countries, as clocks denote the hours by dis- tinction of times/ ' but altogether, at once, as it were, in a moment/ The Saxons had brought back heathen- ism, but had again been soon converted ; and the Popes had continued to heap benefit upon benefit on the favoured people, even making them a present of Ireland, 'which pertained to the See of Rome.' The country had prospered, and the people had been happy down to the time of the late schism ; from that unhappy day they had been overwhelmed with calamities.
The legate dwelt in some detail on the misfortunes of the preceding years. He then went on : ' But, when all light of true religion seemed extinct, the churches de- faced, the altars overthrown, the ministers corrupted, even like as in a lamp, the light being covered yet it is not quenched — even so in a few remained the confession of Christ's faith, namely, in the breast of the Queen's Excellency, of whom to speak without adulation, the
VOL. Y. 29
450 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32
saying of the prophet may be verified, ecce quasi derelicta . and see how miraculously God of his goodness preserved her Highness contrary to the expectation of men, that when numbers conspired against her, and policies were devised to disinherit her, and armed power prepared to destroy her, yet she, being a virgin, helpless, naked, and unarmed, prevailed, and had the victory of tyrants. For all these practices and devices, here you see her Grace established in her estate, your lawful Queen and governess, born among you, whom God hath appointed to govern you. for the restitution of true religion and the extirpation of all errors and sects. And to confirm her Grace more strongly in this enterprise, lo how the providence of God hath joined her in marriage with a prince of like religion, who, being a King of great might, armour, and force, yet useth towards you neither armour nor force, but seeketh you by way of love and amity ; and as it was a singular favour of God to con- join them in marriage, so it is not to be doubted but he shall send them issue for the comfort and surety of this commonwealth.
' Of all princes in Europe the Emperor hath travailed most in the cause of religion, yet, haply by some secret judgment of God, he hath not obtained the end. I can well compare him to David, which, though he were a man elect of God, yet for that he was contaminate with blood and wars, he could not build the temple of Jerusalem, but left the finishing thereof to Solomon who was Rex pacificm. So it may be thought that the ap- peasing of controversies of religion in Christendom is
1554-1 RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 451
not appointed to this Emperor, but rather to his son ; who shall perform the building that his father had begun, which Church cannot be builded unless uni- versally in all realms we adhere to one head, and do acknowledge him to be the vicar of God, and to have power from above — for all power is of God, according to the saying, non est potestas nisi in Deo.
' All power being of God, he hath derived that power into two parts here on earth, which is into the powers imperial and ecclesiastical ; and these two powers, as they be several and distinct, so have they two several effects and operations. Secular princes be ministers of God to execute vengeance upon transgress- ors and evil livers, and to preserve the well-doers and innocents from injury and violence ; and this power is represented in these two most excellent persons the King's and Queen's Majesties here present. The other power is of ministration, which is the power of keys and orders in the ecclesiastical state ; which is by the authority of God's word and example of the apostles, and of all holy fathers from Christ hitherto attributed and given to the Apostolic See .of Rome by special pre- rogative : from which See I am here deputed legate and ambassador, having full and ample commission from thence, and have the keys committed to my hands. I confess to you that I have the keys — not as mine own keys, but as the keys of him that sent me ; and yet cannot I open, not for want of power in me to give, but for certain impediments in you to receive, which must be taken away before my commission can take effect.
452 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [en. 32
This I protest before you, my commission is not of pre- judice to any person. I am come not to destroy, but to build ; I come to reconcile, not to condemn ; I am not come to compel, but to call again ; I am not come to call anything in question already done ; but my com mission is of grace and clemency to such as will receive it — for, touching all matters that be past, they shall be as things cast into the sea of forgetfuliiess.
' But the mean whereby you shall receive this benefit is to revoke and repeal those laws and statutes which be impediments, blocks, and bars to the execution of my commission. For, like as I myself had neither place nor voice to speak here amongst you, but was in all respects a banished man, till such time as ye had re- pealed those laws that lay in my way, even so cannot you receive the benefit and grace offered from the Apos- tolic See until the abrogation of such laws whereby you had disjoined and dissevered yourselves from the unity of Christ's Church.
' It remaineth, therefore, that you, like true Christ- ians and provident men, for the weal of your souls and bodies, ponder what is to be done in this so weighty a cause, and so to frame your acts and proceedings as they may first tend to the glory of God, and, next, to the conservation of your commonwealth, surety, and quiet- ness/
The speech was listened to by such as could hear it with profound attention, and several persons were ob- served to clasp their hands again and again, and raise them convulsively before their faces. When the legate
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Nov. 29.
sat down, Gardiner gave him the thanks of Parliament, and suggested that the two Houses should be left to themselves to consider what they would do. Pole with- drew with the King and Queen, and Gardiner exclaimed : A prophet has ' the Lord raised up among us from among our brethren, and he shall save us/ For the benefit of those who had been at the further end of the hall, he then recapitulated the substance of what had been said. He added a few words of exhortation, and the meeting adjourned.
The next day, Thursday, Lords and Com- mons sat as usual at Westminster. The repeal of all the Acts which directly, or by implication, were aimed at the Papacy, would occupy, it was found, a con- siderable time ; but the impatient legate was ready to accept a promise as a pledge of performance, and the general question was therefore put severally in both Houses whether the country should return to obedience to the Apostolic See. Among the Peers no difficulty was made at all. Among the Commons, in a house of 360, there were two dissentients — one, whose name is not mentioned, gave a silent negative vote ; the other, Sir Ralph Bagenall, stood up alone to protest. Twenty years, he said, ' that great and worthy Prince, King Henry/ laboured to expel the Pope from England. He for one had ' sworn to King Henry's laws/ and, ' he would keep his oath.' *
1 The writer of the Italian ' De- scription' says that Bagenall gave way the next day. The contempor-
ary narrative among the Harlcian MSS. says that he persisted, and re- fused to kneel at the absolution.
454
XElGN OF QUEEN
[CH. 32.
But Bagenall was listened to with smiles. The resolution passed, the very ease and unanimity betray- ing the hollow ground on which it rested ; and, again, devout Catholics beheld the evident work of super- natural agency. Lords and Commons had received separately the same proposition ; they had discussed it, voted on it, and come to a conclusion, each with closed doors, and the messengers of the two Houses encountered each other on their way to communicate their several decisions.1 The chancellor arranged with Pole the forms which should be observed, and it was agreed that the Houses should present a joint petition to the King and Queen, acknowledging their past misconduct, en- gaging to undo the anti-papal legislation, and entreat- ing their Majesties, as undefiled with the offences which tainted the body of the nation, to intercede for the removal of the interdict. A committee of Lords and Commons sat to consider the words in which the sup- plication should be expressed, and all preparations were completed by the evening.
And now St Andrew's Day was come ; a day, as was then hoped, which would be re- membered with awe and gratitude through all ages of English history. Being the festival of the institution of the Order of the Golden Fleece, high mass was sung
Nov. 30.
1 ' Mentre la casa alta mandava a far sapere la sua conclusione alia casa bassa, la casa bassa mandava anch' clla per fare intendcrc il medesimo alia casa alta, sicche i messi s' incontrarono per via ; segno
evidentissimo che lo Spirito di Dio lavorava in amendue i luoghi in un tempo i di una medesima con- formita.' — Descriptio lleductionis Anglise.
i$54-l RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 45$
in the morning in Westminster Abbey ; Philip, Alva, and Ruy Gomez attended in their robes, with six hun- dred Spanish cavaliers. The Knights of the Garter were present in gorgeous costume, and nave and tran- sept were thronged with the blended chivalry of Eng- land and Castile. It was two o'clock before the service was concluded. Philip returned to the palace to din- ner, and the brief November afternoon was drawing in when the Parliament reassembled at the palace. At the upper end of the great hall a square platform had now been raised several steps above the floor ; on which three chairs were placed as before ; two under a canopy of cloth of gold, for the King and Queen ; a third on the right, removed a little distance from them, for the legate. Below the platform, benches were placed lon- gitudinally towards either wall. The bishops sat on the side of the legate, the lay peers opposite them on the left. The Commons sat on rows of cross benches in front, and beyond them were the miscellaneous crowd of spectators, sitting or standing as they could find room. The Cardinal, who had passed the morning at Lambeth, was conducted across the water in a state barge by Lord Arundel and six other peers. The King received him at the gate, and, leaving his suite in the care of the Duke of Alva, who was instructed to find them places, he accompanied Philip into the room adjoining the hall, where Mary, whose situation was supposed to prevent her from unnecessary exertion, was waiting for them. The royal procession was formed. Arundel and the Lords passed in to their places. The King and Queen,
456 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [en. 32
with Pole in his legate's robes, ascended the steps of the platform, and took their seats.
When the stir which had been caused by their entrance was over, Gardiner mounted a tribune ; and in the now fast waning light he bowed to the King and Queen, and declared the resolution at which the Houses had arrived. Then turning to the Lords and Commons, he asked if they continued in the same mind. Four hundred voices answered, ' We do.' ' Will you then/ he said, ' that I proceed in your names to supplicate for our absolution, that we may be received again into the body of the Holy Catholic Church, under the Pope, the supreme head thereof?' Again the voices assented. The Chancellor drew a scroll from under his robe, ascended the platform, and presented it unfolded on his knee to the Queen. The Queen looked through it, gave it to Philip, who looked through it also, and re- turned it. The Chancellor then rose and read aloud as follows : —
1 We, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons of the present Parliament assembled, repre- senting the whole body of the realm of England, and dominions of the same, in our own names particularly, and also of the said body universally, in this our sup- plication directed to your Majesties — with most humble suit that it may by your gracious intercession and means be exhibited to the Most Reverend Father in God the Lord Cardinal Pole, Legate, sent specially hither from our Most Holy Father Pope Julius the Third and the See Apostolic of Rome — do declare ourselves very sorry
I554-] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 457
and repentant for the schism and disobedience com- mitted in this realm and dominions of the same, against the said See Apostolic, either by making, agreeing, or executing any laws, ordinances, or commandments against the supremacy of the said See, or otherwise doing or speaking what might impugn the same ; offer- ing ourselves, and promising by this our supplication that, for a token and knowledge of our said repentance, we be, and shall be always, ready, under and with the authority of your Majesties, to do that which shall be in us for the abrogation and repealing of the said laws and ordinances in this present Parliament, as well for ourselves as for the whole body whom we represent. Whereupon we most humbly beseech your Majesties, as persons undefiled in the oifences of this body towards the Holy See — which nevertheless God by his provid- ence hath made subject to your Majesties — so to set forth this, our most humble suit, that we may obtain from the See Apostolic, by the said Most Heverend Father, as well particularly as universally, absolution, release, and discharge from all danger of such censures and sentences as by the laws of the Church we be fallen in ; and that we may, as children repentant, be received into the bosom and unity of Christ's Church ; so as this noble realm, with all the members thereof, may, in unity and perfect obedience to the See Apos- tolic and Pope for the time being, serve God and your Majesties, to the furtherance and advancement of his honour and glory.'1
1 FOXE, vol. vi. p. 571. The petition was in Latin; but, as I
458
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CCH. 32.
Having completed the reading, the Chancellor again presented the petition. The King and Queen went through the forms of intercession, and a secretary read aloud, first, the legate's original commission, and, next, the all- important extended form of it.
Pole's share of the ceremony was now to begin.
He first spoke a few words from his seat : ' Much in- deed/ he said, ' the English nation had to thank the Al- mighty for recalling them to his fold. Once again God had given a token of his special favour to the realm ; for as this nation, in the time of the Primitive Church, was the first to be called out of the darkness of heathenism, so now they were the first to whom God had given grace to repent of their schism ; and if their repentance was sincere, how would the angels, who rejoice at the conversion of a single sinner, triumph at the recovery of a great and noble people.'
He moved to rise ; Mary and Philip, seeing that the crisis was approaching, fell on their knees, and the as- sembly dropped at their example ; while, in dead silence, across the dimly-lighted hall came the low, awful words of the absolution.
' Our Lord Jesus Christ, which with his most pre- cious blood hath redeemed and washed us from all our sins and iniquities, that he might purchase unto him- self a glorious spouse without spot or wrinkle, whom
have nowhere seen the original, I have not ventured to interfere with Foxe's translation. Foxe, who could translate very idiomatically
when he pleased, perhaps relieved his indignation on the present oc- casion by translating as awkwardly
1554-3 RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 459
the Father hath appointed head over all his Church — he by his mercy absolves you, and we, by apostolic au- thority given unto us by the Most Holy Lord Pope Julius the Third, his vicegerent on earth, do absolve and deliver you, and every of you, with this whole realm and the dominions thereof, from all heresy and schism, and from all and every judgment, censure, and pain for that cause incurred ; and we do restore you again into the unity of our Mother the Holy Church, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.'
Amidst the hushed breathing every tone was audible, and at the pauses were heard the smothered sobs of the Queen. ' Amen, amen/ rose in answer from many voices. Some were really affected ; some were caught for the moment with a contagion which it was hard to resist ; some threw themselves weeping in each other's arms. King, Queen, and Parliament, rising from their knees, went immediately — the legate leading — into the chapel of the palace, where the choir, with the rolling organ, sang Te Deum ; and Pole closed the scene with a benediction from the altar.
. * Blessed day for England/ cries the Italian de- Bcriber, in a rapture of devotion. ' The people exclaim in ecstasies, we are reconciled to God, we are brought back to God : the King beholds his realm, so lately torn by divisions, at the mercy of the first enemy who would seize upon it, secured 011 a foundation which never can be shaken : and who can express the joy — who can tell the exultation of the Queen ? She has shown herself the handmaid of the Lord, and all generations shall call
46o
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
her blessed : she has given her kingdom to God as a thank-offering for those great mercies which He has be- stowed upon her/ l
And the legate ; — but the legate has described his emotions in his own inimitable manner. Pole went back to Lambeth, not to rest, but to pour out his soul to the Holy Father.
In his last letter he said ' he had told his Holiness that he had hoped that England would be recovered to the fold at last ; yet he had then some fears remaining, so far estranged were the minds of the people from the Holy See, lest at the last moment some compromise might ruin all/
But the godly forwardness of the King and Queen had overcome every difficulty ; and on that evening, the day of St Andrew — of Andrew who first brought his brother Peter to Christ — the realm of England had been brought back to its obedience to Peter's See, and through Peter to Christ. The great act had been ac- complished, accomplished by the virtue and the labour of the inestimable sovereigns with whom God had blessed the world.
* And oh/ he said, ' how many things, how great things, may the Church our mother, the bride of Christ, promise herself from these her children ? Oh piety ! oh ! antient faith ! Whoever looks on them will repeat the words of the prophet of the Church's early offspring ; This is the seed which the Lord hath blessed/ How
Descriptio Rcductionis Anglite : Epist. REG. POL. vol. v.
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earnestly, how lovingly, did your Holiness favour their marriage ; a marriage formed after the very pattern of that of our Most High King, who, being Heir of the world, was sent down by his Father from his royal throne, to be at once the Spouse and the Son of the Vir- gin Mary, and be made the Comforter and the Saviour of mankind : and, in like manner, the greatest of all the princes upon earth, the heir of his father's kingdom, departed from his own broad and happy realms, that he might come hither into this land of trouble, he, too, to be spouse and son of this virgin ; for, indeed, though spouse he be, he so bears himself towards her as if he were her son, to aid in the reconciliation of this people to Christ and the Church.1
4 When your Holiness first chose me as your legate, the Queen was rising up as a rod of incense out of trees of myrrh, and as frankincense out of the desert. And how does she now shine out in loveliness ? What a savour does she give forth unto her people. Yea, even
1 This amazing comparison (for one cannot forget what Philip had been, was, and was to be) must be given in the original words of the legate :
' Q,uam sancte sanctitas vestra omni auctoritate studioque huic matrimonio favit ; quod sane videtur prae se ferre magnam summi illius regis similitudinera, qui mundi haeres a regalibus sedibus a patre demissus fuit, ut esset virginis spon- sus et films, et hac ratione univer- sura ffenus humanum consolaretur ac
servaret. Sic enim hie rex maximus omnium qui in terris sunt hares, patriis relictis regnis de illis quidem amplissimis ac felicissimis in hoc turbulentum regnum de contulit, huj usque virginis sponsus et films est factus ; ita enim erga illam se gerit tanquam films esset cum sit sponsus, ut quod jam plane per fecit sequestrem se atque adjutorem ad reconciliandos Cbristo et Ecclesia) bos populos prseberet.' — Pole to the Pope : Epist. REG. POL. vol. v.
462 RE7GN- OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
as the prophet saith of the mother of Christ, ' before she was in labour she brought forth, before she was de- livered she hath borne a man-child/ Who ever yet hath seen it, who has heard of the similitude of it ? Shall the earth bring forth in a day, or shall a nation of men be born together ? but Mary has brought forth the nation of England before the time of that delivery for which we all are hoping ! '
Tillable to exhaust itself in words, the Catholic en- thusiasm flowed over in processions, in sermons, masses, and Te Deums. Gardiner at Paul's Cross, on the Sun- day succeeding, confessed his sins in having borne a part in bringing about the schism. Pole rode through the city between the King and Queen, with his legate's
cross before him, blessing the people. When December.
the news reached Rome, Julius first embraced
the messenger, then flung himself on his knees, and said a Paternoster. The guns at St Angelo roared in triumph. There were jubilees and masses of the Holy Ghost, and bonfires, and illuminations, and pardons and indulgences. In the exuberance of his hopes, the Pope sent a nuntio to urge that, in the presence of this great mercy, peace should be made with France, where the King was devoted to the Church ; the Catholic powers would then have the command of Europe, and the heretics could be destroyed.1 One thing only seemed forgotten, that the transaction was a bargain. The Papal pardon had been thrust up- on criminals, whose hearts were so culpably indifferent
PALLA VICING.
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that it was necessary to bribe them to accept it ; and the conditions of the compromise, even yet, were far from concluded.
The sanction given to the secularization of Church property was a cruel disappointment to the clergy, who cared little for Home, but cared much for wealth and power. Supported by a party in the House of Com- mons who had not shared in the plunder, and who en- vied those who had been more fortunate,1 the ecclesias- tical faction began to agitate for a reconsideration of the question. Their friends in Parliament said that the dispensation was unnecessary. Every man's con- science ought to be his guide whether to keep his lands or surrender them. The Queen was known to hold the same opinion, and eager preachers began to sound the note of restitution.2 Growing bolder, the Lower House of Convocation presented the bishops immediately after
1 Renard to the Emperor : Gran- vette Papers, vol. iv.
2 ' It was this morning told me by one of the Emperor's council, who misliked much the matter, that a preacher of ours whose name he rehearsed, beateth the pulpit jollily in England for a restitution of abbey lands. It is a strange thing in a well-ordered commonwealth that a subject should be so hardy to cry unto the people openly such learning, whereby your winter work may in the summer be attempted with some storm. These unbridled preachings wei-e so much misliked in the ill- governed time as men trusted in this
good governance it should have been amended ; and so may it be when it shall please my Lords of the Council as diligently to consider it, as it is more than necessary to be looked unto. The party methinketh might well be put to silence, if he were asked how, being a monk, and hav- ing professed and vowed solemnly wilful poverty, he can with conscience keep a deanery and three or four benefices.' —Mason to Petre : MS. Germany, bundle 16, Mary, State Paper Office. It is not clear who the offender was. Perhaps it was Weston, Dean of Westminster and Prolocutor of Convocation.
464 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
with a series of remarkable requests. The Pope, in the terms on which he was reinstated, was but an orna- mental unreality ; and the practical English clergy desired substantial restorations which their eyes could see and their hands could handle.
They demanded, therefore, first, that if a statute was brought into Parliament for the assurance of the Church estates to the present possessors, nothing should be allowed to pass prejudicial to their claims ' on lands, tenements, pensions, or tythe rents, which had apper- tained to bishops, or other ecclesiastical persons/
They demanded, secondly, the repeal of the Statute of Mortmain, and afterwards the abolition of lay in> propriations, the punishment of heretics, the destruction of all the English Prayer-books and Bibles, the revival of the Act Be Hceretico Comburendo, the re-establish- ment of the episcopal courts, the restoration of the legislative functions of Convocation, and the exemption of the clergy from the authority of secular magistrates.
Finally, they required that the Church should be restored absolutely to its ancient rights, immunities, and privileges ; that no Premunire should issue against a bishop until he had first received notice and warning; that the judges should define ' a special doctrine of Pre- inunire,' and that the Statutes of Provisors should not be wrested from their meaning.1
The petition expressed the views of Gardiner, and was probably drawn under his direction. Had the
1 Demands of the Lower House of Convocation, December, 1554: printed in WILKINS'S Concilia.
I554-] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 46$
alienated property been no more than the estates of the suppressed abbeys, the secular clergy would have ac- quiesced without difficulty in the existing disposition of it. But the benefices impropriated to the abbeys which had been sold or granted with the lands, they looked on as their own ; the cathedral chapters and the bishops' sees, which had suffered from the second locust flight under Edward, formed part of the local Anglican Church : and Gardiner and his brother prelates de- clared that, if the Pope chose to set aside the canons, and permit the robbing of the religious orders, he might do as he pleased ; but that he had neither right nor powers to sanction the spoliation of the working bishops and clergy. Thus the feast of reconciliation having been duly celebrated, both Houses of Parliament became again the theatre of fierce and fiery conflict.
There were wide varieties of opinion. The lawyers went beyond the clergy in limiting the powers of the Pope ; the lawyers also said the Pope had no rights over the temporalities of bishops or abbots, deans, or rectors ; but they did not any more admit the rights of the clergy. The English clergy, regular and secular, they said, had held their estates from immemorial time under the English Crown, and it was not for any spirit- ual authority, domestic or foreign, to decide whether an English King and an English Parliament might inter- fere to alter the disposition of those estates.
On other questions the clerical party were in the ascendant ; they had a decided majority in the House cf Commons ; in the Upper House there was a compact
VOL. V. 30
4<>6 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
body of twenty bishops ; and Gardiner held the proxies of Lord Rich, Lord Oxford, Lord Westmoreland, and Lord Abergavenny. The Queen had created four new peers ; three of whom, Lord North, Lord Chandos, and Lord Williams, were bigoted Catholics ; the fourth, Lord Howard, was absent with the fleet, and was un- represented. Lord North held the proxy of Lord Worcester ; and the Marquis of Winchester, Lord Montague, and Lord Stourton acted generally with the chancellor. Lord Russell was keeping out of the way, being suspected of heresy ; Wentworth was at Calais ; Grey was at Guisnes ; and the proxies of the two last noblemen, which in the late Parliament were held by Arundel and Paget, were, for some unknown reason, now held by no one. Thus, in a house of seventy-three members only, reduced to sixty-nine by the absence of Howard, Russell, Wentworth, and Grey, Gardiner had thirty-one votes whom he might count upon as cer- tain ; he knew his power, and at once made fatal use of it.
For two Parliaments the liberal party had prevented him from recovering the power of persecution. He did not attempt to pass the Inquisitorial Act on which he was defeated in the last session. But the Act to revive the Lollard Statutes was carried through the House of Commons in the second week in December; on the i^th it was brought up to the Lords ; and although those who had before fought the battle of humanity, struggled again bravely in the same cause, this time their numbers were too small ; they failed, and the lives of the Pro-
J554-:
RE CO ttC I LI A TION WITH ROME.
467
testants were in their enemies' hands.1 Simultaneously Gardiner obtained for the bishops' courts their long- coveted privilege of arbitrary arrest and discretionary punishment, and the clergy obtained, as they desired, the restoration of their legislative powers. The pro- perty question alone disintegrated the phalanx of ortho- doxy, and left an opening for the principles of liberty to assert themselves. The faithful and the faithless among the laity were alike participators in Church plunder, and were alike nervously sensitive when the current of the reaction ran in the direction of a demand for restitution.
Here, therefore, Paget and his friends chose their ground to maintain the fight.
It has been seen that Pole especially dreaded the appearance of any sort of composition between the coun- try and the Papacy. The submission had, in fact, been purchased, but the purchase ought to be disguised. As soon, therefore, as the Parliament set themselves to the fulfilment of their promise to undo the Acts by which England had separated itself from Rome, the legate re- quired a simple statute of repeal. The Pope had granted a dispensation ; it was enough, and it should be accepted gratefully ; the penitence of sinners ought not to be mixed with questions of worldly interest ; the return- ing prodigal, when asking pardon at his father's feet,
1 ' La chambre haulte y faict difficulte pour ce que 1'auctorite et jurisdiction des evesques est autori- zee et renouvellee, et que le peine
si'mble trop grief've. Mais Ton tieut qu'ilz s'accorderont par la pluralite.' — Eenard to the Emperor, Decem- ber 21 : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.
463 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
had made no conditions ; the English nation must not disfigure their obedience by alluding, in the terms of it, to the Pope's benevolence to them.
The holders of the property, on the other hand, thinking more of the reality than the form, were deter- mined that the Act of Repeal should contain, as nearly as possible, a true statement of their case. They had made conditions, and those conditions had been reluct- antly complied with ; and, to prevent future errors, the nature of the compact ought to be explained with the utmost distinctness. They had replaced the bishops in authority, and the bishops might be made use of at some future time, indirectly or directly, to disturb the settle- ment. A fresh Pontiff might refuse to recognize the con- cessions of his predecessors. The Papal supremacy, the secularization of the Church property, and the authority of the episcopal courts should, therefore, be interwoven inextricably to stand or fall together ; and as the lawyers denied the authority of the Holy See to pronounce upon the matter at all, the legal opinion might be embodied also as a further security.
After a week of violent discussion, the lay interest in the House of Lords found itself the strongest. Pole exclaimed that, if the submission and the dispensation were tied together, it was a simoniacal compact ; the Pope's Holiness was bought and sold for a price, he said, and he would sooner go back to Rome, and leave his work unfinished, than consent to an Act so derogatory to the Holy See. But the protest was vain ; if the legate was so anxious, his anxiety was an additional reason
I554-]
RECONCILIA TION WITH ROME.
469
why the opposition should persevere ; if he chose to go, his departure could be endured.1
So keen was the debate that there was not so much as a Christmas recess. Christmas-day was kept as a holyday. On the 26th the struggle began again, and, fortunately, clouds had risen between the House of Commons and the Court. Finding more difficulty than he expected in embroiling England with France, Philip, to feel the temper of the people, induced one of the peers to carry a note to the Lower House to request an opinion whether it was not the duty of a son to assist his father. An answer was instantly returned that the question had been already disposed of by the late Par- liament in the marriage treaty, and the further discussion of it was unnecessary.2 Secretary Bourne, at the in- stigation of Gardiner, proposed to revive the claims on the pensions ; but he met with no better reception. And
1 'Le paiiement faict instance que, en statut de la dicte obedience la dicte dispense soit inseree, ce que le diet cardinal ne veult admettre, a ce que ne serable la dicte obedience avoir este rachetee ; et est passee si avant la dicte difficulte que le diet cardinal a declare qu'il retourneroit plutot a Rome et delaisseroit la
'chose iraparfaite que consentir a chose contre 1'auctorite dudict S. Siege, et de si grande prejudice.' — Renard to the Emperor, December : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.
2 ' Ces jours passez, il y eust ung personnaige de la haulte chambre, auquel il sembla pour ne perdre
temps deb voir porter, (comme il fist) un billette a, la basse par laquelle il mettait en advant s'il n'estoit pas raisonnable que le filz secourust le pere, voullant dire de ce roy a 1'Em- pereur. Ce qui fut si bien recueilly du tiers estat, si promptment et avecques grande raison respondu, comme par le dernier parlement et le traite de mariaige d'entre ce roy et royne cela avoit este et estoit tellement considere, qu'il n'estoit plus besoign mettre telles cboses en advant pour les faire entrer a la guerre.' — -Noailles to the King of France : Ambassades, vol. iv. p. 76.
470 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
the Court made a further blunder. Mary had become so accustomed to success, that she assured herself she could obtain all that she desired. The object of the Court was to secure the regency for Philip, with full sovereign powers, should she die leaving a child ; should she die childless, to make him her successor. The first step would be Philip's coronation, which had been long talked of, and which the House of Commons was now desired to sanction. The House of Commons returned a unanimous refusal.1
The effects of these cross influences on the Papal statute, though they cannot be traced in detail, must It;55 have been not inconsiderable. At length, on January 4. fae ^fo of January, after passing backwards and forwards for a fortnight between the two Houses, the Great Bill, as it was called, emerged, finished, in the form of a petition to the Crown : —
' Whereas/ so runs the preamble,2 ' since the 2oth year of King Henry VIII., of famous memory, much false and erroneous doctrine hath been taught, preached, and written, partly by divers natural-born subjects of this realm, and partly being brought in hither from sundrjr foreign countries, hath been sown and spread abroad within the same — by reason whereof as well the
1 <Je vous puis dire, Sire, que toutes ces choses ont passe bien loing de 1'esperance qu'il avoit, puisqu'il s'attendoit de se faire couronner, comme despuis six jours il en avoit
ceulx de la basse chambre dndict pavleraent qui luy ont tons d'une voix rejette.'— jSToaillcs to the King of France : Ambassades, vol. iv. p. 137.
particulierement faict recbercher j 2 i and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 8.
1 555.] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME, 471
spirituality as the temporality of your Highness' s realm and dominions have swerved from the obedience of the See Apostolic, and declined from the unity of Christ's Church, and so have continued until such time as — - your Majesty being first raised up by God, and set in the seat royal over us, and then by his divine and gracious Providence knit in marriage with the most noble and virtuous prince the King our Sovereign Lord your husband — the Pope's Holiness and the See Apos- tolic sent hither unto your Majesties, as unto persons un- defiled, and by God's goodness preserved from the com- mon infection aforesaid, and to the whole realm, the Most Eeverend Father in God the Lord Cardinal Pole, Legate de Latere, to call us again into the right way, from which we have all this long while wandered and strayed; and we, after sundry and long plagues and calamities, seeing, by the goodness of God, our own errours, have knowledged the same unto the said Most Reverend Father, and by him have been and are (the rather at the contemplation of your Majesties) received and embraced into the unity of Christ's Church, upon our humble submission, and promise made for a declar- ation of our repentance to repeal and abrogate such Acts and Statutes as had been made in Parliament since the said 2oth year of the said King Henry VIII., against the supremacy of the See Apostolic, as in our submission exhibited to the said most Reverend Father in God, by your Majesties appeareth — it may like your Majesty, for the accomplishment of our promise, that all such laws be repealed. That is to say : —
472
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
'The Act against obtaining Dispensations from
Rome for Pluralities and non- Residence.1
* The Act that no person shall be cited out of the
Diocese where he or she dwelleth.2
1 The Act against Appeals to the See of Rome.3
' The Act against the Payment of Annates and
First-fruits to the See of Rome.4
' The Act for the Submission of the Clergy.6
' The Act for the Election and Consecration of
Bishops.6
' The Act against Exactions from the See of
Rome.7
' The Act of the Royal Supremacy.8
1 The Act for the Consecration of Suffragan Bishops.9
' The Act for the Reform of the Canon Law.10
1 The Act against the Authority of the Pope.11
' The Act for the Release of those who had obtained
Dispensations from Rome.12
' The Act authorizing the King to appoint Bishops
by Letters Patent.13
' The Act of Precontracts and Degrees of Consan- guinity.14
' The Act for the King's Style.15
1 21 Henry VIII. cap. 13.
2 23 Ibid. cap. 9.
3 24 Ibid. cap. 12.
4 23 Henry VIII. cap. 20. The Act was repealed, but the annates were not restored.
5 25 Henry VIII. cap. 19.
6 25 Ibid. cap. 20.
7 25 Ibid. cap. 21.
8 26 Ibid. cap. I.
9 26 Ibid. cap. 14.
10 27 Ibid. cap. 15.
11 28 Ibid. cap. 10.
12 28 Ibid. cap. 1-6.
13 31 Ibid. cap. 9.
14 33 Ibid. cap. 38
15 35 Ibid. cap. 3.
I555-]
RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.
473
'The Act permitting the Marriage of Doctors of Civil Law/1
In the repeal of these statutes the entire ecclesiasti- cal legislation of Henry VIII. was swept away ; and, so far as a majority in a single Parliament could affect them, the work was done absolutely and with clean completeness.
But there remained two other Acts collaterally and accidentally affecting the See of Home ; for the repeal of which the Court was no less anxious than for the repeal of the Act of Supremacy, where the Parliament were not so complaisant.
Throughout the whole reaction under Mary there was one point on which the laity never wavered. At- tempts such as that which has been just mentioned were made incessantly, directly or indirectly, to alter the succession and cut off Elizabeth. They were like the fretful and profitless chafings of waves upon a rock. The two Acts on which Elizabeth's claims were rested2 touched, in one or other of their clauses, the Papal pre- rogative, and were included in the list to be condemned. But, of these Acts, ' so much only ' as affected the See of Rome was repealed. The rest was studiously declared to continue in force.
Yet, with this reservation, the Parliament had gone far in their concessions, and it remained for them to secure their equivalent.
They reinstated the bishops, but, in giving back a
1 37 Henry VIII. cap. 17. 2 28 Ibid. cap. 7; 35 Ibid. cap. I.
474
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
power which had been so much abused, they took care to protect — not, alas ! the innocent lives which were about to be sacrificed — but their own interests. The bishops and clergy of the Province of Canterbury having been made to state their case and their claims, in a pe- tition to the Crown, they were then compelled formally to relinquish those claims ; and the petition and the re- linquishment were embodied in the Act as the condition of the restoration of the authority of the Church courts.1 In continuation, the Lords and Commons desired that, for the removal ' of all occasion of contention, suspicion, and trouble, both outwardly and inwardly, in men's consciences/ the Pope's Holiness, as represented by the legate, ' by dispensation, toleration, or permission, as the case required,' would recognize all such foundations of colleges, hospitals, cathedrals, churches, schools, or bishoprics as had been established during the schism, would confirm the validity of all ecclesiastical acts
1 ' Albeit, by the laws of the Church, the bishops and clergy were the defenders and protectors of all ecclesiastical rights, and would therefore in nature be bound to use their best endeavours for the re- covery of the lands and goods lost to the Church during the late schism, they, nevertheless, perceiving the tenures of those lands and goods were now complicated beyond power of extrication, and that the attempt to recover them might promote dis- affection in the realm, and cause the
overthrow of the present happy set- tlement of religion, preferring public peace to private commodity, and the salvation of souls to worldly posses- sions, did consent that the present disposition of those lands and goods should remain undisturbed. They besought their Majesties to intercede with the legate for his consent, and, for themselves, they requested, in return, that the lawful jurisdiction of the Church might be restored.'— i and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 8, sec. 31.
I555-] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 475
which had been performed during the same period ; and, finally, would consent that all property, of whatever kind, taken from the Church, should remain to its pre- sent possessors — ' so as all persons having sufficient con- veyance of the said lands, goods, and chattels by the common laws, or acts, or statutes of the realm, might, without scruple of conscience, enjoy them without im- peachment or trouble, by pretence of any general council, canon, or ecclesiastical law, and clear from all dangers of the censures of the Church/ The petitions, both of clergy and Parliament, the Act went on to say, had been considered by the Cardinal ; and the Cardinal had acquiesced. He had undertaken, in the Pope's name, that the possessors of either lands or goods should never be molested either then or in time to come, in virtue of any Papal decree, or canon, or council ; that if any attempt should be made by any bishop or other ecclesiastic to employ the spiritual weapons of the Church to extort restitution, such act or acts were de- clared vain and of none effect. The dispensation was pronounced, nor could the legate's protests avail to pre- vent it from appearing in the Statute. He was permit- ted, only in consideration of the sacrifice, to interweave amidst the legal technicalities some portion of his own feeling. The impious detainers of holy things, while permitted to maintain their iniquity, were reminded of the fate of Belshazzar, and were urged to restore the patiiies, chalices, and ornaments of the altars. The im- propriators of benefices were implored, in the mercy of
476
REIGN OF QUEEN- MARY.
[CH. 32.
Christ, to remember the souls of the people, and pro- vide for the decent performance of the services of the churches.1
Here the Act might have been expected to end. The nature of the transaction between the Parliament and the Pope had been made sufficiently clear. Yet, had nothing more been said, the surrender of their claims by the clergy would have implied that they had parted with something which they might have legiti- mately required. Under the inspiration of the lawyers, therefore, a series of clauses were superadded, explain- ing that, notwithstanding the dispensation, 'The title of all lands, possessions, and hereditaments in their Majesties' realms and dominions was grounded in the laws, statutes, and customs of the same, and by their high jurisdiction, authority royal, and crown imperial, and in their courts only, might be impleaded, ordered, tried, and judged, and none otherwise : ' and, therefore, ' whosoever, by any process obtained out of any ecclesi-
1 'Et licet omnes res mobiles ecclesiarum indistincte iis qui eas tenent relaxaverimus, eos tamen admonitos esse volumus ut ante ocu- los habentes divini judicii severita- tem contra Balthazarem Regem Babylonis, qui vasa sacra non a se sod a patre a tcmplo ablata in pro- fanos usus convertit, ea propriis ec- clesiis si extant vcl aliis restituant, hortantes etiam et per viscera miseii- cordiae Jesu Christ! obtestantes eos oranes quos hrcc restangit, ut salutis gua) non omnino immemores hoc
saltern efficiant, ut ex bonis eccle- siasticis maxime iis quae ratione per- sonatuum et vicariatuura populi ministrorum sustentationi fuerint specialiter dcstinataj seu aliis cathe- dralibus et aliis qua3 mine extant in- ferioribus ecclesiis curam animarum exerceutibus, ita provideatur, ut eorum pastores commode et honeste juxta eorum qualitatem et statum sustentari possint, et curam ani- marum laudabiliter exercere.' — i and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 8, sec.
1555-1 RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 477
astical court within the realm or without, or by pre- tence of any spiritual jurisdiction or otherwise, contrary to the laws of the realm, should inquiet or molest any person or persons, or body politic, for any of the said lands or things above specified, should incur the danger of Premunire, and should suffer and incur the for- feitures and pains contained in the same.' *
Yainly the clergy had entreated for a limitation or removal of Premunire. That spectre remained unex- orcised in all its shadowy terror ; and while it survived, the penitence of England went no deeper than the lips, however fine the words and eloquent the phrases in which it was expressed. As some compensation, the Mortmain Act was suspended for twenty years. Yet, as if it were in reply to Pole's appeal, a mischievous provision closed the Act, that, notwithstanding any- thing contained in it, laymen entitled to tithes might recover them with the same readiness as before the first day of the present Parliament.2
Such was the great statute of reconciliation with Rome, with which, in the inability to obtain a better, the legate was compelled to be satisfied, and to recon- sider his threat of going back to Italy.
This first conflict was no sooner ended than another commenced. The Commons would not consent that Philip should be crowned ; but, as the Queen said she was enceinte, provision had to be made for a regency, and a bill was introduced into the Upper House which has
I and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 8, sec. 31. - Ibid.
478
OF QUEEN MA&Y.
[OH.
not survived, but which, in spirit, was unfavourable to the King.1 Gardiner, in the course of the debate, at- tempted to put in a clause affecting Elizabeth,2 but the success was no better than usual. The Act went down to the Commons, where, however, it was immediately cancelled. Though the Commons would give Philip no rights as King, they were better disposed towards him than the Lords ; and they drew another bill of their own, in which they declared the father to be the natural and fitting guardian of the child. The experience of protectorates, they said, had been uniformly unfortun- ate, and should the Queen die leaving an heir, Philip should be Regent of the realm during the minority ; if obliged to be absent on the Continent, he might him- self nominate his deputy ; 3 and so long as it should be his pleasure to remain in England, his person should be under the protection of the laws of high treason.
Taking courage from the apparent disposition of the House, the friends of the Court proposed that, should the Queen die childless, the crown should de- volve absolutely upon him for his life.4 But in this
1 'It was suspected,' says Ee- nard, ' que le diet act se proposoit a maulvais fin, qu'il estoit coutre les traictez et capitulation de marriage pour heredjr la couronne qui veiioit de maulvais auteurs quilz plustot desiroient le nial dudict S. roy et in- quietude dudict royaulme que le bien.' — Renard to the Emperor : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 347.
2 Ibid. p. 348.
3 'Et que en son absence il y pourra nommer qui luy plaira.' — Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 348.
4 ' Aulcuns particuliers proposai- ent en ladicte chambre basse que le diet S. roy deust demeurer roy ab- solut dudict royaulme mourant la- dicte dame sans hoirs sa vie durant.' —Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 348.
J555-]
RECONCILIA T10N WITH ROME.
479
they were going too far. The suggestion was listened to coldly; and Philip, who had really calculated on obtaining from Parliament, in some form or other, a security for his succession, despatched Ruy Gomez to Brussels, to consult the Emperor on the course which should be pursued.1 On the whole, however, could the bill of the House of Commons be carried, Renard was disposed to be contented ; the Queen was confident in her hopes of an heir, and it might not be worth while to irritate the people unnecessarily about Elizabeth.2 The clause empowering Philip to govern by deputy in his absence was especially satisfactory.3
But the peers, whom the Commons had refused to consult on the new form of the measure, would not part so easily with their own opinions ; they adopted the phraseology of the Lower House, but this particular and precious feature in it they pared away. The bill, as it eventually passed, declared Philip Regent till his child should be of age, and so long as he continued in the realm ; but, at the same time, fatally for the objects at which he was aiming, it bound him again to observe
1 ' Ruy Gomez est alle vers 1'Empereur pour faire entendre les difficultez qu'ilz trouvent de faire demeurer ceste couroane a son diet filz, au cas que la royne sa fern me allast de vie a trespaz sans enfans, et d'aultant qu'ilz ont congneu la volunte de ceulx cy estre bien loin de leur intention ; et pour ce scavoir par quelz moyens il sembiera bon audict Empereur qu'on puisse mettre
cela en termes devant la fin de ce parlement.' — NOAILLES.
2 ' Et quant a la declaration de bastardise Ton n'est d'opinion qu'elle se doige entamer aux diet parlement, puisque 1'apparence d'heretier est certaine et pour 1'evident et cong- neue contrariete que seroit en toute le royaulme.' — Renard to the Em- peror : Granvelle Papers, p. 348.
3 Ibid.
48o
REIGN OF QUEEN MAR Y.
[CH. 32.
all the articles of the marriage treaty, ' which, during the time that he should hold the government, should remain and continue in as full force and strength, as if they were newly inserted and rehearsed in the present Act.'1
The disposition of the House of Lords was the more dangerous, because the bishops, of course, voted with the Government, and the strength of the opposition, therefore, implied something like unanimity in the lay peers. The persecuting Act had been carried with difficulty, and in the reconciliation with Home the legate had been studiously mortified. On the succession and the coronation the Court had been wholly baffled ; and in the Regency Bill they had obtained but half of what they had desired. At the least Mary had hoped to secure for the King the free disposal of the army and the finances, and she had not been able so much as to ask for it. Compelled to rest contented with such advantages as had been secured, the Court would not risk the results of further controversy by prolonging the session ; and on the i6th of January, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the King and Queen came to the House of Lords almost unattended, and with an evident expression of dissatisfaction dissolved the Parliament.2
1 I and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 10.
2 ' Hz sont pour cejourdhuy bien esloignez de ce qu'ilz pensoient faire il y a six sepmaines en ce parlement, ou ilz faisoient compte que ne pouv- unt couronner ce roy ou luy faire
succeder ce royaulme, a tout le moings de luy en faire tumber 1' ad- ministration, avecques tel pou/oir sur les forces et finances qu il en eust peu disposer a sa volunte. Toutefois la chose a prins tclle issue que pour ce coup il fault qu'il se
1555- J RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 481
I have been particular in relating the proceedings of this Parliament, because it marks the point where the flood tide of reaction ceased to ascend, and the ebb recommenced. From the beginning of the Reformation in 1529, two distinct movements had gone on side by side — the alteration of doctrines, and the emancipation of the laity from Papal and ecclesiastical domination. With the first, the contemporaries of Henry VIII., the country gentlemen and the peers, who were the heads of families at the period of Mary's accession, had never sympathized ; and the tyranny of the Protestants while they were in power had converted a disapproval which time would have overcome, into active and determined indignation. The Papacy was a mixed question ; the Pilgrims of Grace in 1536, and the Cornish rebels in 1549, had demanded the restoration of the spiritual primacy to the See of St Peter, and Henry himself, until Pole and Paul III. called on Europe to unite in a crusade against him, had not determined wholly against some degree of concession. In the Pope, as a sovereign who claimed reverence and tribute, who interfered with the laws of the land, and maintained at Rome a supreme Court of Appeal — who pretended a right to depose kings and absolve subjects from their allegiance — who
contente a beaucoup raoings qn'il j petitement accompaignez et sans ne s'attendoit. aulcune ceremonie, monstrans et
1 Ce qui a tellement despleu a cedict roy et royne, que le 16 de ce mois ilz allerent par eau tous deulx clorre et terminer ledict parleraent,
faisans congnoistre a ung chascun avoir quelque grand mescontente- ment centre 1' assemble d'icelluy.' — Noailles to the Constable : Ambas-
r /
sur les quatre heures du soir, assez I sades, vol. iv. p. 153. VOL. v. 31
4§2 REIGN OF QUEEN MARV. [CH. 32.
held a weapon in excommunication as terrible to the laity as Premunire was terrible to ecclesiastics — in the Pope under this aspect, only a few insignificant fanatics entertained any kind of interest.
But experience had proved that to a nation cut off from the centre of Catholic union, the maintenance of orthodoxy was impossible : the supremacy of the Pope, therefore, came back as a tolerated feature in the return to the Catholic faith, and the ecclesiastical courts were reinstated in authority to check unlicensed extravagance of opinion. Their restored power, however, was over opinion only ; wherever the pretensions of the Church would come in collision with the political constitution, wherever they menaced the independence of the tem- poral" magistrate or the tenure of property, there the progress of restoration was checked by the rock, and could eat no further into the soil. The Pope and the clergy recovered their titular rank, and in one direction unhappily they recovered the reality of power. But the temporal spoils of the struggle remained with the laity, and if the clergy lifted a hand to retake them, their weapons would be instantly wrenched from their grasp.
If the genuine friends of human freedom had ac- quiesced without resistance in this conclusion, if the nobility had contented themselves with securing theii worldly and political interests, and had made no effort to restrain or modify the exercise of the authority which they were giving back, they might be accused of having accepted a dishonourable compromise. But they did
I555-] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 483
what they could. They worked with such legal means as were in their power, and for two Parliaments they succeeded in keeping persecution at bay; they failed in the third, but failed only after a struggle. The Pro- testants themselves had created, by their own miscon- duct, the difficulty of defending them ; and armed un- constitutional resistance was an expedient to be resorted to, only when it had been seen how the clergy would conduct themselves. English statesmen may be par- doned if they did not anticipate the passions to which the guardians of orthodoxy were about to abandon themselves. Parliament had maintained the independ- ence of the English courts of law. It had maintained the Premunire. It had forbidden the succession to be tampered with. If this was not everything, it was something — something which in the end would be the undoing of all the rest.
The Court and the bishops, however, were for the present absolute in their own province. The perse- cuting Acts were once more upon the Statute Book ; and when the realities of the debates in Parliament had disappeared, the Cardinal and the Queen could again give the rein to their imagination. They had called up a phantom out of its grave, and they persuaded them- selves that they were witnessing the resurrection of the spirit of truth, that heresy was about to vanish from off the English soil, like an exhalation of the morning, at the brightness of the Papal return. The chancellor and the clergy were springing at the leash like hounds with the game in view, fanaticism and revenge lashing them
484 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
forward. If the temporal schemes of the Court were thwarted, it was, perhaps, because Heaven desired that exclusive attention should be given first to the salvation of souls.
For all past political offences, therefore, there was now an amnesty, and such prisoners as remained unex- ecuted for Wyatt's conspiracy were released from the Tower on the i8th of January. On the 25th a hundred and sixty priests walked in procession through the London streets, chanting litanies, with eight bishops walking after them, and Bonner carrying the Lost. On the 28th the Cardinal issued his first general in- structions. The bishops were directed to call together their clergy in every diocese in England, and to inform them of the benevolent love of the Holy Father, and of the arrival of the legate with powers to absolve them from their guilt. They were to relate the Acts of the late Parliament, with the reconciliation and absolution of the Lords and Commons ; and they were to give general notice that authority had been restored to the ecclesiastical courts to proceed against the enemies of the faith, and punish them according to law.
A day was then to be fixed on which the clergy should appear with their confessions, and be received into the Church. In the assignment of their several penances, a distinction was to be made between those who had taught heresy and those who had merely lapsed into it.
When the clergy had been reconciled, they were again in turn to exhort the laity in all churches and
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cathedrals, to accept the grace which was offered to them ; and that they might understand that they were not at liberty to refuse the invitation, a time was assigned to them within which their submissions must be all completed. A book was to be kept in every diocese, where the names of those who were received were to be entered. A visitation was to be held throughout the country at the end of the spring, and all who had not complied before Easter day, or who, after compliance, 'had returned to their vomit, would be proceeded against with the utmost severity of the law.1
The introduction of the Register was the Inqui- sition under another name. There was no limit, except in the humanity or the prudence of the bishops, to the tyranny which they would be enabled to exer- cise. The Cardinal professed to desire that, before heretics were punished with death, mild means should first be tried with them;2 the meaning which he attached to the words was illustrated in an instant example.
1 Instructions of Cardinal Pole to the Bishops : BURNET'S Col- lectanea.
2 The opinion of Pole, on the propriety of putting men .to death for nonconformity, was strictly or- thodox. He regarded heretics, he said, as rebellious children, with whom persuasion and mild correction should first be tried. ' Nee tamen, negarim fieri posse,' he continued,
' ut alicujus opiniones tarn perniciosae existant, ipseque jam corruptus tarn sit ad corrumpendos alios promptus ac sedulus ut non dubitarim dicere eum e vita tolli oportere et tanquam putridum membrum e corpore exse- cari. Neque id tamen priusquam ejus sanandi causS, omnis leviter me- dendi tentata sit ratio.' — Pole to the Cardinal of Augsburg : Epist. REG. POL. vol. iv.
486 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
Tlie instructions were the signal for the bishops to
commence business. On the day of their
appearance, Gardiner, Bonner, Tunstal, and
three other prelates, formed a court in St Mary
0 very* s Church, in Southwark ; and Hooper, and
Rogers, a .canon of St Paul's, were brought up before
them.
Rogers had been distinguished in the first bright days of Protestantism. He had been a fellow-labourer with Tyndal and Coverdale, at Antwerp, in the trans- lation of the Bible. Afterwards, taking a German wife, he lived for a time at Wittenberg, not unknown, we may be sure, to Martin Luther. On the accession of Edward, he returned to England, and worked among the London clergy till the end of the reign ; and on Mary's accession he was one of the preachers at Paul's Cross who had dared to speak against the reaction. He had been rebuked by the council, and his friends had urged him to fly, but, like Cranmer, he thought that duty required him to stay at his post, and, in due time, without, however, having given fresh provocation, he was shut up in Newgate by Bonner.
Hooper, when the unfortunate garment controversy was brought to an end, had shown by his conduct in his diocese that in one instance at least doctrinal fa- naticism was compatible with the loftiest excellence. While the great world was scrambling for the Church property, Hooper was found petitioning the council for leave to augment impoverished livings out of his
I555-] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 487
income.1 In the hall of his palace at Gloucester a profuse hospitality was offered daily to those who were most in need of it. The poor of the city were invited by relays to solid meat dinners, and the Bishop with the courtesy of a gentleman dined with them, and treated them with the same respect as if they had been the highest in the land. He was one of the first per- sons arrested after Mary's accession, and the cross of persecution at once happily made his peace with Ridley. In an affectionate interchange of letters, the two confessors exhorted each other to constancy in the end which both foresaw, determining ' if they could not overthrow, at least to shake, those high altitudes ' of spiritual tyranny.2 The Fleet prison had now been Hooper's house for eighteen, months. At first, on pay- ment of heavy fees to the warden, he had lived in some degree of comfort ; but as soon as his deprivation was declared, Gardiner ordered that he should be con- fined in one of the common prisoners' wards ; where ' with a wicked man and a wicked woman ' for his com- panions, with a bed of straw and a rotten counterpane, the prison sink on one side of his cell and Fleet ditch on the other, he waited till it would please Parliament to permit the dignitaries of the Church to murder him.3
These were the two persons with whom the Marian persecution opened. On their appearance in the court,
1 Privy Council Register, Edward VI. MS.
2 Correspondence between Hooper and Ridley : FOXE, vol. vi.
3 Account of Hooper's Imprisonment, by himself: Ibi4.
488 REIGN- OF QUEEN MAR Y. [CH. 32.
they were required briefly to make their submission. They attempted to argue ; but they were told that when Parliament had determined a thing, private men were not to call it in question, and they were allowed twenty- four hours to make up their minds. As they were leaving the church Hooper was heard to say, ' Come, brother Rogers, must we two take this matter first in hand and fry these faggots ? ' * Yea, sir, with God's grace/ Rogers answered. ' Doubt not/ Hooper said, ' but God will give us strength/
They were remanded to prison. The next morning they were brought again before the court. ' The Queen's mercy ' was offered them, if they would recant ; they refused, and they were sentenced to die. Rogers asked to be allowed to take leave of his wife and children. Gardiner, with a savage taunt, rejected the request. The day of execution was left uncertain. They were sent to Newgate to wait the Queen's pleasure. On the 3oth, Taylor of Hadley, Laurence Sandars, rector of All Hallows, and the illustrious Bradford, were passed through the same forms with the same results. Another, a notorious preacher, called Card- maker, flinched, and made his submission.
Rogers was to ' break the ice/ as Bradford described
Monday, it.1 On the morning of the 4th of February
Feb- 4- the wife of the keeper of Newgate came to his
bedside. He was sleeping soundly, and she woke him
with difficulty to let him know that he was wanted.
Bradford to Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer : FOXE.
1 5 55-1 RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 489
The Bishop of London was waiting, she said, to degrade him from the priesthood, and he was then to go out and die. Rubbing his eyes, and collecting himself, he hurried on his clothes. ' If it be thus/ he said, ' I need not tie my points/ Hooper had been sent for also for the ceremony of degradation. The vestments used in the mass were thrown over them, and were then one by one removed. They were pronounced deposed from the priestly office, incapable of offering further sacrifice — • except, indeed, the only acceptable sacrifice which man can ever offer, the sacrifice of himself. Again Rogers entreated permission -to see his wife, and again he was refused.
The two friends were then parted. Hooper was to suffer at Gloucester, and returned to his cell : Rogers was committed to the sheriff, and led out to Smithfield. The Catholics had affected to sneer at the faith of their rivals. There was a general conviction among them, which was shared probably by Pole and Gardiner, that the Protestants would all flinch at the last ; that they had no ' doctrine that would abide the fire/ When Rogers appeared, therefore, the exultation of the people in his constancy overpowered the horror of his fate, and he was received with rounds of cheers. His family, whom he was forbidden to part with in private, were waiting on the way to see him — his wife with nine little ones at her side and a tenth upon her breast — and they, too, welcomed him with hysterical cries of joy, as if he were on his way to a festival.1 Sir Robert Ro-
1 ' Cejourclhuy a este faictc la confirmation de 1'alliance entrc lo
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
Chester was in attendance at the stake to report his behaviour. At the last moment he was offered pardon if he would give way, but in vain. The fire was lighted. The suffering seemed to be nothing. He bathed his hands in the flame as ' if it was cold water/ raised his eyes to heaven, and died.
The same night a party of the royal guard took charge of Hooper, the order of whose execution was ar- ranged by a mandate from the Crown. As ' an obstinate, false, and detestible heretic,' he was to 'be burned in the city ' which he had infected with his pernicious doctrines ; ' and ' forasmuch as being a vain- glorious person, and delighting in his tongue/ he ( might per- suade the people into agreement with him, had he liberty to use it/ care was to be taken that he should not speak either at the stake or on his way to it.1 He was carried down on horseback by easy stages ; and on the forenoon of Thursday the 7th, he dined at Ciren- cester, ' at a woman's house who had always hated the truth, and spoken all evil she could of him.' This woman had shared in the opinion that Protestants had no serious convictions, and had often expressed her belief that Hooper, particularly, would fail if brought
Pape et ce Koyaulme par ung sacri- fice publique et solempnel d'ung docteur predicant nomme Kogerus, lequel a este brule tout vif pour estre Luthcrien ; mais il est mort persist- nnt en son opinion, a quoy la plus grand part de ce peuple a prins tel plaisir qu'ilz n'ont eu craincte de luy
faire plusieurs acclamations pour comforter son courage; et mesmes ses enfans y ont assistes le consolan- tes de telle facon qu'il sembloit qu'on le menast aux nopces.'— Noailles to Montmorency : Ambassadcs, vol. iv. 1 Mandate for the execution of Hooper : BURNET'S Collectanea.
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RECONCIL1A TION WITH ROME.
491
to the trial. She found that both in him and in his creed there was more than she had supposed ; and ' per- ceiving the cause of his coming, she lamented his case with tears, and showed him all the friendship she could/
At five in the evening he arrived at Gloucester. The road, for a mile outside the town, was lined with people, and the mayor was in attendance, with an escort, to prevent a rescue. But the feeling was rather of awe and expectation, and those who loved Hooper best knew that the highest service which he could render to his faith was to die for it.
A day's interval of preparation was allowed him, with a private room. He was in the custody of the sheriff; * and there was this difference observed between the keepers of the bishops' prisons and the keepers of the Crown prisons, that the bishops' keepers were ever cruel ; the keepers of the Crown prisons showed, for the most part, such favour as they might.'1 After a sound night's rest, Hooper rose early, and passed the morning in solitary prayer. In the course of the day, young Sir Anthony Kingston, one of the commissioners appointed to superintend the exe- cution, expressed a wish to see him. Kingston was an old acquaintance, Hooper having been the means of bringing him out of evil ways. He entered the room unannounced. Hooper was on his knees, and, looking round at the intruder, did not at first know him.
Feb. 8.
492 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
Kingston told him his name, and then, bursting into tears, said : —
' Oh, consider ; life is sweet and death is bitter ; therefore, seeing life may be had, desire to live, for life hereafter may do good.7
Hooper answered : —
' I thank you for your counsel, yet it is not so friendly as I could have wished it to be. True it is, alas ! Master Kingston, that death is bitter and life is sweet ; there- fore I have settled myself, through the strength of God's Holy Spirit, patiently to pass through the fire prepared for me, desiring you and others to commend me to God's mercy in your prayers.'
' Well, my Lord/ said Kingston, ' then there is no remedy, and I will take my leave. I thank God that ever I knew you, for God appointed you to call me, being a lost child. I was both an adulterer and a forn- icator, and God, by JOUT good instruction, brought me to the forsaking of the same/
They parted, the tears on both their faces. Other friends were admitted afterwards. The Queen's orders were little thought of, for Hooper had won the hearts of the guard on his way from London. In the evening the mayor and aldermen came, with the sheriffs, to shake hands with him. * It was a sign of their good will/ he said, ' and a proof that they had not forgotten the lessons which he used to teach them/ He begged the sheriffs that there might be ' a quick fire, to make an end shortly ; ' and for himself he would be as obedi- ent as they could wish.
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RECONCILIA TION WITH ROME.
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Feb. 9.
' If you think I do amiss in anything,' he said, ' hold up your fingers, and I have done ; for I am not come hither as one enforced or compelled to die ; I might have had my life, as is well known, with worldly gain, if I would have accounted my doctrine falsehood and heresy.'
In the evening, at his own request, he was left alone. He slept undisturbed the early part of the night. From the time that he awoke till the guard entered, he was on his knees.
The morning was windy and wet. The scene of the execution was an open space opposite the college, near a large elm tree, where Hooper had been accustomed to preach. Several thousand people were collected to see him suffer ; some had climbed the tree, and were seated in the storm and rain among the leafless branches. A company of priests were in a room over the college gates, looking out with pity or satisfaction, as God or the devil was in their hearts.
( Alas ! ' said Hooper, when he was brought out, 1 why be all these people assembled here, and speech is prohibited me ? ' He had suffered in prison from sciatica, and was lame, but he limped cheerfully along with a stick, and smiled when he saw the stake. At the foot of it he knelt ; and as he began to pray, a box was brought, and placed on a. stool before his eyes, which he was told contained his pardon if he would recant.
1 Away with it ! ' Hooper only cried ; ' away with it ! '
494 kEIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [cH. 32.
' Despatch him, then/ Lord Chandos said, ' seeing there is no remedy.'
He was undressed to his shirt, in the cold ; a pound of gunpowder was tied between his legs, and as much more under either arm ; he was fastened with an iron hoop to the stake, and he assisted with his own hand? to arrange the faggots round him.
The fire was then brought, but the wood was green , the dry straw only kindled, and burning for a few mo- ments was blown away by the wind. A violent flame paralyzed the nerves at once, a slow one was torture. More faggots were thrown in, and again lighted, and this time the martyr's face was singed and scorched ; but again the flames sank, and the hot damp sticks smouldered round his legs. He wiped his eyes with his hands, and cried, ' For God's love, good people, let me have more fire ! ' A third supply of dry fuel was laid about him, and this time the powder exploded, but it had been ill-placed, or was not enough. ' Lord Jesu,- have mercy on me ! ' he exclaimed ; ' Lord Jesu, receive my spirit ! ' These were his last articulate words ; but his lips were long seen to move, and he continued to beat his breast with his hands. It was Mot till after three quarters of an hour of torment that he at last expired.
The same day, at the same hour, Rowland Taylor was burnt on Aldham •Common, in Suffolk. Laurence Sandars had been destroyed the day before at Coventry, kissing the stake, and crying, ' Welcome the cross of Christ ! welcome everlasting life ! ' The first-fruits of
1555-J RECONCILIA flON WlTti ROME. 49$
the Whitehall pageant were gathered. By the side of the rhetoric of the hysterical dreamer who presided in that vain melodrama, let me place a few words addressed by the murdered Bishop of Gloucester to his friends, a week before his sentence.
' The grace of God be with you, amen, I did write unto you of late, and told you what extremity the Par- liament had concluded upon concerning religion, sup- pressing the truth, and setting forth the untruth ; in- tending to cause all men, by extremity, to forswear them- selves ; and to take again for the head of the Church him that is neither head nor member of it, but a very enemy, as the word of God and all ancient writers do record. And for lack of law and authority they will use force and extremity, which have been the arguments to defend the Pope and Popery since their authority first began in the world. But now is the time of trial, to see whether we fear more God or man. It was an easy thing to hold with Christ whilst the Prince and the world held with him ; but now the world hateth him, it is the true trial who be his.
1 Wherefore in the name, and in the virtue, strength, and power of his Holy Spirit, prepare yourselves in any case to adversity and constancy. Let us not run away when it is most time to fight. Hemember, none shall be crowned but such as fight manfully ; and he that endureth to the end shall be saved. Ye must now turn your cogitations from the perils you see, and mark the felicity that followeth the peril — either victory in this world of your enemies, or else a surrender of this life to
496 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 32.
inherit the everlasting kingdom. Beware of beholding too much the felicity or misery of this world ; for the con- sideration and too earnest love or fear of either of them draweth from God. Wherefore think with yourselves as touching the felicity of the world, it is good ; but none otherwise than it standeth with the favour of God ; it is to be kept, but yet so far forth as by keeping it we lose not God. It is good abiding and tarrying still among our friends here, but yet so that we tarry not therewithal in God's displeasure, and hereafter dwell with the devils in fire everlasting. There is nothing under God but may be kept, so that God, being above all things we have, be not lost. Of adversity judge the same. Imprisonment is painful, but yet liberty upon evil conditions is more painful. The prisons stink ; but yet not so much as sweet houses, where the fear and true honour of God lack. I must be alone and solitary ; it is better so to be, and have God with me, than to be in company with the wicked. Loss of goods is great, but loss of God's grace and favour is greater. I am a poor simple creature, and cannot tell how to answer before such a great sort of noble, learned, and wise men. It is better to make answer before the pomp and pride of wicked men than to stand naked, in the sight of all heaven and earth, before the just God at the latter day. I shall die by the hands of the cruel men ; but he is blessed that loseth this life full of miseries, and findeth the life of eternal joys. It is pain and grief to depart from goods and friends ; but yet not so much as to de- part from grace and heaven itself. Wherefore there is
1555] RECONCILIATION WITH ROME. 497
neither felicity nor adversity of this world that can appear to be great, if it be weighed with the joys or pains in the world to come.'1
Of five who had been sentenced, four were thus de- spatched. Bradford, the fifth, was respited, in the hope that the example might tell upon him. Six more were waiting their condemnation in Bonner's prisons. The enemies of the Church were to submit or die. So said Gardiner, in the name of the English priesthood, with the passion of a fierce revenge. So said the legate and the Queen, in the delirious belief that they were chosen instruments of Providence.
So, however, did not say the English lay statesmen. The first and unexpected effect was to produce a differ- ence of opinion in the Court itself. Philip, to whom Renard had insisted on the necessity of more moderate measures, found it necessary to clear himself of respons- ibility : and the day after Hooper suffered, Alphonso a Castro, the King's chaplain, preached a sermon in the royal presence, in which he denounced the execution, and inveighed against the tyranny of the bishops. The Lords of the Council ' talked strangely ; ' and so deep was the indignation, that the Flemish ambassador again expected Gardiner's destruction. Paget refused to act with him in the council any more, and Philip himself talked more and more of going abroad. Renard, from the tone of his correspondence, believed evidently at this moment that the game of the Church was played
1 Hooper to his friends : FOXE, vol. vi. VOL. v. 32
498
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
out and lost. He wrote to the Emperor to entreat that when the King went he might not himself be left be- hind : he was held responsible by the people for the Queen's misdoings ; and a party of the young nobility had sworn to kill him.1
Among the people the constancy of the martyrs had called out a burst of admiration. It was rumoured that bystanders had endeavoured to throw themselves into the fire to die at their side.2 A prisoner, on examina- tion before Bonner, was asked if he thought he could bear the flame. You may try me, if you will, he said. A candle was brought, and he held his hand, without flinching, in the blaze.3 With such a humour abroad,
1 ' L'evesque de Londres avec les autres evesques assembleez en ce lieu pour 1' execution du statut con- clu en dernier Parlement sur le faict de la religion, a fait brusler trois heretiques ; 1'ung en ce lieu et les deux autres en pays ; et sont apres pour continuer contre les obstinez : dont les nobles etle peuple heretique murmure et s'altere ; selon que 1'ay faict entendre an roy par ung billet par escript duquel la copie va avec les preseutes ; et la noblesse tous- jours desire d'avoir occasion d'at- tirer le peuple et le faire joindre a revolte avec elle ; etprevoys si Dieu n'y remedie, ou que telle precipita- tion ne se modere, les choses prend- ront dangereux succes, et signam- ment les partiaulx, contre le chan- celier ne perdront ceste commodite de vengeance. . . . Les dictes con- seilliers se retirent de nejjroces. Pa-
get se voyant en la male grace de la royne, et de la pluspart du conseil, se trouve souvent au quartier dudict Sieur roy . . le peuple parle contre la royne estrangement .... Comme j'entendz que Ton parle pour me faire demeurer, et sejourner par de^a apres le depart du roy, je n'ay pen delaisser de supplier tres humble- ment vostre majeste me excuser . . je suys certain Ton me tueroit in- continant apres ledict parlement,' &c. — Renard to Charles V. ; Gran- velle Papers, vol. iv. pp. 400 — 402.
2 'Et a Ton diet que plusieurs . . . se sont voulu voluntairement mettre sur le buche a coste de ceulx que Ton brusloit.' — Ibid. p. 404.
3 ' Un bourgeois estant inter- rouge par ledict evesque de Londres se souftriroit bien le feug, respondist qu'il en fist 1' experience : et aiant fait apporter une chandelle allumee,
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RE CONCILIA TION WITH ROME.
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it seemed to Renard that the Lords had only to give the signal and the Queen and the bishops would be over- whelmed.
He expected the movement in the spring. It is singular that, precisely as in the preceding winter, the deliberate intentions of moderate and competent persons were anticipated and defeated by a partial and prema- ture conspiracy. At the end of February a confederate revealed a project for an insurrection, partly religious and partly agrarian. Placards were to be issued simul- taneously in all parts of the country, declaring that the Queen's pregnancy was a delusion, and that she in- tended to pass upon the nation a supposititious child ; the people were, therefore, invited to rise in arms, drive out the Spaniards, revolutionize religion, tear down the enclosures of the commons, and proclaim Courtenay King under the title of Edward VII.1 In such a scheme the lords and country gentlemen could bear no part. They could not risk a repetition of the popular re- bellions of the late reign, and they resolved to wait the issue of the Queen's pregnancy, while they watched over the safety of Elizabeth. The project of the Court was now to send her to Flanders, where she was to re- main under charge of the Emperor ; if possible, she was to be persuaded to go thither of her own accord ; if she
il meit la main dessus sans la retirer ny se mouvoir.' — Renard to Charles V. : Granvelle Papers, vol. vi. p. 404. The man's name was Tom- kir.s. Foxe, who tells the story as an illustration of Bonner's brutality,
says that the Bishop himself held the hand. But Renard's is probably the truer version.
1 Renard to Charles V.: Gran- velle Papers, vol. iv. p. 403.
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 32.
could not be persuaded, she would be otherwise removed Lord William Howard, her constant guardian, requested permission to see and speak with her, and learn her own feelings. He was refused ; but he went to her notwith- standing, and had a long private interview with her ; and the Court could only talk bitterly of his treason among themselves, make propositions to send him to the Tower which they durst not execute, and devise some other method of dealing with their difficulty.1
Meantime, Philip, who had pined for freedom after six weeks' experience of his bride, was becoming un- manageably impatient. A paper of advice and exhort- ation survives, which was addressed on this occasion by the ambassador to his master, with reflections on the condition of England, and on the conduct which the King should pursue.
1 Your Majesty must remember/ said Renard, ' the purpose for which you came to England. The French had secured the Queen of Scotland for the Dauphin. They had afterwards made an alliance with the late King, and spared no pains to secure the support of England. To counteract their schemes, and to obtain a counter-advantage in the war, the Emperor, on the accession of the Queen, resolved that your Highness should marry her. Your Highness, it is true, might wish that she was more agreeable;2 but, on the other hand, she is infinitely virtuous, and, things being as
1 Renard to Charles V. : Gran- velle Papers, vol. iv. pp. 404, 405.
2 ' Et corabien Ton pouvoit re-
querir plus tie civilite en la Reyne. —Renard to Philip : Ibid. p. 394.
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RECONCILIA 77ON WITH ROME.
they are, your Highness, like a magnanimous prince, must remember her condition, and exert yourself, so far as you conveniently may, to assist her in the manage- ment of the kingdom.
' Your Highness must consider that your departure will be misrepresented, your enemies will speak of it as a flight rather than as a necessary absence. The French will be busy with their intrigues, and the Queen will not be pleased to lose you. The administration is in confusion, the divisions in the council are more violent than ever. Religion is unsettled ; the heretics take advantage of these late barbarous punishments to say, that they are to be converted by fire, because their enemies are unable to convince them by reason or ex- ample. The orthodox clergy are still unreformed, and their scandalous conduct accords ill with the offices to which they are called.1
1 Further, your Highness will do well to weigh the uncertainty of the succession. Should the Queen's pregnancy prove a mistake, the heretics will place their hopes in Elizabeth : and here you. are in a difficulty whatever be done ; for if Elizabeth be set aside, the crown will go to the Queen of Scots ; if she succeed, she wi)l restore heresy, and naturally attach herself to France. Some step must be taken about this before you leave the country ; and you must satisfy the Queen
1 ' Les gens d'eglise ne sont re- forniecs, il y a plusieurs abuz qui donnent scandale et maulvaise im- pression, et ilz ne respondent aux
offices auxquelz ilz sont appellez.' — Renard to Philip ; Granvdlc Papers, vol. iv. p. 395.
$01
OP QUEEN" MARY.
[crt.
tliat you will assist her in her general difficulties, as a good lord and husband ought to do.1
' The council must be reformed, if possible, and the number diminished ; those who remain must be invited to renew their oaths to your Majesty. Regard must be had to the navy, and especially to the admiral Lord William Howard ; and above all there must be no more of this barbarous precipitancy in putting heretics to death. The people must be won from their errors by gentleness and by better instruction. Except in cases of especial scandal, the bishops must not be permitted to irritate them by cruelty, and the legate must see that a better example is set by the clergy themselves.2 The debts of the Crown must be attended to ; and your Ma- jesty should endeavour to do something which will give you popularity with the masses. Before all things, at- tend to the succession.
1 You cannot set aside the dispositions of King Henry in favour of Elizabeth without danger of rebellion. To recognize her as heir-presumptive without providing her with a husband, who can control her, will be peril- ous to the Queen. The mean course between the ex-
1 ' Dormer ce contenternent a la royne d' avoir intention de asseurer et establir ses affaires et la secourir comme bon Seigneur et raari.'
- ' Que es choses de la religion Ton ne use de precipitation par pu- nition cruelle, ains avec la modera- tion, et mansuetude requise, et dont Peglise a tousjours use ; retirant le peuple de 1'erreur par doctrine et
predication, et que si ce n'est un acte scandaleux 1'on ne passe oultre en chastoy que puisse alterer le peu- ple et le desgouter, que la reforma- tion requise pour le bon example, soit introduicte sur lea gens de 1'eglise comme le legat advisera pour le mieulx.' — Renard to Philip : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 395.
RECOtiClLIA TION WITH ROME.
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tremes will be, therefore, for your Highness to bring about her marriage with the Prince of Savoy. It will please the English, provided that her rights of inherit- ance are not interfered with ; and although they will not go to war for our quarrel, they will not in that case be unwilling to assist in expelling the French from Piedmont.
'If your Majesty approve, the thing can be done without delay. At all events, before you leave the country, you should see the Princess yourself ; give her your advice to be faithful to her sister, and, on your part, promise that you will be her friend, and assist her where you can find opportunity/
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE MARTYRS.
THE protests of Renard against the persecution re- ceived no attention.
The inquisition established by the legate was not to commence till Easter ; but the prisons were already abundantly supplied with persons who had been arrested on various pretexts, and the material was ready in hand to occupy the interval. The four persons who had first suffered had been conspicuous among the leaders of the Reformation ; but the bishops were for the most part prudent in their selection of victims, and chose them principally from among the poor and unfriended.
On the 9th of February, a weaver named Tomkins (the man who had held his hand in the candle), Pigot, a butcher, Knight, a barber, Hunter, an apprentice boy of 19, Lawrence, a priest, and Hawkes, a gentleman, were brought before Bonner in the Consistory at St Paul's, where they were charged with denying transub- stantiation, and were condemned to die. The indigna- tion which had been excited by the first executions caused a delay in carrying the sentence into effect ;
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THE MARTYRS.
505
March.
but as the menace of insurrection died away the wolves came back to their prey. On the 9th of March, two more were condemned also, Thomas Caus- ton and Thomas Higbed, men of some small property in Essex. To disperse the effect, these eight were scatter- ed about the diocese. Tomkins died at Smithfield on the 1 6th of March ; Causton and Higbed, Pigot and Knight, in different parts of Essex ; Hawkes suffered later ; Lawrence was burnt at Colchester. The legs of the latter had been crushed by irons in one of Bonner's prisons ; he was unable to stand, and was placed at the stake in a chair. ' At his burning, he sitting in the fire, the young children came about and cried, as well as young children could speak, Lord, strengthen thy serv- ant, and keep thy promise — Lord, strengthen thy serv- ant, and keep thy promise.' l
Hunter's case deserves more particular mention. The London apprentices had been affected deeply by the Reforming preachers. It was to them that the servant of Anne Askew ' made her moan/ and gathered sub- scriptions for her mistress. William Hunter, who was one of them, had been ordered to attend mass by a priest when it was re-established ; he had refused, and his master, fearing that he might be brought into trouble, had sent him home to his famity at Brentwood, in Essex.2 Another priest, going one day into Brent-
1 FOXE, vol. vi.
2 The story of Hunter was left in writing by his brother, and was printed by Foxe. I have already said that whene ;er Foxe prints docu-
ments instead of relating hearsays, I have found him uniformly trust- worthy ; so far, that is to say, as there are means of testing him.
$06 REIGN OF QUEEtf MARtf. [OH. 33.
wood Church, found Hunter reading the Bible there.
Could he expound Scripture, that he read it thus to himself? the priest asked. He was reading for his comfort, Plunter replied ; he did not take on himself to expound. The Bible taught him how to live, and how to distinguish between right and wrong.
It was never merry world, the priest said, since the Bible came forth in English. He saw what Hunter was— he was one of those who disliked the Queen's laws, iind he and other heretics would broil for it before all was over.
The boy's friends thought it prudent that he should fly to some place where he was not known ; but, as soon as he was gone, a Catholic magistrate in the neighbour- hood required his father to produce him, on peril of being arrested in his place ; and, after a struggle of affection, in which the father offered to shield his son at his own hazard, young Hunter returned and surren- dered.
The magistrate sent him to the Bishop of London, who kept him in prison three quarters of a year. When the persecution commenced, he was called up for ex- amination.
Bonner, though a bigot and a ruffian, had, at times, a coarse good-nature in him, and often, in moments of pity, thrust an easy recantation upon a hesitating prisoner. He tried with emphatic anxiety to save this young apprentice. 'If thou wilt recant/ he said to him, ' I will make thee a freeman in the city, and give thee forty pounds in money to set up thy occupation
'555-:
THE MARTYRS.
withal ; or I will make thee steward of mine house, and set thee in office, for I like thee well/
Hunter thanked him for his kindness ; but it could not be, he said : he must stand to the truth : he could not lie, or pretend to believe what he did not believe. Bonner said, and probably with sincere conviction, that if he persisted he would be damned for ever. Hunter said, that God judged more righteously, and justified those whom man unjustly condemned.
He was therefore to die with the rest ; and on Saturday, the 23rd of March, he was sent to suffer at his native village. Monday being the feast of the An- nunciation, the execution was postponed till Tuesday. The intervening time he was allowed to spend with his friends ' in the parlour of the Swan Inn/ His father prayed that he might continue to the end in the way that he had begun. His mother said, she was happy to bear a child who could find in his heart to lose his life for Christ's sake. ' Mother/ he answered, * for my little pain which I shall suffer, which is but a short braid, Christ hath promised me a crown of joy. May you not be glad of that, mother ? '
Amidst such words the days passed. Tuesday morn- ing the sheriff's son came and embraced him, ' bade him not be afraid/ and ' could speak no more for weeping/ When the sheriff came himself for him, he took his brother's arm and walked calmly to the place of exe- cution, ' at the town's end, where the butts stood.'
His father was at the roadside as he passed. ' God be with thee, son William f ' the old man said. ' God
508 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
be with thee, good father,' the son answered, 'and be of good comfort ! '
When he was come to the stake, he took one of the faggots, knelt upon it, and prayed for a few moments. The sheriff read the pardon with the conditions. ' I shall not recant,' he said, and walked to the post, to which he was chained.
' Pray for me, good people, while you see me alive/ he said to the crowd.
' Pray for thee ! ' said the magistrate who had com- mitted him, ' I will no more pray for thee than I will pray for a dog/
' Son of God,' Hunter exclaimed, ' shine on me ! ' The sun broke out from behind a cloud and blazed in glory on his face.
The faggots were set on fire.
' Look,' shrieked a priest, ' how thou burnest here, so shalt thou burn in hell ! '
The martyr had a Prayer-book in his hands, which he cast through the flames to his brother.
' William,' said the brother, ' think on the holy passion of Christ, and be not afraid of death.'
' I am not afraid/ were his last words. ' Lord, Lord, Lord, receive my spirit ! '
Ten days later another victim was sacrificed at Carmarthen, whose fate was peculiarly unprovoked and cruel.
Robert Ferrars, who twenty-seven years before carried a faggot with Anthony Dalaber in High-street at Oxford, had been appointed by Somerset Bishop of
I555-]
THE MARTYRS.
St David's. He was a man of large humanity, justice, and uprightness — neither conspicuous as a theologian nor prominent as a preacher, but remarkable chiefly for good sense and a kindly imaginative tenderness. He had found his diocese infected with the general dis- orders of the times. The Chapter were indulging them- selves to the utmost in questionable pleasures ; the Church patronage was made the prey of a nest of Cathedral lawyers ; and, in an evil hour for himself, the Bishop endeavoured to make crooked things straight.
After three years of struggle, his unruly canons were unable to endure him longer, and fonvarded to the Duke of Northumberland an elaborate series of com- plaints against him. He was charged with neglecting his books and his preaching, and spending his time in surveying the lands of the See, and opening mines. He kept no manner of hospitality, it was said, but dined at the same table with his servants ; and his talk was ' not of godliness/ ' but of worldly matters, as baking, brew- ing, enclosing, ploughing, mining, millstones, dis- charging of tenants, and such like.'
' To declare his folly in riding (these are the literal words of the accusation) , he useth a bridle with white studs and snaffle, white Scottish stirrups, white spurs ; a Scottish pad, with a little staff of three quarters [of a yard] long.
' He said he would go to Parliament on foot ; and to his friends that dissuaded him, alleging that it was not meet for a man in his place, he answered, I care not for that ; it is no sin.
5ro REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33-
1 Having a son, he went before the midwife to the church, presenting the child to the priest ; and giving the name Samuel with a solemn interpretation of the name,1 appointed two godfathers and two godmothers contrary to the ordinance, making his son a monster and himself a laughing-stock.
' He daily useth whistling of his child, and saith that he understood his whistle when he was but three years old ; and being advertised of his friends that men laughed at his folly, he answered, They whistle their horses and dogs ; they might also be contented that I whistle my child : and so whistleth him daily, friendly admonition neglected.
1 In his visitation, among other his surveys, he sur- veyed Milford Haven, where he espied a seal-fish tum- bling, and he crept down to the rocks by the water- side, and continued there whistling by the space of an hour, persuading the company that laughed fast at him, he made the fish to tarry there.
' Speaking of the scarcity of herrings, he laid the fault to the covetousness of fishers, who in time of plenty took so many that they destroyed the breeders.
' Speaking of the alteration of the coin, he wished that what metal soever it was made of, the penny should be in weight worth a penny of the same metal.'
Such were the charges against Ferrars, which, not- withstanding, were considered serious enough to re-
1 Wherefore it came to pass that Hannah bare a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the Lord, i Samuel i, 20.
1 555-1 THE MARTYRS. 511
quire an answer ; and the Bishop consented to reply.
He dined with his servants, he said, because the hall of the palace was in ruins, and for their comfort he al- lowed them to eat in his own room. For his hospitality, he appealed to his neighbours ; and for his conversation, he said that he suited it to his hearers. He talked of religion to religious men ; to men of the world he talked ' of honest worldly things with godly intent.' He saw no folly in having his horse decently appointed ; and as to walking to Parliament, it was indifferent to him whether he walked or rode. God had given him a child, after lawful prayer, begotten in honest marriage , he had therefore named him Samuel, and presented him to the minister as a poor member of Christ's Church ; it was done openly in the cathedral, without offending any one. The crime of whistling he admitted, ' thinking it better to bring up his son with loving entertainment/ to encourage him to receive afterwards more serious lessons. He had whistled to the seal ; and ' such as meant folly might turn it to their purpose.' He had said that the destruction of the fry offish prevented fish from multiplying, because he believed it to be true.
Answered or unanswered, it is scarcely credible that such accusations should have received attention ; but the real offence lay behind, and is indicated in a vague statement that he had exposed himself to a premunire. The exquisite iniquity of the Northumberland adminis- tration could not endure a bishop who had opposed the corrupt administration of patronage ; and the explan- ation being held as insufficient, Ferrars was summoned
5i2 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
to London and thrown into prison, where Mary's acces- sion found him.
Cut off in this way from the opportunities of escape which were so long open to others, the Bishop remained in confinement till the opening of the persecution. He was deposed from his See by Gardiner's first commission, as having been married; otherwise, however, Ferrars was unobnoxious politically and personally. Being in prison, he had been incapable of committing any fresh offence against the Queen, and might reasonably have been forgotten or passed over. But he had been a bishop, and he was ready caught to the hands of the authorities ; and Mary had been compelled unwillingly to release a more conspicuous offender, Miles Coverdale, at the intercession of the King of Denmark. Ferrars was therefore brought before Gardiner on the 4th of February. On the I4th he was sent into V/ales to be tried by Morgan, his successor at St David's and Con- stantine, the notary of the diocese, who had been one of his accusers. By these judges, 011 the uth of March, he was condemned and degraded ; he appealed to the legate, but the legate never listened to the prayer of heretics ; the legate's mission was to extirpate them. On Saturday the 3Oth of March, Ferrars was brought to the stake in the market-place in Carmarthen.1
Rawlins White, an aged Cardiff fisherman, followed
^ Ferrars. In the course of April, George
Marsh, a curate, was burnt at Chester ; and on
1 FOXE, vol. vii.
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THE MARTYRS.
513
the 20th of April, a man named William Flower, who had been once a monk of Ely, was burnt in Palace- yard, at Westminster. Flower had provoked his own fate. He appeared on Easter day in St Margaret's Church, while mass was being said ; and instigated, as he per- suaded himself, by the Holy Spirit, he flew upon the officiating priest, and stabbed him with a dagger in the hand ; when to the horror of pious Catholics, the blood spurted into the chalice, and was mixed with the con- secrated elements.1
Sixteen persons had now been put to death, and there was again a pause for the sharp surgery to produce its effects.
While Mary was destroying the enemies of the Church, Julius the Third had died at the end of March, and Reginald Pole was again a candidate for the vacant Chair. The Courts of Paris and Brussels alike promised him their support, but alike gave their support to an- other. They flattered his virtues, but they permitted Marcellus Cervino, the Cardinal of St Cross, to be elected unanimously ; and the English legate was told that he must be contented with the event which God had been pleased to send.2 An opportunity, however, seemed to offer itself to him of accomplishing a service to Europe.
For thirty-five years the two great Catholic powers had been wrestling with but brief interruption. The advantage to either had been as trifling as the causes
1 FOXE.
2 Noailles to the King of France, April 5 and April 1 7. Montmorency
VOL. V
to Noailles, April 21. Noailles to Montmorency, April 30 : Ambas- sades, vol. iv.
33
514 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33-
of their quarrel were insignificant. Their revenues were anticipated, their credit was exhausted, yet year after year languid armies struggled into collision. Across the Alps in Italy, and along the frontiers of Burgundy and the Low Countries, towns and villages and homesteads were annually sacked, and peasants and their families destroyed — for what it were vain to ask, except it was for some poor shadow of imagined honour. Two mighty princes believed themselves justified in the sight of Heaven in squandering their subjects' treasure and their subjects' blood, because the pride of each for- bade him to be the first in volunteering insignificant concessions. France had conquered Savoy and part of Piedmont, and had pushed forward its northern frontier to Marienbourg and Metz : the Emperor held Lombardy, Parma, and Naples, and Navarre was annexed to Spain. The quarrel might have easily been ended by mutual restitution ; yet the Peace of Cambray, the Treaty of Nice, and the Peace of Crepy, lasted only while the combatants were taking breath ; and those who would attribute the extravagances of human folly to super- natural influence might imagine that the great discord between the orthodox powers had been permitted to give time for the Reformation to strike its roots into the soil of Europe But a war which could be carried on only by loans at sixteen per cent, was necessarily near its conclusion. The apparent recovery of England to the Church revived hopes which the Peace of Passau and the dissolution of the Council of Trent had almost
1 55 5-1 THE MARTYRS. 515
extinguished ; and, could a reconciliation be effected at last, and could Philip obtain the disposal of the military strength of England in the interests of the Papacy, it might not even yet be too late to lay the yoke of or- thodoxy on the Germans, and, in a Catholic inter- pretation of the Parable of the Supper, 'compel them to come in.'
Mary, who had heard herself compared to the Virgin, and Pole, who imagined the Prince of Spain to be the counterpart of the Redeemer of mankind, indulged their fancy in large expectations. Philip was the Solomon who was to raise up the temple of the Lord, which the Emperor, who was a man of war, had not been allowed to build : and France, at the same time, was not unwill- ing to listen to proposals. The birth of Mary's child was expected in a few weeks, when England would, as a matter of course, become more decisively Imperialist : and Henry, whose invasion of the Netherlands had failed in the previous summer, was ready now to close the struggle while it could be ended on equal and hon- ourable terms.
A conference was, therefore, agreed upon, in which England was to mediate. A village in the Calais Pale was selected as the place of assembly, and Pole, Gardiner, Paget, and Pembroke were chosen to arrange the terms of a general peace, with the Bishop of Arras, the Car- dinal of Lorraine, and Montmorency. The time pitched upon was that at which, so near as the Queen could judge, she would herself bring into the world the off-
516 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
spring which was to be the hope of England and man- kind ; and the great event should, if possible, precede the first meeting of the plenipotentiaries.
The Queen herself commenced her preparations with infinite earnestness, and, as a preliminary votive offer- ing, she resolved to give back to the Church such of the abbey property as remained in the hands of the Crown. Her debts were now as high as ever. The Flanders correspondence was repeating the heavy story of loans and bills. Promises to pay were falling due, arid there were no resources to meet them, and the Israelite leeches were again fastened on the commonwealth.1 Neverthe- less, the sacrifice should be made ; the more difficult it was, the more favourably it would be received ; and, on the 28th of March, she sent for the Lord Treasurer, and announced her intention. 'If he told her that her estate would not bear it, she must reply/ she said, ' that she valued the salvation of her soul beyond all earthly things/ 2 As soon as Parliament could meet and give its sanction, she would restore the first-fruits also to the Holy See. She must work for God as God had worked for her.
About the 2oth of April she withdrew to Hampton Court for entire quiet. The rockers and the nurses were in readiness, and a cradle stood open to receive the royal infant. Priests and bishops sang Litanies through the London streets ; a procession of ecclesiastics in cloth
1 Letters to and from Sir Thomas Gresham : MS. Flanders, Mary, State Taper Office.
- STBYPE'S Memorials.
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THE MARTYRS.
of gold and tissue, marched round Hampton Court Palace, headed by Philip in person ; Gardiner walked at his side, while Mary gazed from a window.1 Not only was the child assuredly coming, but its sex was decided on, and circulars were drawn and signed both by the King and Queen, with blanks only for the month and day, announcing to ministers of State, to ambas- sadors, and to foreign sovereigns, the birth of a prince.2 On the 3oth, the happy moment was supposed to have arrived; a message was sent off to London, an- nouncing the commencement of the pains. The bells were set ringing in all the churches ; Te Deum was sung in St Paul's ; priests wrote sermons ; bonfires were piled ready for lighting, and tables were laid out in the streets.3. The news crossed the Channel to Antwerp, and had grown in the transit. The great bell of the
1 MACHYN'S Diary.
2 These curious records of dis- appointed expectations remain in large numbers in the State Paper Office. The following is the letter addressed to Pole : —
Philip. — Mary the Queen.
Most Reverend Father in God, our right trusty and right entirely beloved cousin, We greet you -well: And whereas it hath pleased Almighty God, of His infinite goodness, to add unto the great number of other His benefits bestowed upon us, the gladding of us with the happy deliverance of a prince, for the which \ve do most hum- bly thank Him ; knowing your
affections to be such towards us as whatsoever shall fortunately succeed unto us, the same can- not be but acceptable unto you also ; We have thought good to communicate unto you these happy news of ours, to the in- tent you may rejoice with us ; and praying for us, give God thanks for this his work ac- cordingly. Given under our signet, at our house of Hamp- ton Court, the — of — , the ist and 2nd year of our and my Lord the King's reign. — MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. v. State Paper Office.
3 Noailles to Montmorency, April 30 : Ambassades, vol. iv.
5i£ REIGtf Of QUEEN MARY. |cH. 33.
cathedral was rung for the actual birth. The vessels in the river fired salutes. ' The Regent sent the English mariners a hundred crowns to drink,' and, ' they made themselves in readiness to show some worthy triumph upon the waters.' l
But the pains passed off without result ; and whispers began to be heard that there was, perhaps, a mistake of a more considerable kind. Mary, however, had herself no sort of misgiving. She assured her attendants that all was well, and that she felt the motion of her child. The physicians professed to be satisfied, and the priests were kept at work at the Litanies. Up and down the streets they marched, through City and suburb, park and square ; torches flared along Cheapside at midnight behind the Holy Sacrament, and five hundred poor men and women from the almshouses walked two and two, telling their beads in their withered fingers : then all the boys of all the schools were set in motion, and the ushers and the masters came after them.; clerks, canons, bishops, mayor, aldermen, officers of guilds.2 Such marching, such chanting, such praying was never seen or heard before or since in London streets. A profane person ran one day out of the crowd, and hung about a priest's neck, where the beads should be, a string of puddings ; but they whipped him and prayed on. Surely, God would hear the cry of his people.
1 Sir Thomas Gresham to the I Paper Office. Council : MS. Flanders, Mary, State I 2 MACHYN'S Diary.
1555-1 ?ftE MARTYRS. $1$
111 the midst of the suspense the Papal chair fell vacant again. The Pontificate of Marcellus lasted three weeks, and Pole a third time offered himself to the suffrages of the cardinals. The Courts were profuse of compliments as before. Noailles presented him with a note from Montmorency, con- taining assurances of the infinite desire of the King of France for the success of so holy a person.1 Philip wrote to Rome in his behalf, and Mary condescended to ask for the support of the French cardinals.2 But the fair speeches, as before, were but trifling. The choice fell on Pole's personal enemy, Cardinal Caraffa, who was French alike in heart and brain.
The choice of a Pope, however, would signify little, if only the child could be born ; but where was the child ? The Queen put it off strangely. The Confer- ence could be delayed no longer. It opened without the intended makeweight, and the Court of France was less inclined to make concessions for a peace. The delay began to tell on the Bourse at Antwerp. The Fuggers and the Schertzes drew their purse- strings, and made difficulties in lending more money to the Emperor.3 The Plenipotentiaries had to separate after a few meetings, having effected nothing, to the especial mortification of Philip and Mary, who looked to the pacification to enable them to cure England of its unruly humours. The Duke of Alva f so rumour insisted)
1 Noailles to Montmorency, May 15 : Ambassades, vol. iv. 2 Philip and Mary to Gardiner, Arundel, and Paget : BUKNET'S Col- lectanea. 3 NOAILLES : Ambassades, vol. iv. p. 313.
520
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
33
was to bring across the Spanish troops which were in the Low Countries, take possession of London, and force the Parliament into submission.1 The English were to be punished, for the infinite insolences in which they had indulged towards Philip's retinue, by being compelled, whether they liked it or not, to bestow upon him the crown.2
But the peace could not be, nor could the child be born ; and the impression grew daily that the Queen had not been pregnant at all. Mary herself, who had been borne forward to this, the crisis of her fortunes, on a tide of success, now suddenly found her exulting hopes closing over. From confidence she fell into anxiety, from anxiety into fear, from fear into wildness and despondency. She vowed that with the restoration of the estates, she would rebuild the abbeys at her own cost. In vain. Her women now understood her con- dition ; she was sick of a mortal disease ; but they durst not tell her; and she whose career had been
1 * Et la oti ladicte paix ou trefve adviendront ledict seigneur (1'Em- pereur) fera bientost apres repasser en ce royaulme le due d' Alva avecque la plus grande part de sesdictes forces pour y fabvoriser les affaires de ce roy.' — NOAILLES, vol. iv. p. 330.
2 'II n'est rien que 1'Empereur ne fasse pour venir a la paix, tant il desire avant de retourner en Es- paigne de faire couronner son filz, roy de ce pays. Et pensera par meme moyen se saisir des places fortes d'icelluy et cbastier des Ang-
loys d'infinies injures qu'ilz out faict recepvoir aux Espagnols, mettant grosses garnisons en ceste ville de Londres, et aultres lieux, a quoy ces roy et royne proposent . . . s'y faire obeir absolument aux parle- mens, suyvant ce qu'ilz n'ont pcu faire par cydevant.' — Ibid. p. 332,
333-
In these reports tbe truth was anticipated but not exceeded. It will be seen that such projects were really formed at a later period.
I555-]
THE MARTYRS.
$21
painted out to her by the legate, as especial and super- natural, looked only for supernatural causes of her present state. Throughout May she remained in her apartments waiting — waiting — in passionate restless- ness. With stomach swollen, and features shrunk and haggard, she would sit upon the floor, with her knees drawn up to her face, in an agony of doubt ; and in mockery of her wretchedness, letters were again strewed about the place by an invisible agency, telling her that she was loathed by her people. She imagined they would rise again in her defence. But if they rose again, it would be to drive her and her husband from the country.1
After the mysterious quickening on the legate's salutation, she could not doubt that her hopes had been at one time well founded ; but for some fault, some error in herself, God had delayed the fulfilment of his promise. And what could that crime be ? The ac- cursed thing was still in the realm. She had been raised up, like the judges in Israel, for the extermina- tion of God's enemies ; and she had smitten but a few here and there, when, like the evil spirits, their name was legion.2 She had before sent orders round among
1 ' Ladicte dame plusieurs fois dc le jour demeure long-temps assise a terre, Ics genoulx aussy haultz que la teste.
'Se trouva hier fort malade et plus que de coustume, et pour la soulager, fust trouve a mesme heure ensa court plusieurs lettres semees
contre son honneur,' &c. NOAILLES, vol. iv. p. 342.
2 ' The Queen said she could not be safely and happily delivered, nor could anything succeed prosperously with her, unless all the heretics in prison were burnt ad unum! — BUR- NET
522 REIGN OF QUEEAr MARY. [CH. 33.
the magistrates, to have their eyes upon them. On the 24th of May, when her distraction was at its height, she wrote a circular to quicken the over-languid zeal of the bishops.
* Right Reverend Father in God/ it ran, * We greet you well ; and where of late we addressed our letters unto the justices of the peace, within every of the coun- ties within this our realm, whereby, amongst other good instructions given therein for the good order of the country about, they are willed to have special regard to such disordered persons as, forgetting their duty to Almighty God and us, do lean to any erroneous and heretical opinions ; whom, if they cannot, by good ad- monition and fair means, reform, they are willed to de- liver unto the ordinary, to be by him charitably tra- velled withal, and removed, if it may be, from their naughty opinions ; or else, if they continue obstinate, to be ordered according to the laws provided in that behalf: understanding now, to our no little marvel, that divers of the said misordered persons, being, by the justices of the peace, for their contempt and ob- stinacy, brought to the ordinary, to be used as is afore- said, are either refused to be received at their hands, or, if they be received, are neither so travelled with as Christian charity requireth, nor yet proceeded withal according to the order of justice, but are suffered to con- tinue in their errors, to the dishonour of Almighty God, and dangerous example of others ; like as we find this matter very strange, so have we thought convenient both to signify this our knowledge, and therewithal also
THE MARTYRS.
523
to admonish you to have in this behalf such regard henceforth unto the office of a good pastor and bishop, as where any such offenders shall be, by the said just- ices of the peace, brought unto you, ye do use your good wisdom and discretion in procuring to remove them from their errors if it may be, or else in proceed- ing against them, if they continue obstinate, according to the order of the laws, so as, through your good furtherance, both God's glory may be the better ad- vanced, and the commonwealth more quietly governed.' l
Under the fresh impulse of this letter, fifty persons were put to death at the stake in the three ensuing months, — in the diocese of London, under Boiiner ; in the diocese of Rochester, under Maurice Griffin ; in the diocese of Canterbury, where Pole, the Archbishop designate, so soon as Cranmer should be despatched, governed through Harpsfeld, the Archdeacon, and Thornton, the suffragan Bishop of Dover. Of these sacrifices, which were distinguished all of them by a uniformity of quiet heroism in the sufferers, that of Cardmaker, prebendary of Wells, calls most for notice.
The people, whom the cruelty of the Catholic party was re- converting to the Reformation with a rapidity like that produced by the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost, looked on the martyrs as soldiers are looked at who are called to accomplish, with the sacrifice of
1 BURNET'S Collectanea. This | a circular. The Bishop of London letter is addressed to Bonner, and had not deserved to be singled out was taken from Bonner's Register ; j to'be especially admonished for want bu-t, from the form, it was evidently I of energy.
524 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
their lives, some great service for their country. Card- maker, on his first examination, had turned his back and flinched. But the consciousness of shame, and the example of others, gave him back his courage ; he was called up again under the Queen's mandate, con- demned, and brought out on the 3Oth of May, to suffer at Smithfield, with an upholsterer named Warne. The sheriffs produced the pardons. "Warne, without looking at them, undressed at once, and went to the stake; Cardmaker ' remained long talking ; ' ' the people in a marvellous dump of sadness, thinking he would recant/ He turned away at last, and knelt, and prayed ; but he had still his clothes on ; ' there was no semblance of burning ; ' and the crowd continued nervously agitated, till he rose and threw off his cloak. 'Then, seeing this, contrary to their fearful expectations, as men de- livered out of great doubt, they cried out for joy, with so great a shout as hath not been lightly heard a greater, 'God be praised; the Lord strengthen thee, Card- maker; the Lord Jesus receive thy spirit.' n Every martyr's trial was a battle ; every constant death was a defeat of the common enemy ; and the instinctive con- sciousness that truth was asserting itself in suffering, converted the natural emotion of horror into admiring pride.
Yet, for the great purpose of the Court, the burnt- offerings were ineffectual as the prayers of the priests. The Queen was allowed to persuade herself that she had
1 FOXE, vol. vii.
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mistaken her time by two months ; and to this hope she clung herself, so long as the hope could last : but among all other persons concerned, scarcely one was any longer under a delusion ; and the clear-eyed Renard lost no time in laying the position of affairs before his master.
The marriage of Elizabeth and Philibert had hung fire, from the invincible unwillingness on the part of Mary to pardon or in any way recognize her sister ; l and as long as there was a hope of a child, she had not perhaps been pressed about it : but it was now abso- lutely necessary to do something, and violent measures towards the Princess were more impossible than ever.
"The entire future/ wrote Renard to the Emperor, on the 27th of June, ' turns on the accouchement of the Queen ; of which, however, there are no signs. If all goes well, the state of feeling in the country will improve. If she is in error, I foresee convulsions and disturbances such as no pen can de- scribe. The succession to the crown is so unfortun- ately hampered, that it must fall to Elizabeth, and with Elizabeth there will be a religious revolution. The clergy will be put down, the Catholics persecuted, and there will be such revenge for the present proceedings as the world has never seen. I know not whether the King's person is safe ; and the scandals and calumnies which the heretics are spreading about the Queen are
June.
1 A letter of Mary's to Philip on the subject will be given in the fol- lowing chapter, which reveals the
disagreement which had arisen be- tween them about this marriage.
526
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
33.
beyond conception. Some say that she has never been enceinte; some repeat that there will be a supposititious child, and that there would have been less delay could a child have been found that would answer the purpose.1 The looks of men are grown strange and impenetrable ; those in whose loyalty I had most dependence I have now most reason to doubt. Nothing is certain, and I am more bewildered than ever at the things which I see going on around me. There is neither government, nor justice, nor order; nothing but audacity and malice.' 2
The faint hopes which Renard expressed speedily vanished, and every one but the Queen herself not only knew that she had no child at present, but that she never could have a child — that her days were numbered, arid that if the Spaniards intended to secure the throne they must obtain it by other means than the order of in- heritance. Could the war be brought to an end, Mary might live long enough to give her husband an oppor- tunity of attempting violence ; but of peace there was no immediate prospect, and it remained for the present
1 The impression was very gen- erally spread. Noailles mentions it, writing on the 2oth of June to the King of France ; and Foxe men- tions a mysterious attempt of Lord North to obtain a new-born child from its mother, as having happened within his own knowledge. The existence of the belief, however, proves nothing. At such a time it was inevitable, nor was there any
good evidence to connect Lord North, supposing Foxe's story true, with the Court. The risk of dis- covery would have been great, the consequences terrible, and few peo- ple have been more incapable than Mary of knowingly doing a wrong thing.
2 Renard to the Emperor, June 27 : Granvelle Papers, vol. vi.
1555 1 THE MARTYRS. 527
to make the most of Elizabeth. Setting her marriage aside, it was doubtful whether the people would permit her longer confinement after the Queen's disappoint- ment ; and, willingly or unwillingly, Mary must be forced to receive her at Court again.
The Princess was still at Woodstock, where she had remained for a year, under the harsh surveillance of Sir Henry Bedingfield. Lord William Howard's visit may have consoled her with the knowledge that she was not forgotten by the nobility ; but her health had suffered from her long imprisonment, and the first symptom of an approaching change in her position was the appearance of the Queen's physician to take charge of her.
A last effort was made to betray her into an acknow- ledgment of guilt. ' A secret friend ' entreated her to ' submit herself to the Queen's mercy/ Elizabeth saw the snare. She would not ask for mercy, she said, where she had committed no offence ; if she was guilty, she desired justice, not mercy ; and she knew well she would have found none, could evidence have been produced against her : but she thanked God she was in no danger of being proved guilty ; she wished she was as safe from secret enemies.
But the plots for despatching her, if they had ever existed, were laid aside ; she was informed that her pre- sence was required at Hampton Court. The rumour of her intended release spread abroad, and sixty gentlemen, who had once belonged to her suite, met her on the way at Colebrook, in the hope that they
528
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
33.
might return to attendance upon her : but their coming was premature ; she was still treated as a prisoner, and they were ordered off in the Queen's name.
On her arrival at Hampton Court, however, the Princess felt that she had recovered her freedom. She was received by Lord William Howard. The courtiers hurried to her with their congratulations, and Howard dared and provoked the resentment of the King and Queen by making them kneel and kiss her hand.1 Mary could not bring herself at first to endure an interview. The Bishop of Winchester came to her on the Queen's behalf, to repeat the advice which had been given to her at Woodstock, and to promise pardon if she would ask for it.
Elizabeth had been resolute when she was alone and friendless, she was not more yielding now. She re- peated that she had committed no offence, and therefore required no forgiveness ; she had rather lie in prison all her life, than confess when there was nothing to be confessed.
The answer was carried to Mary, and the day after the Bishop came again. 'The Queen marvelled/ he said, ' that she would so stoutly stand to her innocence ; ' if she called herself innocent, she implied that she had
1 Joanna of Castille, the Em- peror's mad mother, dying soon after, masses were said for her with some solemnity at St Paul's. ' Aux obs&ques que la royne commanda estre faictes a Londres, 1' admiral d'Angleterre demontra ouvertement aroir quelque ressentment. do ce
qu'il disoit le roy ne luy faisoit si bonne chiere et demonstration si favorable qu'il avoit accoustume, disant qu'il sc, avoit bien pourquoy s'estoit, inferant que ce fust pour ce qu'il avoit faict baiser les mains de Elizabetz aux gentilhommes qui 1'avoient visitez.'
I555-J THE MARTYRS. 529
been ' unj ustly imprisoned ; ' if she expected her liberty 1 she must tell another tale/
But the causes which had compelled the Court to send for her, forbade them equally to persist in an im- potent persecution. They had desired only to tempt her into admissions which they could plead in justifica- tion for past or future severities. They had failed, and they gave way.
A week later, on an evening in the beginning of July, Lady Clarence, Mary's favourite attendant, brought a message, that the Queen was expecting her sister in her room. The Princess was led across the garden in the dusk, and introduced by a back staircase into the royal apartments. Almost two years had elapsed since the sisters had last met, when Mary hid the hatred which was in her heart behind a veil of kind- ness. There was no improvement of feeling, but the necessity of circumstances compelled the form of recon- ciliation.
Elizabeth dropped on her knees. ' God preserve your Majesty/ she said ; ' you will find me as true a subject to your Majesty as any ; whatever has been reported of me, you shall not find it otherwise.'
' You will not confess/ the Queen said ; ' you stand to your truth : I pray God it may so fall out/
* If it does not/ said Elizabeth, ' I desire neither favour nor pardon at your hands.'
' Well/ Mary bitterly answered, ' you persevere in your truth stiffly ; belike you will not confess that you have been wrongly punished ? '
VOL. V. 34
J30 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
* I must not say so, your Majesty/ Elizabeth replied.
' Belike you will to others ? ' said the Queen.
1 No, please your Majesty/ answered the Princess. ' I have borne the burden, and I must bear it. I pray your Majesty to have a good opinion of me, and to think me your true subject, not only from the beginning but while life lasteth/
The Queen did not answer, she muttered only in Spanish, ' Sabe Dios/ ' God knows/ and Elizabeth withdrew.1
It was said that, during the interview, Philip was concealed behind a curtain, anxious for a sight of the captive damsel whose favour with the people was such a perplexity to him.
At this time Elizabeth was beautiful ; her haughty features were softened by misfortune ; and as it is cer- tain that Philip, when he left England, gave special directions for her good treatment, so it is possible that he may have envied the fortune which he intended for the Prince of Savoy ; and the scheme which he after- wards attempted to execute, of making her his own wife on the Queen's death, may have then suggested itself to him as a solution of the English difficulty. The magnificent girl, who was already the idol of the country, must have presented an emphatic contrast with the lean, childless, haggard, forlorn Mary ; and he may easily have allowed his fancy to play with a pleasant temptation. If it was so, Philip was far too careless of
FOXE; HOLINSHED.
'555'
THE MARTYRS.
53*
the Queen's feelings to conceal his own. If it was not so, the Queen's haunting consciousness of her unattrac- tiveness must have been aggravated by the disappoint- ment of her hopes, and she may have tortured herself with jealousy and suspicion.
At all events, Mary could not overcome her aversion. Elizabeth was set at liberty, but she was not allowed to remain at the Court. She returned to Ashridge, to be pursued even there with petty annoyances.. Her first step when she was again at home was to send for her friend Mrs Ashley ; the Queen instantly committed Mrs Ashley to the Fleet, and sent three other officers of her sister's household to the Tower ; while a number of gentlemen suspected of being her adherents, who had remained in London beyond their usual time of leaving for the country, were ordered imperiously to their estates.1
But neither impatience nor violence could conceal the fatal change which had passed over Mary's pro- spects. Not till the end of July could she part finally from her hopes. Then, at last, the glittering dream
1 Le diet conseil voyant que plu- sieurs gentilhommes s'assembloient a Londres, et commimicquoient par ensemble, qu'ils se tenoient a Lon- dres, centre ce qu'est accoustume en Angleterre, qu'est que ceulx qu'ilz eu moien ne demeurent a Londres en 1'este, ains au pays, pour la chaleur et maladies ordinaires qu'ilz y reig- nent, et que toutes les diets gentil- hommes sont heretiqties, ains este
pour le plus part rebelles, les autres parens et adherens de Elizabeth, leur a faict faire commandement de se retirer chascun en sa maison et se separer ; qu'ilz ont prins mal et en ont fait grandes doleances, en pre- tendant qu'ilz estoient gens de bien, qu'ilz n' estoient traistres. — Renavd to the Emperor : Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.
532 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
was lost for the waking truth ; then at once from the imagination of herself as the virgin bride who was to bear a child for the recovery of a lost world, she was precipitated into the poor certainty that she was a blighted and a dying woman. Sorrow was heaped on sorrow ; Philip would stay with her no longer. His presence was required on the Continent, where his father was about to anticipate the death which he knew to be near; and, after forty years of battling with the stormy waters, to collect himself for the last great change in the calm of a monastery in Spain.
It was no new intention. For years the Emperor had been in the habit of snatching intervals of retreat ; for years he had made up his mind to relinquish at some time the labours of life before relinquishing life itself. The vanities of sovereignty had never any particular charm for Charles V. ; he was not a man who cared 1 to monarchize and kill with looks/ or who could feel a pang at parting with the bauble of a crown ; and when the wise world cried out in their surprise, and strained their fancies for the cause of conduct which seemed so strange to them, they forgot that princes who reign to labour, grow weary like the peasant of the burden of daily toil.
Many influences combined to induce Charles to delay no longer in putting his resolution in effect.
The Cortes were growing impatient at the prolonged absence both of himself and Philip, and the presence of the Emperor, although in' retirement, would give pleasure to the Spanish people. His health was so
I555-]
THE MARTYRS.
533
August.
shattered, that each winter had been long expected to be his last ; and although he would not flinch from work as long as he was required at his post, there was nothing to detain Philip any more in England, unless, or until, -the succession could be placed on another footing. To continue there the husband of a childless Queen, with authority limited to a form, and with no recognized interest beyond the term of his wife's life, was no becoming position for the heir of the throne of Spain, of Naples, the Indies, and the Low Countries.
Philip was therefore now going. He con- cealed his intention till it was betrayed by the departure of one Spanish nobleman after another. The Queen became nervous and agitated, and at last he was forced to avow part of the truth. He told her that his father wanted to see him, but that his absence would not be extended beyond a fortnight or three weeks ; ahe should go with him to Dover, and, if she desired, she could wait there for his return.1 Her consent was ob- tained by the mild deceit, and it was considered after- wards that the journey to Dover might be too much for her, and the parting might take place at Greenwich.
On the 3rd of August, the King and Queen removed for a few days from Hampton Court to Oatlands ; on the way Mary received consolation from a poor man who met her on crutches, and was cured of his lameness by looking on her.2
On the 26th, the royal party came down the river
1 NOAILl.KS, Vol. V. pp. 77 — 82.
MACHYN'S Diary
534
RETGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 33
in their barge, attended by the legate ; they dined at Westminster on their way to Greenwich, and as rumour had said that Mary was dead, she was carried through the city in an open litter, with the King and the Car- dinal at her side. To please Philip, or to please the people, Elizabeth was invited to the Court before the King's departure ; but she was sent by water to prevent a demonstration, while the archers of the guard who at- tended on the Queen, were in corslet and morion.1
On the 28th, Philip went. Parliament was to sit again in October. It would then be seen whether any- thing more could be done about the succession. On the consent or refusal of the legislature his future mea- sures would depend. To the Queen he left particular instructions, which he afterwards repeated in writing, to show favour to Elizabeth ; and doubting how far he could rely upon Mary, he gave a similar charge to such of his own suite as he left behind him.2 Could he obtain it, he would take the Princess's crown for himself; should he fail, he might marry her ; or should this too be impossible, he would win her gratitude, and support her title against the dangerous competition of the Queen of Scots and Dauphiness of France.
On these terms the pair who had been brought together with so much difficulty se- parated after a little more than a year. The Cardinal
September.
1 NOAILLES, vol. v. pp. 98, 99, 123.
2 Elle a bonne part en la grace dudict Seigneur Roy, lequel par plusieurs lettres qu'il escript a la
royne sa fern me la luy recommende, comme aussy il a faict particuliere- ment et par soubz main aux prinoi- paux seigneurs Espaignolz qui sont demourez en ce lieu. — Ibid. p. 127.
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THE MARTYRS.
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composed a passionate prayer for the Queen's use during her husband's absence.1 It is to be hoped that she was spared the sight of a packet of letters soon after inter- cepted by the French, in which her "husband and her husband's countrymen expressed their opinions of the marriage and its consequences.2 The truth, however,
1 Domine Jesu Christe, qui es verus sponsus animse meae, verus Rex ac Dominus meus qui me ad Regni hujus gubernacula singulari tua providentia ac benignitate voca- tam, cum antea essem derelicta et tanquam mulier ab adolescentia ab- jecta, cum virum in matrimonium et regni societatem expetere voluisti, qui plus cceteris imaginem tuam quam in sanctitate et justitia mundo ostendisti in suis meisque actionibus dirigendis exprimeret, et expetitum dedisti, cujus nunc discessum moerens defleo— quseso per ilium pretiosissi- mum sanguinem quern pro. me sponsa tua proque illo et omnibus in ar& crucis effudisti, ut hunc meum dolo- rem ita lenias, ita purges, ita tem- peres, ut quoties ille sanctis suis consiliis mihi adest, quoties per lit- ter-as quse ad salutem hujus populi tui pertinent commendat, toties ilium preesentem esse, teque unicum con- solatorem in medio nostro adesse sentiam, utque in illo te semper amem atque glorificem. Obsecro, Domine, ut in nobis tua imago sic indies per tuam gratiam renovetur in conspectu populi tui, quern nobis gubernandum commisisti, ut cum is justitiaj tua3 severitatem, in iis quse amiserat dum hi regnarent qui a
recta fide declinantes sanctitatem et justitiam expulerunt, jam pridem senserit, qua) nunc per tuam miseri- cordiam recuperaverit sub illorum Regno quos nunquam a recta fide declinare es passus, cum gratiarum actione Ia3tus intelligat ut uno ore tarn nos quam populus noster Deum patrem per te ejus unicum filium in unitate Spiritus glorificemus, ad nostram ipsorum et piorum omnium salutem et consolationem. Amen. — Epist. REG. POL. vol. v.
2 11 me fauldroit faire ung mer- veilleux discours pour vous rendre compte de tous les propoz qui font dans les dictes lettres. Je vous diray seulment ce qui plus tousche et regarde le lieu ou vous estes. Et premierement la royne a tant en- chante et ensorcele ce beau jeune prince son mary que de luy avoir faict croyre ung an entier qu'elle estoit grosse pour le retenir pres d'elle, dont il se trouve a present si confus et fasche qu'il nja plus de- libere de retourner habiter ceste terre, promettant a tous ses servi- teurs que s'il peult estre une fois en Espaigne qu'il n'en sortira plus a si maulvaise occasion, &c. . . . — Le Protonotaire de Noailles a M. de Noailles; Ambassades, vol. v. p. 136.
536
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 33.
became known in England, although in a form under which the Queen could turn from it as a calumny.
Before the meeting of Parliament, a letter was pub- lished, addressed to the Lords of the Council, by a cer- tain John Bradford.1 The writer accounted for his knowledge of the secrets which he had to tell, by saying that he had lived in the household of one of the Spanish noblemen who were in attendance on Philip ; that he had learnt the language unknown to his master, and had thus overheard unguarded conversations. He had read letters addressed to Philip, and letters written by him and by his confidential friends ; and he was able to say, as a thing heard with his own ears, and seen with his own eyes, that the ' Spaniards minded nothing less than the subversion of the English commonwealth.' In fact, he repeated the rumours of the summer, only more cir- cumstantially, and with fuller details. Under pretence of improving the fortifications, Philip intended to ob- tain command of the principal harbours and ports ; he would lay cannon on the land side, and gradually bring in Spanish troops, the Queen playing into his hands ; and as soon as peace could be made with France, he would have the command of the fleet and the sea, and could do what he pleased.2
1 Not the martyr ; he had been despatched by Bonncr among the victims of the summer ; but a per- son otherwise unknown.
2 ' Ye will say, How could this fellow know their counsel ? — I was chamberlain to one of the privy
council, and with all diligence gave myself to write and read Spanish, which thing once obtained I kept secret from my master and my fel- low-servants, because I might be trusted in my master's closet or study, where I might read such.
I555-]
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' I saw/ the writer continued, * letters sent from the Emperor, wherein was contained these privities, — that the King should make his excuse to the Queen that he would go to see his father in Flanders, and that imme- diately he would return — seeing the good simple Queen is so jealous over my son. (I term it/ said Bradford, ' as the letter doth.) ( We/ said the Emperor, ' shall make her agree unto all our requests before his return, or else keep him exercised in our affairs till we may prevail with the council, who, doubtless, will be won with fair promises and great gifts, politicly placed in time/ In other letters I have read the cause disputed, that the Queen is bound by the laws of God to endue her husband in all her goods and possessions, so far as in her lieth ; and they think she will do it indeed to the uttermost of her power. No man can think evil of the Queen, though she be somewhat moved when such things are beaten into her head with gentlemen ; but whether the crown belongs to the Queen or the realm, the Spaniards know not, nor care not, though the Queen, to her damnation, disherit the right heir- apparent, or break her father's entail, made by the whole consent of the realm, which neither she nor the realm can justly alter.' l
writing as I saw daily brought into the council chamber.' — John Brad- ford to the Lords of the Council : STRYPE'S Memorials of the Reform- ation.
1 Elizabeth, when she came to the throne, refused to admit that
she was under any real obligation to Philip. She was entirely right in her refusal. The Spaniards had sworn, if possible, to make away ' with all those which by any means might lay claim to the crown.'
' I call God to record,' Bradford
538
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 33.
Struggle as the Queen might against such a repre- sentation of her husband's feelings towards her, it was
continues, 'I have heard it with j mine ears, and seen the said persons with mine eyes, that have said, if ever the King obtain the crown, he would make the Lady Elizabeth safe from ever coming to the same, or any of our cursed nation. For they say, that if they can find the means to keep England in subjection, they would do more with the land than with all the rest of his kingdoms. I speak not of any fool's communica- tion, ljut of the wisest, and that no mean persons. Yea, and they trust that there shall means be found be- fore that time to despatch the Lady Elizabeth well enough by the help of assured traitors, as they have al- ready in England plenty, and then they may the more easier destroy the others when she is rid out of the way.
' I speak not this, as some men would take it, to move dissension ; for that were the best way for the Spaniards to come to their prey. Such a time they look for, and such a time they say some nobleman hath promised to provide for them.
' God is my witness that my heart will not suffer me for very shame to» declare such vile reports as I have heard them speak against the Queen, and yet her Grace taketh them for her faithful friends. The Spaniards say, that if they obtain not the crown, they may curse the time that ever the King was married to a wife
so unmeet for him by natural course of years; but and if that may be brought to pass that was meant in marriage-making, they shall keep old rich robes for high festival days. 'Alas, for pity! Ye be yet in such good estate that ye may, with- out loss of any man's life, keep the crown and realm quietly. If ye will hear a fool's counsel, keep still the crown to the right succession in your hands, and give it to no foreign princes. Peradventure her Grace thinketh the King will keep her the more company and love her the bet- ter, if she give him the crown. Ye will crown him to make him chaste contrary to his nature. They have a saying — ' The baker's daughter is better in her goAvn than Queen Mary Avithout the crown.' They say, ' Old wives must be cherished for their young fair gifts.' 'Old wives,' they say, ' for fair words will give all that they have.' But how be they used afterwards ? Doth the Queen think the King will remain in England with giving him the realm? The council of Spain purposeth to establish other matters ; to appoint in England a viceroy with a great army of Spanish soldiers, and let the Queen live at her beads like a good anticnt lady.' — John Bradford to the Earls of Arundel, Shrewsbury, Derby, and Pembroke : STRYPE'S Memo- rials, vol. vi. p. 340, &c,
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true that he had left her with a promise to return ; and the weeks went, and he did not come, and no longer spoke of coming. The abdication of the Emperor would keep him from her, at least, till the end of the winter. And news came soon which was harder still to Lear ; news, that he, whom she had been taught to re- gard as made in the image of our Saviour,1 was unfaith- ful to his marriage vows.2 Bradford had spoken gener- ally of the King's vulgar amours;3 other accounts convinced her too surely that he was consoling himself for his long purgatory in England, by miscellaneous licentiousness. Philip was gross alike in all his appe- tites ; bacon fat was the favourite food with which he gorged himself to illness ; 4 his intrigues were on the same level of indelicacy, and his unhappy wife was forced to know that he preferred the society of aban- doned women of the lowest class to hers.
The French ambassador describes her as distracted with wretchedness, speaking to no one except the legate. The legate was her only com- fort ; the legate and the thing which she called religion.
Deep in the hearts of both Queen and Cardinal lay the conviction that if she would please God, she must avoid the sin of Saul. Saul had spared the Amalekites, and God had turned his face from him. God had greater enemies in England than the Amalekites. Historians have affected to exonerate Pole from the
October.
1 Prayer written by Cardinal Pole for Queen Mary : supra.
2 Noailles to tbe King of France, October 21 : Ambassades, vol. v.
3 Probably all malicious lies. — J. A. F.
4 Noailles to Montmorency, December 5 : Ibid.
540 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
crime of the Marian persecution ; although, without the legate's sanction, not a bishop in England could have raised a finger, not a bishop's court could have been opened to try a single heretic. If not with Pole, with whom did the guilt rest ? Gardiner was jointly responsible for the commencement, but after the first executions, Gardiner interfered no further ; he died, and the bloody scenes continued. Philip's confessor pro- tested ; Philip himself left the country ; Reriard and Charles were never weary of advising moderation, ex- cept towards those who were politically dangerous. Bonner was an instrument whose zeal more than once required the goad ; and Mary herself, when she came to the throne, was so little cruel, that she would have spared even Northumberland himself. When the per- secution assumed its ferocious aspect, she was exclus- ively under the direction of the dreamer who believed that he was born for England's regeneration. All evi- dence concurs to show that, after Philip's departure, Cardinal Pole was the single adviser on whom Mary relied. Is it to be supposed that, in the horrible cru- sade which thenceforward was the business of her life, the Papal legate, the sovereign director of the ecclesias- tical administration of the realm, was not consulted, or, if consulted, that he refused his sanction ? But it is not a question of conjecture or probability. From the legate came the first edict for the episcopal inquisition ; under the legate every bishop held his judicial commis- sion ; while, if Smithfield is excepted, the most frightful scenes in the entire frightful period were witnessed
I555-] THE MARTYRS. 541
under the shadow of his own metropolitan cathedral. His apologists have thrown the blame on his arch- deacon and his suffragan : the guilt is not with the instrument, but with the hand which holds it. An admiring biographer1 has asserted that the cruelties at Canterbury preceded the Cardinal's consecration as archbishop, and the biographer has been copied by Dr Lingard. The historian and his authority have ex- ceeded the limits of permitted theological misrepresent- ation. The administration of the See belonged to Pole as much before his consecration as after it ; but it will be seen that eighteen men and women perished at the stake in the town of Canterbury alone, — besides those who were put to death in other parts of the diocese — and five were starved to death in the gaol there — after the legate's installation. He was not cruel ; but he believed that, in the catalogue of human iniquities, there were none greater than the denial of the Roman Catholic Faith, or the rejection of the Roman Bishop's supremacy ; and that he himself was chosen by Provid- ence for the re- establishment of both. Mary was driven to madness by the disappointment of the grotesque imaginations with which he had inflated her ; and where two such persons were invested by the circum- stances of the time with irresponsible power, there is no occasion to look further for the explanation of the dread- ful events of the three ensuing years.
The victims of the summer were chiefly undistin-
1 PHILLIPS.
542 REIGN OF QUEEN MAkY. [CH. 33-
guished persons : Cardmaker and Bradford alone were in any way celebrated : and the greater prisoners, the three bishops at Oxford, the Court had paused upon — not from mercy — their deaths had been long determined on ; but Philip, perhaps, was tender of his person ; their execution might occasion disturbances ; and he and his suite might be the first objects on which the popular indignation might expend itself. Philip, how- ever, had placed the sea between himself and danger, and if this was the cause of the hesitation, the work could now go forward.
A commission was appointed by Pole in September, consisting of Brookes, Bishop of Gloucester ; Holyman, Bishop of Bristol ; and White, Bishop of Lincoln ; to try Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, for obstinate heresy. The first trial had been irregular ; the country was then unreconciled. The sentence which had been passed therefore was treated as non-existent, and the tedious forms of the Papacy continued still to throw a shield round the Archbishop.
On Saturday, the yth September,1 the commissioners took their places under the altar of St Mary's Church, at Oxford. The Bishop of Gloucester sat as president, Doctors Story and Martin appeared as proctors for the Queen, and Cranmer was brought in under the custody of the city guard, in a black gown and leaning on a stick.
' Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury/ cried an officer
1 FOXE says the I2th; but this is wrong. — See Cranmer's letter to the Q,ueeii ; JENKINS, vol. i. p. 369.
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THE MARTYRS.
$41
of the court, * appear here, and make answer to that which shall be laid to thy charge ; that is to say, for blasphemy, incontinency, and heresy ; make answer to the Bishop of Gloucester, representing his Holiness the Pope/
The Archbishop approached the bar, bent his head and uncovered to Story and Martin, who were present in behalf of the Crown, then drew himself up, put on his cap again, and stood fronting Brookes. ' My Lord/ he said, ' I mean no contempt to your person, which I could have honoured as well as any of the others ; but I have sworn never to admit the authority of the Bishop of Rome in England, and I must keep my oath/
The president remonstrated, but without effect, and then proceeded to address the Archbishop, who remained covered : 1 —
'My Lord, we are come hither at this present to you, not intruding ourselves by our own authority, but sent by commission, as you know, by the Pope's Holi- ness partly ; partly from the King's and Queen's most excellent Majesties ; not utterly to your discomfort, but rather to your comfort if you will yourself. For we are come not to judge you immediately, but to put you in remembrance of that which you have been partly judged of before, and shall be thoroughly judged of ere long.
' Neither our coming or commission is to dispute
1 Exhortation of the Bishop of Gloucester to Thomas Cranmer: Cotton MSS., Vespasian, A. 25. A copy, more rounded and finished, is
given by FOXE, in his account of Craniner's trial : but the latter has the appearance of having been touch- ed up afterwards.
544 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
with, you, but to examine you in matters which you have already disputed in, taught, and written ; and of your resolute answers in those points and others, to make re- lation to them that shall give sentence on you. If you, of your part, be moved to come to a uniformity, then shall not only we take joy of our examination, but also they that have sent us. Remember yourself then, imde excidcris, from whence you have fallen. You have fallen from the unity of your mother, the Holy Catholic Church, and that by open schism. You have fallen from the true and received faith of the same Catholic Church, and that by open heresy. You have fallen from your fidelity and promise towards God, in breaking your orders and vow of chastity, and that by open apostasy. You have fallen from your fidelity and promise towards God's Vicar- general, the Pope, in breaking your oath made to his Holiness at your consecration, and that by open perjury. You have fallen from your fidelity and allegiance towards God's magistrate, your Prince and sovereign lady the Queen, and that by open treason, whereof you are already attainted and convicted. Re- member, unde excideris, from whence you have fallen, and in what danger you have fallen.
' You were sometime, as I and other poor men, in mean estate. God hath called you from better to better, from higher to higher, and never gave you over till he made you, legatum natum, Metropolitan Archbishop, Primate of England. Who was more earnest then in defence of the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the sacrament of the altar than ye were ? Then was
1 5 55-] THE MARTYRS. 545
your candle shining to be a light to all the world, set on high on a pinnacle. But after you began to fall from the unity of the Catholic Church by open schism, and would no longer acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope's Holiness by God's word and ordinance; — and that by occasion, that you, in whose hands then rested the sum of all, being Primate, as was aforesaid, would not, according to your high vocation, stoutly withstand the most ungodly and unlawful request of your prince touching his divorce, as that blessed martyr, St Thomas of Canterbury, sometime your predecessor, did withstand the unlawful requests of the prince of his time, but would still not only yield and bear with things not to be borne withal, but also set a-flame the fire already kindled — then your perfections diminished ; then began you, for your own part, to fancy unlawful liberty. Then decayed your conscience of your former faith, your former promise, the vow of chastity and discipline after the order of priesthood ; and when good conscience was once cast off, then followed after, as St Paul noteth, a shipwreck in the faith. Then fell you from the faith, and out of the Catholic Church, as out of a sure ship, into a sea of dangerous desperation ; for out of the Church, to say with St Cyprian, there is no hope of sal- vation at all. To be brief; when you had forsaken God, his Spouse, his faith, and fidelity to them both, then God forsook you ; and as the Apostle write th of the ingrate philosophers, delivered you up in reprolrmn sensum, and suffered you to fall from one inconvenience to another, as from perjury into schism, from schism VOL. v. 35
$46 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
into a kind of apostasy, from apostasy into heresy, from heresy into traitory, and so, in conclusion, from traitory into the highest displeasure and worthiest indignation of your most benign and gracious Queen.'1
When the Bishop ceased, the Crown proctors rose, and demanded justice against the prisoner in the names of the King and Queen.
' My Lord/ Cranmer replied, ' I do not acknowledge this session of yours, nor yet yourself my mislawful judge ; neither would I have appeared this day before you, but that I was brought hither; and therefore here I openly renounce you as my judge, protesting that my meaning is1 not to make any answer as in a lawful judg- ment, for then I would be silent ; but only for that I am "bound in conscience to answer every man of that hope which I have in Jesus Christ/
He then knelt, and turning towards the west with his back to the court and the altar, he said the Lord's Prayer. After which, he rose, repeated the Creed, and said, —
' This I do profess as touching my faith, and make my protestation, which I desire you to note ; I will never consent that the Bishop of Rome shall have any juri*- diction in this realm/
'Mark, Master Cranmer/ interrupted Martin, 'you refuse and deny hrm by whose laws you do remain in life, being otherwise attainted of high treason, and but a dead man by the laws of the realm.'
1 The address concluded with a prolix exhortation to repentance,
which I omit. It may be read in a form sufficiently accurate in FOXK.
15 55-1 THE MARTYRS. 547
'I protest before God I was no traitor/ said the Archbishop. ' I will never consent to the Bishop of Rome, for then I should give myself to the devil. I have made an oath to the King, and I must obey the King by God's law. By the Scripture, the King is chief, and no foreign person in his own realm above him. The Pope is contrary to the Crown. I cannot obey both, for no man can serve two masters at once. You attribute the keys to the Pope and the sword to the King. I say the King hath both.'
Continuing the same argument, the Archbishop entered at length into the condition of the law and the history of the Statutes of Provisors and Premunire : he showed that the constitution of the country was emphatically independent, and he maintained that no English subject could swear obedience to a foreign power without being involved in perjury.
The objection was set aside, and the subject of oaths Was an opportunity for a taunt, which the Queen's proctors did not overlook. Cranmer had unwillingly accepted the archbishopric when the Act of Appeals was pending, and when the future relations of England with the See of Rome, and the degree of authority which (if any) the Pope was to retain, were uncertain. In taking the usual oaths, therefore, by the advice of lawyers, he made an especial and avowed reservation of his duty to the Crown;1 and this so-called perjury Martin now flung in his teeth.
1 Although, the circumstances of I declaration of this kind on the part the time called properly for an open I of Cranmer, yet every one of his pre*
543
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
. 33.
• It pleased the King's Highness/ Cranmer replied, ' many and sundry times to talk with me of the matter. I declared, that, if I accepted the office of archbishop, I muse receive it at the Pope's hands, which I neither would nor could do, for his Highness was the only supreme governor of this Church in England. Per- ceiving that I could not be brought to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop of Rome, the King called Doctor Oliver, and other civil lawyers, and devised with them how he might bestow it on me, enforcing me nothing against my conscience, who informed him I might do it by way of protestation. I said, I did not acknowledge the Bishop of E/ome's authority further than as it agreed with the word of God, and that it might be lawful for me at all times to speak against him ; and my protest- ation did I cause to be enrolled, and there I think it remaineth.'
' Let your protestation, with the rest of your talk, give judgment against you/ answered Martin. ' Nine prima mail labes : of that your execrable perjury, and
from the time of Edward I., must have been inducted with a tacit understanding of the same kind. If a bishop had been prosecuted un- der the Statutes of Provisors, his oath to the Papacy would have been no more admitted as an excuse by the Plantagenet sovereigns, than the oath of a college Fellow to obey the statutes of the founder would have saved him from penalties under the House of Hanover had he said mass
in his college chapel. Because Cranmer, foreseeing an immediate collision between two powers, which each asserted claims upon him, ex- pressed in words a qualification which was implied in the nature of the case — it was, and is (I regret to be obliged to speak in the present tense), but a shallow sarcasm to taunt him with premeditated per- jury.
1555 ] THE MARTYRS. 549
the King's coloured and too shamefully suffered adultery, came heresy and all mischief into the realm/
The special charges were then proceeded with.
In reply to a series of questions, the Archbishop said, that he had been twice married — once before, and once after he was in orders. In the time of Henry he had kept his wife secretly, ( affirming that it was better for him to have his own wife, than to do like other priests, having the wives of others ; ' and he was not ashamed of what he had done.
He admitted his writings upon the Eucharist ; he avowed the authorship of the Catechism, of the Articles, and of a book against the Bishop of Winchester ; and these books, and his conduct generally as Archbishop of Canterbury, he maintained and defended. His replies were entered by a notary, to be transmitted to the Pope, and for the present the business of the court with him was over.
'Who can stay him that willingly runneth into perdition?' said Brookes. ' Who can save that will be lost ? God would have you to be saved, and you refuse it.'
The Archbishop was cited to appear at Home within eighty days to answer to the charges which would there be laid against him ; and in order that he might be able to obey the summons he was returned to his cell in Bocardo prison, and kept there in strict con- finement.
Ridley and Latimer came next, and over them the Papal mantle flung no protection.
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 33,
They liad been prisoners now for more than two /ears. What Latimer' s occupation had been for all that time, little remains to show, except three letters : — - one, of but a few lines, was to a Mrs Wilkinson, thanking her for some act of kindness : * another, was a general exhortation to ( all unfeigned lovers of God's truth/ to be constant in their faith : the third, and most noteworthy, was to some one who had an oppor- tunity of escaping from arrest, and probable martyr- dom, by a payment of money, and who doubted whether he might lawfully avail himself of the chance: there was no question of recantation ; a corrupt official was ready to accept a bribe and ask no questions.
Latimer had not been one of those fanatics who thought it a merit to go in the way of danger and court persecution ; but in this present case he shared the misgiving of his correspondent, and did ' highly allow his judgment in that he thought it not lawful to redeem himself from the crown, unless he would exchange glory for shame, and his inheritance for a mess of pottage,'
'We were created/ Latimer said, 'to set forth God's glory all the days of our life, which we, as unthankful sinners, have forgotten to do, as we ought, all our days hitherto ; and now God, by affliction, doth offer us
1 If the gift of a pot of cold water shall not be in oblivion with God, how can God forget your mani- fold and bountiful gifts, Avhen He shall say unto you, ' I was in prison, and you visited me.' God grant us
all to do and suffer while we be here as may be to His will and pleasure, — Latimer to Mrs Wilkinson, from Bocardo: LATIMER'S Remains, p. 444-
1555-1 THE MARTYRS. 551
good occasion to perform one day of our life, our duty. If any man perceive his faith, not to abide the fire, let such an one with weeping buy his liberty until he hath obtained more strength, lest the gospel suffer by him some shameful recantation. Let the dead bury the dead. Do you embrace Christ's cross, and Christ shall embrace you. The peace of God be with you for ever.' *
Ridley's pen had been more busy : he had written a, lamentation over the state of England ; he had written a farewell letter, taking leave of his friends, and taking leave of life, which, clouded as it was, his sunny nature made it hard to part from ; he had written comfort to the afflicted for the gospel, and he had addressed a passionate appeal to the Temporal Lords to save England from the false shepherds who were wast- ing the flock of Christ. But both he and Latjmer had looked death steadily in the face for two years, expect- ing it every day or hour. It was now come.
On the 3Oth of September, the three Bishops took their seats in the Divinity school. Ridley was led in for trial, and the legate's commission was read, empowering them to try him for the opinions which he had expressed in the disputation at Oxford the year before, and ' else- where in the time of perdition.' They wore to de- grade him from the priesthood if he persisted in his heresies, and deliver him over to the secular arm.
On being first brought before the court, Ridley stood bareheaded. At the names of
LATIMEU'S Ramim, p. 429.
552 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
the Cardinal and the Pope, lie put on his cap, like Cranmer, declining to acknowledge their authority. But his scruples were treated less respectfully than the Archbishop's. He was ordered to take it off, and when he refused, it was removed by a beadle.
He was then charged with having denied transub- stantiation, and the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass, and was urged at length to recant. His opinions on the real presence were peculiar. Christ, he said, was not the sacrament, but was really and truly in the sacrament, as the Holy Ghost was with the water at baptism and yet was not the water. The subtlety of the position was perplexing, but the knot was cut by the crucial question, whether, after the con- secration of the elements, the substance of bread and wine remained. He was allowed the night to consider his answer, but he left no doubt what that answer would be. " The bishops told him that they were not come to condemn him, their province was to condemn no one, but only to cut off the heretic from the Church, for the temporal judge to deal with as he should think fit. The cowardly sophism had been heard too often. Ridley thanked the court ' for their gentleness/ ' being the same which Christ had of the high priest : ' ' the high priest said it was not lawful for him to put any man to death, but committed Christ to Pilate ; neither would suffer him to absolve Christ, though he sought all the means therefor that he might/
Ridley withdrew, and Latimer was then introduced — eighty years old now — dressed in a threadbare
I555-] THE MARTYRS. 553
gown of Bristol frieze, a handkerchief on his head with a night- cap over it, and over that again another cap, with two broad flaps buttoned under the chin. A leather belt w^as round his waist, to which a Testament was attached ; his spectacles, without a case, hung from his neck. So stood the greatest man perhaps then living in the world, a prisoner on his trial, waiting to be condemned to death by men professing to be the min- isters of God. As it was in the days of the prophets, so it was in the Son of man's days; as it was in the days of the Son of man, so was it in the Reformers' days ; as it was in ihe days of the Reformers, so will it be to the end, so long and so far as a class of men are per- mitted to hold power, who call themselves the commis- sioned and authoritative teachers of truth. Latimer's trial was the counterpart of Ridley's : the charge was the same, and the result was the same, except that the stronger intellect vexed itself less with nice distinc- tions. Bread was bread, said Latimer, and wine was wine ; there was a change in the sacrament, it was true, but the change was not in the nature, but the dignity. He too was reprieved for the day. The following morning the court sat in St Mary's Church, with the authorities of town and university, heads of houses, mayor, aldermen, and sheriff. The prisoners were brought to the bar. The same questions were asked, the same answers were re- turned, and sentence was pronounced upon them, as heretics obstinate and incurable.
Execution did not immediately follow. The con-
554
REIGN OF QUEEN MAR Y.
[<-'"• 33-
Oct. 16.
victions for which they were about to die had been adopted by both of them comparatively late in life. The legate would not relinquish the hope of bringing them back into the superstition in which they had been born, and had lived so long ; and So-to, a Spanish friar, who was teaching divinity at Oxford in the place of Peter Martyr, was set to work on them.
But one of them would not see him, and on the other he could make no impression. Those whom God had cast away, thought Pole, were not to be saved by man ; l and the i6th of October was fixed upon as the day on which they were to suffer. Ridley had been removed from Bocardo, and was under the custody of the mayor, a man named Irish, whose wife was a bigoted and fanatical Catholic. On the evening of the 1 5th there was a supper at the mayor's house, where some members of Ridley's family were permitted to be present. He talked cheerfully of his approaching •' mar- riage ; ' his brother-in-law promised to be in attendance, and, if possible, to bring with him his wife, Ridley's sister. Even the hard eyes of Mrs Irish were softened to tears, as she listened and thought of what was coming. The brother-in-law offered to sit up through the night, but Ridley said there was no occasion ; he ' minded to go to bed, and sleep as quietly as ever he did in his life.'
1 A Rev. P. Soto accepi litteras Oxonio datas quibus me certiorera facit quid cum duobus illis htereticis egerit qui jam erant damnati, quorum alter ne loqui quidem cum eo voluit : cum altero est locutus sed nihil pro-
fecit, ut facile intelligatur a nemine servari posse quos Dcus projecerit. Itaque de illis supplicium est sump- turn.— Pole to Philip : Epist. KEG. POL. vol. v. p. 47.
1.555.] THE MARTYRS. 555
In the morning lie wrote a letter to the Queen. As Bishop of London he had granted renewals of certain leases, on which he had received fines. Bonner had refused to recognize them, and he entreated the Queen, for Christ's sake, either that the leases should be allowed, or that some portion of his own confiscated property might be applied to the repayment of the tenants.1 The letter was long ; by the time it was finished, the sheriff's officers were probably in readiness.
The place selected for the burning was outside the north wall of the town, a short stone's throw from the south corner of Balliol College, and about the same distance from Bocardo prison, from which Cranmer was intended to witness his friends' sufferings.
Lord Williams of Thame was on the spot by the Queen's order ; and the city guard were under arms to prevent disturbance. Ridley appeared first, walking between the mayor and one of the aldermen. He was dressed in a furred black gown, ' such as he was wont to wear being bishop,' a furred velvet tippet about his neck, and a velvet cap. He had trimmed his beard, and had washed himself from head to foot ; a man evidently nice in his appearance, a gentleman, and liking to be known as such. The way led under the windows of Bocardo, and he looked up ; but Soto, the friar, was with the Archbishop, making use of the occasion, and Ridley did not see him.2 In turning round, however, he saw
1 FOXE, vol. vii. p. 545. It is to the discredit of Mary that, she paid no attention to this appeal, and left Bonner's injustice to he repaired
by the first Parliament of Elizabeth. Commons Journals, i Elizabeth.
2 The execution, however, was doubtless appointed to take place on
556
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 33
Latimer coming up behind him in the frieze coat, with the cap and handkerchief — the workday costume unal- tered, except that under his cloak, and reaching to his feet, the old man wore a long new shroud.
' Oh ! be ye there ? ' Ridley exclaimed.
' Yea/ Latimer answered. ' Have after as fast as I can follow/
Ridley ran to him and embraced him. ' Be of good heart, brother/ he said. ' God will either assuage the flame, or else strengthen us to abide it.' They knelt and prayed together, and then exchanged a few words in a low voice, which were not overheard.
Lord Williams, the vice-chancellor, and the doctors were seated on a bench close to the stake. A sermon was preached, ' a scant one/ ' of scarce a quarter of an hour ; ' and then Ridley begged that for Christ's :sake he might say a few words.
Lord Williams looked to the doctors, one of whom started from his seat, and laid his hand on Ridley's lips —
' Recant/ he said, 'and you may both speak and live.'
' So long as the breath is in my body/ Ridley an- swered, 'I will never deny my Lord Christ and his known truth. God's will be done in me. I commit our cause/ he said, in a loud voice, turning to the peo- ple, 'to Almighty God, who shall indifferently judge all.'
that spot, that Cranmer might see it. An old engraving in FOXE'S Martyrs represents him as on the
leads of the Tower while the burn- ing was going forward, looking at it, and praying.
IS5S-] THE MARTYRS. 557
The brief preparations were swiftly made. Ridley gave his gown and tippet to his brother-in-law, and distributed remembrances among those who were nearest to him. To Sir Henry Lee he gave a new groat, to others he gave handkerchiefs, nutmegs, slices of ginger, his watch, and miscellaneous trinkets ; ( some plucked off the points of his hose ; ' ' happy/ it was said, ' was he that might get any rag of him/
Latimer had nothing to give. He threw off his cloak, stood bolt upright in his shroud, and the friends took their places on either side of the stake.
' 0 Heavenly Father/ Ridley said, ' I give unto thee most humble thanks, for that thou hast called me to be a professor of thee even unto death. Have mercy, 0 Lord, 011 this realm of England, and deliver the same from all her enemies.'
A chain was passed round their bodies, and fastened with a staple.
A friend brought a bag of powder and hung it round Ridley's neck.
1 1 will take it to be sent of God/ Ridley said. .' Have you more for my brother ? '
' Yea, sir/ the friend answered. ' Give it him be- times then/ Ridley replied, ' lest ye be too late.'
The fire was then brought. To the last moment, Ridley was distressed about the leases, and, bound as he was, he entreated Lord Williams to intercede with the Queen about them.
* I will remember your suit/ Lord Williams an- swered. The lighted torch was laid to the faggots.
5$S kEtGN OF QUEEN MARY. (ctt. 33.
4 Be of good comfort, Master Ridley/ Latimer cried at the crackling of the flames ; ' Play the man : we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in Eng- land, as I trust shall never be put out/
( In manus tuasy Dotnine, commendo spiritum meum,' cried E/idley. 'Momme, recipe spiritum meum*
' 0 Father of Heaven/ said Latimer, on the other side, * receive my soul/
Latimer died first : as the flame blazed up about him, he bathed his hands in it, and stroked his face. The powder exploded, and he became instantly senseless.
His companion was less fortunate. The sticks had been piled too thickly over the gorse that was under them ; the fire smouldered round his legs, and the sens- ation of suffering was unusually protracted. ' I cannot burn/ he called ; ' Lord, have mercy on me ; let the fire come to me ; I cannot burn/ His brother-in-law, with awkward kindness, threw on more wood, which only kept down the flame. At last some one lifted the pile with ' a bill/ and let in the air ; the red tongues of fire shot up fiercely,, Ridley wrested himself into the middle of them, and the powder did its work.
The horrible sight worked upon the beholders as it has worked since, and will work for ever, while the English nation survives, being, notwithstanding, — as in justice to those who caused these accursed cruelties, must never be forgotten, — a legitimate fruit of the superstition, that, in the eyes of the Maker of the world, an error of belief is the greatest of crimes ; that while for all other sins there is forgiveness, a mistake in the intellectual in-
'$55-3
MARTYRS.
559
tricaeies of speculative opinion will be punished not with the brief agony of a painful death, but with tor- tures to which there shall be no end.
But martyrdom was often but a relief from more bar- barous atrocities. In the sad winter months which were approaching, the poor men and women, who, untried and uncondemned, were crowded into the bishops' pri- sons, experienced such miseries as the very dogs could scarcely suffer and survive. They were beaten, they were starved, they were flung into dark fetid dens, where rotting straw was their bed, their feet were fettered in the stocks, and their clothes were their only covering, while the wretches who died in their misery were flung out into the fields where none might bury them.1
1 FOXB, vols. vii. viii., passim, especially vol. vii. p. 605. Philpot's Petition, Ibid. p. 682 ; and an ac- count of the Prisons at Canterbury, vol. viii. p. 255. At Canterbury, after Pole became archbishop, his archdeacon, Harpsfeld, had fifteen prisoners confined together, of whom five were starved to death ; the other ten were burnt. But before they suffered, and while one of those who died of hunger still survived, they left on record the following ac- count of their treatment, and threw it out of a window of the castle : —
' Be it known to all men that shall read, or hear read, these our letters, that we, the poor prisoners of the castle of Canterbury, for God's truth, are kept and lie in cold irons, and our keeper will not suffer any
meat to be brought to us to comfort us. And if any man do bring in anything — as bread, butter, cheese, or any other food — the said keeper will charge them that so bring us anything (except money or raiment), to carry it thence again ; or else, if he do receive any food of any for us, he doth keep it for himself, and he and his servants do spend it ; so that we have nothing thereof : and thus the keeper keepeth away our victuals from us ; insomuch that there are four of us prisoners there for God's truth famished already, and thus it is his mind to famish us all. And we think he is appointed thereto by the bishops and priests, and also of the justices, so to famish us ; and not only us of the said castle, but also all other prisoners
56o
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 33.
Lollard's Tower and Bonner's coal-house were the chief scenes of barbarity. Yet there were times when even Bonner loathed his work. He complained that he was troubled with matters that were none of his ; the bishops in other parts of England thrust upon his hands offenders whom they dared not pardon and would not themselves put to death ; and, being in London, he was himself under the eyes of the Court, and could not evade the work.1 Against Bonner, however, the world's voice rose the loudest. His brutality was notorious and un- questionable, and a published letter was addressed to him by a lady, in which he was called the ' common cut- throat and general slaughter- slave to all the bishops in England.'2 ' I am credibly informed/ said this person to him, ' that your Lordship doth believe, and hath in secret said, there is no hell. The very Papists them- selves begin now to abhor your bloodthirstiness, and speak shame of your tyranny. Every child can call you by name, and say, ' Bloody Bonner is Bishop of London ! ' and every man hath it as perfect upon his fingers' ends as his Paternoster, how many you for your part have burned with fire and famished in prison this three-quarters of a year. Though your Lordship be-
in other prisons for the like cause to be also famished. Notwithstanding, we write not these our letters to that intent we might not afford to be famished for the Lord Jesus' sake, but for this cause and intent, that they having no law so to famish us in prison, should not do it privily, but that the murderers' hearts should
be openly known to all the world, that all men may know of what church they are, and who is their father.' — FOXE, vol. viii. p. 255.
1 See especially his conversation with Philpot: FOXE, vol. vii. p. 611.
2 Godly Letter addressed to Bonner : Ibid., p. 712.
I555-]
THE MARTYRS.
561
lieve neither heaven nor hell, neither God nor devil, yet if your Lordship love your own honesty, you were best to surcease from this cruel burning and murdering. Say not but a woman gave you warning. As for the obtaining your Popish purpose in suppressing of the truth, I put you out of doubt, you shall not obtain it so long as you go this way to work as you do. You have lost the hearts of twenty thousand that were rank Papists within this twelve months.'
In the last words lay the heart of the whole matter. The martyrs alone broke the spell of orthodoxy, and made the establishment of the Reformation possible.
In the midst of such scenes the new Parliament was about to meet. Money was wanted for the Crown debts, and the Queen was infatuated enough still to meditate schemes for altering the succession, or, at least, for ob- taining the consent of the legislature to Philip's coron- ation, that she might bribe him back to her side.1
As the opening of the session approached, Elizabeth was sent again from the Court to be out of sight and out of reach of intrigue ; and Mary had the mortifi- cation of knowing that her sister's passage through London was a triumphal procession. The public en- thusiasm became so marked at last that the Princess was obliged to ride forward with a few servants, leaving
1 Pour Ic faire plustost retonrner elle fera toutes choses incredible en ce diet parlement en favour dudict Sieur ... . L'on diet que 1'oc- casion pour laquelle le diet parle- ment a este assemble, ne tend a VOL. v.
aultre fin que pour faire s'ilest pos- sible tomber le gouvernement absolu de ce royaulme entre les mains de ce roy. — Noailles to the King of France, October 21 : Awbassadcs, vol. v.
36
562 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY, [CH. 33.
the gentlemen who were her escort to keep back the people. Fresh alarms, too, had risen on the side of the Papacy. Cardinal CarafFa, Paul IV. as he was now named, on assuming the tiara, had put out a bull among his first acts, reasserting the decision of the canons on the sanctity of the estates of the Church, and threaten- ing laymen who presumed to withhold such property from its lawful owners with anathemas. In a con- versation with Lord Montague, the English ambassador at Rome, he had used language far from reassuring on the concessions of his predecessor ; and some violent- demonstration would undoubtedly have been made in Parliament, had not Paul been persuaded to except England especially from the general edict.
Even then the irritation was not allayed, and a whole train of sorrows was in store for Mary from the violent character of CaraiFa. Political Popes have al- ways been a disturbing element in the European sys- tem. Paul IV., elected by French influence, showed his gratitude by plunging into the quarrel between France and the Empire. He imprisoned Imperialist cardinals in St Angelo ; he persecuted the Colonnas on account of their Imperialist tendencies, levelled their fortresses, and seized their lands. The Cardinal of Lorraine hastened to Rome to conclude an alliance offensive and defensive on behalf of France ; and the Queen, distracted between her religion and her duty as a wife, saw Philip on the point of being drawn into parricidal hostility with his and her spiritual father. Nay, she herself might be involved in the same ca-
15551
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lamity ; for so bitter was the English humour that the Liberal party in the council were inclined to take part in the war, if they would have the Pope for an enemy ; and Philip would be too happy in their support to look too curiously to the motives of it.1
A calamity of a more real kind was also approach- ing Mary. She was on the point of losing the only able minister on whose attachment she could rely. Gardiner's career on earth was about to end.
On the 6th of October, Noailles described the Bishop of Winchester as sinking rapidly, and certain to die before Christmas,2 yet still eager and energetic, per- fectly aware of his condition, yet determined to work till the last.
Noailles himself had two hours' conversation with him on business; when he took his leave, the chan- cellor conducted him through the crowded antechamber to the door, leaning heavily on his arm. ' The people thought he was dead/ he said, ' but there was some life in him yet.'
Notwithstanding his condition, he roused himself for the meeting of Parliament on the 2 1 st ; he even spoke at the opening, and he was in his place in the House of Lords on the second day of the session ; but his remaining strength broke down immediately after,
1 Ce soit ung argument plus grand que tout aultre pour faire entrer ceulx cy a la guerre ouverte ; estant ceste nation comme ung chas- cung S£ait fort ennemie de sadict
Sainctite. — Noailles to Montmo- rency: Ambassades, vol. v. p. 188. 2 Same to the same. — Ibid. p. 150.
564 REIGN OF QUEEN MAR Y. [CH. 33.
and he died at Whitehall Palace on the
of November. The Protestants, who believed that he was the author of the persecution, expected that it would cease with his end ; they were deceived in their hopes, for their sufferings continued unabated. In their opinion of his conduct they were right, yet right but partially.
Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was the pupil of Wolsey, and had inherited undiminished the pride of the ecclesiastical order. If he went with Henry in his separation from the Papacy, he intended that the English Church should retain, notwithstanding, unimpaired authority and undiminished privileges. The humiliations heaped upon the clergy by the King had not discouraged him, for the Catholic doctrine was maintained unshaken, and so long as the priesthood was regarded as a peculiar order, gifted with supernatural powers, so long as the sacraments were held essential conditions of salvation, and the priesthood alone could administer them, he could feel assured that, sooner or later, their temporal position would be restored to them.
Thus, while loyal to the royal supremacy, the Bishop of Winchester had hated heresy, and hated all who protected heresy with a deadly hatred. He passed the Six Articles Bill ; he destroyed Cromwell ; he laboured with all his might to destroy Cranmer ; and, at length, when Henry was about to die, he lent himself, though too prudently to be detected, to the schemes of Surrey and the Catholics upon the regency. The failure of those schemes, and the five years of arbitrary imprison-
1 555.] THE MARTYRS. 565
ment under Edward, had not softened feelings already more than violent. lie returned to power exasperated by personal injury ; and justified, as he might easily believe himself to be, in his opinion of the tendencies of heresy, by the scandals of the Protestant adminis- tration, he obtained, by unremitting assiduity, the re- enactment of the persecuting laws, which he himself launched into operation with imperious cruelty.
Yet there was something in Gardiner's character which was not wholly execrable. For thirty years he worked unweariedly in the service of the public; his judgment as a member of council was generally excel- lent; and Somerset, had he listened to his remonstrances, might have saved both his life and credit. He was vindictive, ruthless, treacherous, but his courage was in- domitable. He resisted Cromwell till it became a ques- tion which of the two should die, and the lot was as likely to have fallen to him as to his rival. He would have murdered Elizabeth with the forms of law or with- out, but Elizabeth was the hope of all that he most detested. He was no dreamer, no high-flown enthusiast, but he was a man of clear eye and hard heart, who had a purpose in his life which he pursued with unflagging energy. Living as he did in revolutionary times, his hand was never slow to strike when an enemy was in his power ; yet in general when Gardiner struck, he stooped, like the eagle, at the nobler game, leaving the linen-drapers and apprentices to ' the mousing owls/ His demerits were vast ; his merits were small, yet something.
566 RSJGtf OF QU&EM MARY. [CH. 33.
' Well, well/ as some one said, winding up his epitaph, * Mortuus est, et sepultus est, et descendit ad inferos ; let us say no more about him/1
To return to the Parliament. On the 23rd of October a bull of Paul IV., confirming the dispensation of Julius, was read in the House of Com- mons.2 On the 29th the Crown debts were alleged as a reason for demanding a subsidy. The Queen had been prevented from indulging her desire for a standing army. The waste and peculation of the late reign had been put an end to ; and the embarrassments of the treasury were not of her creation. Nevertheless the change in social habits, and the alteration in the value of money, had prevented the reduction of the expendi- ture from being carried to the extent which had been contemplated; the marriage had been in many ways costly, and large sums had been spent in restoring plundered Church plate. So great had been the dif- ficulties of the treasury, that, although fresh loans had been contracted with the Jews, the wages of the house- hold were again two years in arrear.
Parliament showed no disposition to be illiberal ; they only desired to be satisfied that if they gave money it would be applied to the purpose for which it was de- manded. The Subsidy Bill, when first introduced, was opposed in the House of Commons on the ground that the Queen would give the keys of the treasury to her
1 Special Grace appointed to have been said ut York on the Accession of Elizabeth. — Tanner MSS., Bodleian Library.
2 Commons Journals, 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary
THE MARTYRS.
567
November.
husband ; and after a debate, a minority of a hundred voted for refusing the grant.1 The general spirit of the Houses, however, was, on the whole, more generous. Two fifteenths were voted in addition to the subsidy, which the Queen, on her side, was able to decline with thanks.2 The money question was settled quietly, and the business of the session proceeded.
If her subjects were indifferent to their souls, Mary was anxious about her own. On the nth of November, a bill was read a first time in the House of Lords, ' whereby the King's and Queen's Majesties surrendered, and gave into the hands of the Pope's Holiness, the first-fruits and tenths of all ec- clesiastical benefices.' The reception of the measure can be traced in the changes of form which it experi- enced. The payment of annates to the See of Eome was a grievance, both among clergy and laity, of very ancient standing. The clergy, though willing to be relieved from paying first-fruits to the Crown, were not so loyal to the successors of St Peter as to desire to re- store their contributions into the old channel ; while the laity, who from immemorial time had objected on principle to the payment of tribute to a foreign sove- reign, were now, through their possession of the abbey lands and the iinpropriation of benefices, immediately
1 Commons Journals, 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary. — Noaillcs to the Constable, October 31.
2 Commons Journ. Noailles says that the Queen demanded the fif- teenths, and that the Commons re-
fused to grant them. The account in the Journals is confirmed by a letter of Lord Talbot to the Earl of Shrewsbury. — LODGE'S Illustra- tions^ vol. i. p. 207.
568
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 33
interested parties. On the iQth of November fifty members of the House of Commons waited, by desire, upon the Queen, to hear her own resolutions, and to listen to an admonition from the Cardinal.1 On the acth a second bill was introduced, ' whereby the King's and Queen's Majesties surrendered and gave the first-fruits and tenths into the hands of the laity.'2 The Crown would not receive annates longer in any form ; and as laymen liable to the payment of them could not con- Ten iently be required to pay tribute to Rome, it was left to their consciences to determine whether they would follow the Queen's example in a voluntary surrender.
Even then, however, the original bill could not pass so long as the Pope's name was in it, or so long as the Pope was interested in it. As it left the Lords, it was simply a surrender, on behalf of the Crown, of all claims whatever upon first-fruits of benefices, whether from clergy or laity. The tenths were to continue to be paid. Lay impropriators should pay them to the Crown. The clergy should pay them to the legate, by whom they were to be applied to the discharge of the monastic pensions, from which the Crown was to be re- lieved. The Crown at the same time set a precedent of sacrifice by placing in the legate's hands unreservedly every one of its own impropriations.3
1 Mr Speaker declared the Queen's pleasure to be spoken yester- day, for to depart with the first-fruits and tenths ; and my Lord Cardinal spake for the tithes and impropria- tions of benefices to be spiritual.—
Commons Journals, November 20: 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary.
2 Lords Journals.
3 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary, cap. iv.
iSSS-J
THE MARTYRS.
569
In this form the measure went down to the Com mons, where it encountered fresh and violent opposition. To demand a subsidy in one week, and in the next to demand permission to sacrifice a sixth part of the ordi- nary revenue, was inconsistent and irrational. The laity had no ambition to take upon themselves the bur- dens of the clergy. On the 2 7th there was a long dis- cussion ; * on the 3rd of December the bill was
December.
carried, but with an adverse minority of a hun- dred and twenty- six, against a majority of a hundred and ninety-three.2
1 Commons Journals.
2 Ibid. The temper of the op- position may be gathered from the language of a pamphlet which ap- peared on the accession of Eliza- beth.
The writer describes the clergy as * lads of circumspection, and verily filii Imjus sceculi! He complains of their avarice in inducing the Queen, ' at one chop, to give away fifty thousand pounds and better yearly from the inheritance of her crown unto them, and many a thousand after, unto those idle hypocrites be- sides.'
He then goes on : —
* And yet this great profusion of their prince did so smally serve their hungry guts, like starven tikes that were never content with more than enough ; at all their collations, as- semblies, and sermons, they never left yelling and yelping in pursuit of their prey, Restore ! Restore ! These devout deacons nothing
how some for long service and tra vail abroad, while they sat at home —some for shedding his blood in defence of his prince's cause and country, while they with safety, all careless in their cabins, in luxe and
lewdness, did sail in a sure port
some selling his antient patrimony for purchase of these lands, while they must have all by gift a God's name — they nothing regarding, ] say, what injury to thousands, what undoing to most men, what dangei of uproar and tumult throughout the whole realm, and what a weakening to the State, should thereby arise ; with none of these matters were they moved a whit, but still held on their cry, Restore ! Restore !
' And that ye may be sure they meant nothing more than how to have all, and that with all haste ; after that their Pope, this seditious Paul IV., that now is, had sent hither his bulls and his thunderbolts for that cause, and other (and yet
$76
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
Language had been heard in both Houses,' during the debates, of unusual violence. Bradford's letter on the succession was circulating freely among the mem- bers, and the Parliament from which the Queen antici- pated so much for her husband's interests proved the most intractable with which she had had to deal.1 After the difficulty which she had experienced with the first- fruits, she durst not so much as introduce the question of the crown.2 She attempted a bill for the restoration of the forfeited lands of the Howards, but it was lost.3 The Duchess of Suffolk,4 with several other persons of rank, had lately joined the refugees on the Continent ; she attempted to carry a measure for the confiscation of
little restored, because the world, in- deed, would not be so faced out of their livelihood) sundry of our pre- lates, like hardy champions, slacke not a whit themselves to thrust lords out of their lands, and picked quar- rels to their lawful possessions. "Well. Let nobility consider the case as they list ; but, as some think, if the clergy come to be masters again, they will teach them a school point. Christ taught the young man that perfec- tion was in vade, vende, et da, not in mane, acquire, acctimula. ' — Grace to be said at the Accession of Eli- zabeth : Tanner MSS., Bodleian Library.
1 NOAILLES.
2 Michele, the Venetian ambas- sador, ill his curious but most inac- curate account of England during this reign, states that the Queen had it in her power to cut off Elizabeth
from the succession, but that she was prevented from doing it by Philip- Michele's information suf- fered from the policy of Venice. Venice held aloof from the compli- cations of the rest of Europe, and her representatives were punished by exclusion from secrets of State. The letters of Noailles might be sus- pected, but the correspondence of Renard with Charles V. leaves no doubt whatever either as to tho views of the Spaniards towards Eliza- beth, of their designs on the crown, or of the causes by which they were baffled.
3 Noailles to the King of France, December 16.
4 The witty Katherine Brandon, widow of Henry VIII. 's Charles Brandon, married to Richard Bertie. She was a lady of advanced opinions, between whom and the IJishop of
THE MARTYRS.
their property, and failed again.1 A sharp blow was dealt also at the recovered privileges of ecclesiastics. A man named Beiiet Smith, who had been implicated in a charge of murder, and was escaping under plea of clergy, was delivered by a special Act into the hands of justice.2 The leaven of the heretical spirit was still unsubdued. The Queen dissolved her fourth Parliament on the 9th of December ; and several gentlemen who had spoken out with unpalatable freedom were seized and sent to the Tower. She was unwise, thought JSToailles ; such arbitrary acts were only making her day by day more detested, and, should opportunity offer, would bring her to utter destruction.
Unwise she was indeed, and most unhappy. When the poor results of the session became known to Philip, he sent orders that such of his Spanish suite as he had left behind him should no longer afflict themselves with remaining in a country which they abhorred ; he sum moned them all to come to him except Alphonso, hk
Winchester there were some passages- at-arras. She dressed a dog in a rochet on one occasion, and called it Bishop Gardiner. . .
Gardiner himself said that he was once at a party at the Duke of Suffolk's, and it was a question who should take the Duchess down to dinner. She wanted to go with her husband ; but as that could not be, ' My lady,' said Gardiner, ' taking me by the hand, for that my lord would not take her himself, said that, forasmuch as she could not sit
down with my lord whom she loved best, she had chosen me whom she loved worst.' — HOLINSHED.
1 Et de mesmefustrejetteaudict parlement a la grande confusion de ladicte dame ung aultre bill, par lequel elle vouloit confisquer les per- sonnes et biens de ceulx qui sout transfuges de ce royaulme despuis son advene ment a la couronne. — Noailles to the King of France, December 16 : Ambassadcs, vol. v.
2 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary, cap. 17.
572 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
confessor. ' The Queen wept and remonstrated ; more piteous lamentations were never heard from woman.7 ' How/ exclaimed a brother of Noailles,1 ' is she repaid now for having quarrelled with her subjects, and set aside her father's will ! The misery which she suffers in her husband's absence cannot so change her but that she will risk crown and life to establish him in the sovereignty, and thus recall him to her side. Neverthe- less, she will fail, and he will not come. He is weary of having laboured so long in a soil so barren ; while she who feels old age stealing so fast upon her, cannot endure to lose what she has bought so dearly/
Nothing now was left for Mary but to make such use as she was able of the few years of life which were to remain to her. If Elizabeth, the hated Anne Boleyn's hated daughter, was to succeed her on the throne, and there was no remedy, it was for her to work so vigor- ously in the restoration of the Church that her labours could not afterwards be all undone. At her own ex- pense she began to rebuild and refound the religious houses. The Grey Friars were replaced at Greenwich, the Carthusians at Sheene, the Brigittines at Sion. The house of the Knights of St John in London was restored ; the Dean and Chapter of Westminster gave way to Ab- bot Feckenham and a college of monks. Yet these touching efforts might soften her sorrow but could not remove it. Philip was more anxious than ever about the marriage of Elizabeth ; and as Mary could not over-
1 Francois de Noailles to Madame de Roye : Ambassades, vol. v "
'555-1
THE MARTYRS.
573
come her unwillingness to sanction by act of her own Elizabeth's pretensions, Philip wrote her cruel letters, and set his confessor to lecture her upon her duties as a wife.1 These letters she chiefly spent her time in an- swering, shut up almost alone, trusting no one but Pole, and seeing no one but her women. If she was compelled to appear in public, she had lost her power of self-control ; she would burst into fits of violent and uncontrollable passion ; she believed every one about her to be a spy
1 Among the surviving me- morials of Mary, none is more af- fecting than a rough copy of an answer to one of these epistles, which is preserved in the Cotton Library. It is painfully scrawled, and covered with erasures and cor- rections, in which may be traced the dread in which she stood of offend- ing Philip. Demander license de votre Haultesse, is crossed through and altered into Supplier tres hum- blement. "Where she had described herself as obeissante, she enlarged the word into tres obeissante; and the tone throughout is most piteous. She entreats the King to appoint some person or persons to talk with her about the marriage. She says that the conscience which she has about it she has had for twenty-four years; that is to say, since Eliza- beth's birth. Nevertheless, she will agree to Philip's wish, if the realm will agree. She is ready to discuss it ; but she complains, so far as she dares complain, of the confessor. The priests trouble her, she says. ' Al fonsez especialement me pro-
| posoit questions si obscures que mon simple enteudement ne les pouvoit comprehendre, comme pour exemple il me demandoit qui estoit roy au temps de Adam, et disoit comme j'estoy obligee de faire ceste mar- riage par ung article de mon Credo, mais il ne 1'exposoit. . . . Aultres choses trop difficiles pour moy d'en- tendre. . . . ainsy qu'il estoit im- possible en si peu de temps de changer. . . . conscience. . . . Votre Haultesse escript en ses dictes lettres que si le consent de ce roy- aulme iroyt au contraire, Votre Haultesse en imputeroit la coulpe en moy. Je supplie en toute humilite votre Haultesse de differer ceste affaire jusques a votre retour ; et donques Votre Haultesse sera juge si je seray coulpable ou non. Car au- trement je vinray en jalousie de Votre Haultesse la quelle sera pire a moy que mort; car j'en ay com- mence deja d'en taster trop a mon grand regret,' &c. — Cotton MSS., Titus, B. 2 : printed very incorrectly in STEYPE'S Memorials, vol. vi. 418.
574 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
in the interest of the Lords. So disastrously miserable were all the consequences of her marriage, that it was said, the Pope, who had granted the dispensation for the contraction of it, had better grant another for its dissolution.1 Unfortunately there was one direction open in which her frenzy could have uncontrolled scope. The Archbishop of Canterbury, after his trial and his citation to Borne, addressed to the Queen a singular letter : he did not ask for mercy, and evidently he did not expect mercy : he reasserted calmly the truth of the opinions for which he was to suffer ; but he protested against the indignity done to the realm of England, and the degradation of the royal prerogative, 'when the King and Queen, as if they were subjects in their own realm, complained and required justice at a stranger's hand against their own subjects, being already condemn- ed to death by their own laws/ ' Death/ he said, ' could not grieve him much more than to have his most dread and gracious sovereigns, to whom under God he owed all obedience, to be his accusers in judgment before a stranger and outward power.' 2
1 NOAILLES.
2 Cranmerto Queen Mary : JEN- KINS, vol. i. p. 369. This protest was committed to Pole to answer, who replied to it at length.
The authority of the Pope in a secular kingdom, the legate said, was no more a foreign power than ' the authority of the soul of man coming from heaven in the body generate on earth.' 'The Pope's laws spiritual did no other but that
the soul did in the body, giving life to the same, confirming and strengthening the same ; ' and that it was which the angel signified in Christ's conception, declaring what his authority should be, that he should sit super domum David, which was a temporal reign, ut confirmet illud et corroboret, as the spiritual laws did.'
The quotation is inaccurate. The words in the Vulgate arc, Dabit Hit
I555-] THE MARTYRS. 575
The appeal was intended perhaps to provoke the Queen to let him die with his friends, in whose example and companionship he felt his strength supported. But it could not be ; he was the spectator of their fate, while his own was still held at a distance before him. He witnessed the agonies of Ridley ; and the long im- prisonment, the perpetual chafing of Soto the Spanish friar, and the dreary sense that he was alone, forsaken of man, and perhaps of Gfod, began to wear into the firmness of a many-sided susceptible nature. Some vague indication that he might yield had been commu- nicated to Pole by Soto before Christmas,1 and the struggle which had evidently commenced was permitted to protract itself. If the Archbishop of Canterbury, the father of the Reformed Church of England, could be brought to a recantation, that one victory might win back the hearts which the general constancy of the martyrs was drawing off in tens of thousands. Time,,
Dominus sedem David patris ej'us : et regnabit in domo Jacob in ceternum. The letter contains another il- lustration of Pole's habit of mind. ' There was never spiritual man/ he says, ' put to execution according to the order of the laws of the realm but he was first by the canon laws condemned and degraded ; whereof there be as many examples afore the time of breaking the old order of the realm these last years, us hath been delinquents. Let the records be seen. And specially this
is notable of the Bishop of ,
which, being imprisoned for high
treason, the King would not proceed to his condemnation and punish- ment afore he bad the Pope's bull given him. . . .'
The historical argument pro- ceeded smoothly up to the name, which, however, was not and is not to be found. Pole was probably thinking of Archbishop Scrope, who, however, unfortunately for the argu- ment, was put to death without the Pope's sanction. — Draft of a Letter from Cardinal Pole to Cranmer: Harleian MSS. 417.
1 Pole to Philip : Epistola REG. POL., vol. v. p. 47.
576 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
however, wore on, and the Archbishop showed no defin- ite signs of giving way. On the I4th of December, a mock trial was instituted at Rome ; the report of the examination at Oxford was produced, and counsel were heard on both sides, or so it was pretended. Paul IV. then pronounced the final sentence, that Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, having been ac- cused by his sovereigns of divers crimes and misde- meanours, it had been proved against him that he had followed the teachings of John WiclifF and Martin Luther of accursed memory ; 1 that he had published books containing matters of heresy, and still obstinately persisted in those his erroneous opinions : he was there- fore declared to be anathema, to be deprived of his office, and having been degraded, he was to be delivered over to the secular arm.
There was some delay in sending the judgment to
England. It arrived at the beginning of February,
I(.-6 and on the I4th, Thirlby and Bonner went
Feb. 14. down to finish tne wort at Oxford. The
court sat this time in Christ Church Cathedral. Cran- mer was brought to the bar, and the Papal sentence was read. The preamble declared that the cause had been heard with indifference, that the accused had been defended by an advocate, that witnesses had been ex- amined for him, that he had been allowed every oppor- tunity to answer for himself. ' 0 Lord/ he exclaimed, ' what lies be these ! that I, being in prison and never
1 DamnatcB memories. Sentence Definitive against Thomas Cranmer : FOXE, vol. vir
1556.] THE MARTYRS. 577
suffered to have counsel or advocate at home, should produce witness and appoint counsel at Rome; God must needs punish this shameless lying/
Silence would perhaps have been more dignified ; to speak at all was an indication of infirmity. As soon as the reading was finished, the Archbishop was form- ally arrayed in his robes, and when the decoration was completed, Bonner called out in exultation :
"This is the man that hath despised the Pope's Holiness, and now is to be judged by him; this is the man that hath pulled down so many churches, and now is come to be judged in a church ; this is the man that hath contemned the blessed Sacrament of the altar, and now is come to be condemned before that blessed Sacrament hanging over the altar ; this is the man that, like Lucifer, sat in the place of Christ upon an altar1 to judge others, and now is come before an altar to be judged himself/2
Thirlby checked the insolence of his companion. The degradation was about to commence, when the Archbishop drew from his sleeve an appeal ' to the next Free General Council that should be called/ It had been drawn after consultation with a lawyer, in the evi- dent hope that it might save or prolong his life,3 and he attempted to present it to his judges. But he was catching at straws, as in his clearer judgment he would
1 An allusion to a scaffold in St Paul's Church, on which Cranmer had sat as a commissioner ; said to
2 FOXE, vol. viii. p. 73.
3 Cranmer to a Lawyer : JEN- KINS, vol. i. p. 384.
have been erected over an altar.
VOL. v. 37
$78 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
haVe known. Thirlby said sadly that the appeal could hot be received ; his orders were absolute to proceed.
The robes were stripped off in the usual way. The thin hair was clipped. Bonner with his own hands scraped the finger points which had been touched with the oil of consecration ; ' Now are you lord no longer/ he said, when the ceremony was finished. t All this needed not/ Cranmer answered ; * I had myself done with this gear long ago.'
He Was led off in a beadle's threadbare gown, and a tradesman's cap ; and here for some important hours authentic account of him is lost. What he did, what he said, what Was done or what was said to him, is known only in its results, or in Protestant tradition. Tradition said that he was taken from the cathedral to the house of the Dean of Christ Church, where he was delicately entertained, and worked upon with smooth words, and promises of life. 'The noblemen,' he was told, 'bare him good- will; he was still strong, and might live many years, why should he cut them short ? ' The story may contain some elements of truth. But the same evening, certainly, he was again in his cell ; and among the attempts to move him which can be authenticated, there was one of a far different kind ; a letter addressed to him by Pole to bring him to a sense of his condition.
'Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ,' so the legate addressed a prisoner in the expectation of death,1 'hath not Gk>d* He that
1 Epist. REG. POL., vol. v. p. 248. 1 wn obliged to abridge and epitomize
1556.] THE MARTYRS. 579
abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed ; for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds. There are some who tell me that, in obedience to this command, I ought not to address you, or to have any dealings with you, save the dealings of a judge with a criminal. But Christ came not to judge only, but also to save ; I call upon you, not to enter into your house, for so I should make myself a partaker with you ; my desire is only to bring you back to the Church which you have de- serted.
' You have corrupted Scripture, you have broken through the communion of saints, and now I tell you what you must do ; I tell you, or rather not I, but Christ and the Church through me. Did I follow my own impulse, or did I speak in my own name, I should hold other language : to you I should not speak at all ; I would address myself only to God ; I would pray him to let fall the fire of Heaven to consume you, and to consume witl vou the house into which you have entered in abandoning the Church.1
' You pretend that you have used no instruments
1 Car se je n'ecoutois que les | maison ou vous avez passe en aban-
mouvemens de la nature, se je ne vous parlois qu'en mon nom, je vous tiendrois un autre langage an plut8t je ne vous dirois rien ; je m'entreti-
donnant 1'Eglise. The letter was only known to the editor of Pole's remains in a French translation. I do not know whether the original
endrois avec Dieu seul at je lui de- I exists, or whether it was in Latin or raanderois de faire tomber le feu du 1 in "English. ciel pour vous consumer avec cette i
REIGN OF QUEEK MARY.
33-
but reason, to lead men after you ; what instrument did the devil use to seduce our parents in Paradise ? you have followed the serpent; with guile you destroyed your King, the realm, and the Church, and you have brought to perdition thousands of human souls.
' Compared with you, all others who have been con- cerned in these deeds of evil, are but objects of pity ; many of them long resisted temptation, and yielded only to the seductions of your impious tongue ; you made yourself a bishop, — for what purpose, but to mock both God and man ? Your first act was but to juggle with your King, and you were no sooner Primate, than you plotted how you might break your oath to the Holy See ; you took part in the counsels of the evil one, you made your home with the wicked, you sat in the seat of the scornful. You exhorted your King with your fine words, to put away his wife ; you prated to him of his obligations to submit to the judgment of the Church ; J and what has followed that unrighteous sentence ? You parted the King from the wife with whom he had lived for twenty years ; you parted him from the Church, the common mother of the faithful ; and thenceforth throughout the realm law has been trampled under foot, the people have been ground with
1 The innumerable modern writ- el s who agree with Pole on the in- iquity of the divorce of Catherine forget that, according to the rule which most of us now acknowledge, the marriage of Henry with his bro- ther's wife really was incestuous —
really was forbidden by the laws of God and nature ; that the Pope had no more authority to dispense with those laws then than he has now ; and that if modern law is right, Cranmer did no more than his duty.
1556.] THE MARTYRS. 581
tyranny, the churches pillaged, the nobility murdered one by the other.
1 Therefore, I say, were I to make my own cries heard in heaven, I would pray God to demand at your hands the blood of his servants. Never had religion, never had the Church of Christ, a worse enemy than you have been ; now therefore, when you are about to suffer the just reward of your deeds, think no more to excuse yourself ; confess your sins, like the penitent thief upon the cross.
1 Say not in your defence that you have done no violence, that you have been kind and gentle in }^our daily life. Thus I know men speak of you ; but cheat not your conscience with so vain a plea. The devil, when called to answer for the souls that he has slain, may plead likewise that he did not desire their de- struction ; he thought only to make them happy, to give them pleasure, honour, riches — all things which their hearts desired. So did you with your King : you gave him the woman that he lusted after ; you gave him the honour which was not his due, and the good things which were neither his nor yours ; and, last and worst, you gave him poison, in covering his iniquities with a cloak of righteousness. Better, far better, you had offered him courtezans for companions ; better you and he had been open thieves and robbers. Then he might have understood his crimes, and have repented of them ; but you tempted him into the place where there is no repentance, no hope of salvation.
' Turn then yourself, and repent. See yourself as
582 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
you are. Thus may you escape your prison. Thus may you flee out of the darkness wherein you have hid your- self. Thus may you come back to light and life, and earn for yourself God's forgiveness. I know not how to deal with you. Your examination at Oxford has but hardened you ; yet the issue is with God. I at least can point out to you the way. If you, then, persist in your vain opinions, may God have mercy on you/
The legate, in his office of guide, then travelled the full round of controversy, through Catholic tradition, through the doctrine of the Sacraments and of the real presence, where there is no need to follow him. At length he drew to his conclusion :
* You will plead Scripture to answer me. Are you so vain, then, are you so foolish, as to suppose that it has been left to you to find out the meaning of those Scriptures which have been in the hands of the Fathers of the Church for so many ages ? Confess, confess that you have mocked God in denying that he is present on the altar ; wash out your sins with tears ; and in the abundance of your sorrow you may find pardon. May it be so. Even for the greatness of your crimes may it be so, that God may have the greater glory. You have not, like others, fallen through simplicity, or fallen through fear. You were corrupted, like the Jews, by earthly rewards and promises. For your own profit you denied the presence of your Lord, and you re- belled against his servant the Pope. May you see your crimes. May you feel the greatness of your need of inercy. Now, even now, by my mouth, Christ offers
J556-] ?#£ MARTYRS. 583
you tliat mercy ; and with the passionate hope which I am bound to feel for your salvation, I wait your answer to your Master's call.'
The exact day on which this letter reached the Arch- bishop is uncertain, but it was very near the period of bis sentence. Jle had dared death bravely while it was distant ; but he was physically timid ; the near approach of the agony which he had witnessed in others un- nerved him ; and in a moment of mental and moral prostration Oranmer may well have looked in the mirror which Pole held up to him, and asked himself whether, after all, the being there described was his true image — whether it was himself as others saw him. A faith which had existed for centuries, a faith in which gener- ation after generation have lived happy and virtuous lives ; a faith in which all good men are agreed, and only the bad dispute — such a faith carries an evidence and a weight with it beyond what can be looked for in a creed reasoned out by individuals — a creed which had the ban upon it of inherited execration ; which had been held in abhorrence once by him who was now called upon to die for it. Only fools and fanatics believe that they cannot be mistaken. Sick misgivings may have taken hold upon him in moments of despondency, whether, after all, the millions who received the Roman supremacy might not be more right than the thousands who denied it ; whether the argument on the real pre- sence, which had satisfied him for fifty years, might not be better founded than his recent doubts. It is not possi- ble for a man of gentle and modest nature to feel him-
REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
[CH. 33.
self the object of intense detestation without uneasy pangs ; and as such thoughts came and went, a window might seem to open, through which there was a return to life and freedom. His trial was not greater than hundreds of others had borne, and would bear with con- stancy ; but the temperaments of men are unequally constituted, and a subtle intellect and a sensitive organ- ization are not qualifications which make martyrdom easy.
Life1, by the law of the Church, by justice, by pre- cedent, was given to all who would accept it on terms of submission. That the Archbishop should be tempted to recant, with the resolution formed, notwithstanding, that he should still suffer, whether he yielded or whether he was obstinate, was a suspicion which his experience of the legate had not taught him to entertain.
So it was that Cranmer's spirit gave way, and he who had disdained to fly when flight was open to him, because he considered that, having done the most in establishing the Reformation, he was bound to face the responsibility of it, fell at last under the protraction of the trial.
The day of his degradation the Archbishop had eaten little. In the evening he returned to his cell in a state of exhaustion : * the same night, or the next day, he sent in his first submission,2 which was forwarded on
1 JENKINS, vol. iv. p. 129.
2 Forasmuch as the King's and Queen's Majesties, hy consent of Parliament, have received the Pope's
authority within this realm, I am content to submit myself to their laws herein, and to take the Pope for chief head of this Church of
I556-]
THE MARTYRS.
the instant to the Queen. It was no sooner gone than he recalled it, and then vacillating again, he drew a second, in slightly altered words, which he signed and did not recall. There had been a struggle in which the weaker nature had prevailed, and the orthodox leaders made haste to improve their triumph. The first step being over, confessions far more humiliating could now be extorted. Bonner came to his cell, and obtained from him a promise in writing, l to submit to the King and Queen in all their laws and ordinances, as well touching the Pope's supremacy, as in all other things ;' with an engagement further ' to move and stir all others to do the like/ and to live in quietness and obedience, without murmur or grudging ; his book on the Sacra- ment he would submit to the next general council.
These three submissions must have followed one another rapidly. On the i6th of February, two days only after his trial, he made a fourth, and yielding the point which he ha.d reserved, he declared that he be- lieved all the articles of the Christian religion as the Catholic Church believed. But so far he had spoken generally, and the Court required particulars. In a fifth and longer submission,1 he was made to anathematize
England so far as God's laws and the customs of this realm will per- mit.
THOMAS CKANMER.
1 Of this fifth submission there is a contemporary copy among the MSS. at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. It was the only one known to Foxe ; and this, with, the fact of
its being found in a separate form, gives a colour of probability to Mr Southey's suspicion that the rest were forgeries. The whole collec- tion was published by Bonner, who injured his claims to credit by print- ing with the others a seventh re- cantation, which was never made, and by concealing the real truth.
586 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [en. 33.
particularly the heresies of Luther and Zuinglius ; to accept the Pope as the head of the Church, out of which was no salvation ; to acknowledge the real presence in the Eucharist, the seven sacraments as received by the Roman Catholics, and purgatory. He professed his penitence for having once held or taught otherwise, and he implored the prayers of all faithful Christians, that those whom he had seduced might be brought back to the true fold.
The demands of the Church might have been satis- fied by these last admissions ; but Cranmer had not yet expiated his personal offences against the Queen and her mother, and he was to drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs.
A month was allowed to pass. He was left with the certainty of his shame, and the uncertainty whether,
after all. it had not been encountered in vain. March 18.
On the loth of March, one more paper was
submitted to his signature, in which he confessed to be all which Pole had described him. He called himself a blasphemer, and a persecutor ; being unable to undo his evil work, he had no hope, he said, save in the example of the thief upon the cross, who when other means of reparation were taken from him, made amends to God with his lips He was unworthy of mercy, and he de- served eternal vengeance. He had sinned against King
But the balance of evidence I still think is in favour of the genuineness of the first six. The first four lead up to the fifth, and the invention of them after the fifth had been made
would have been needless. The sixth I agree with Strype in con- sidering to have been composed by Pole, and signed by Cranmer.
THE MARTYRS. 5^7
Henry and his wife ; lie was the cause of the divorce, from which, as from a seed, had sprung up schism, heresy, and crime ; he had opened a window to false doctrines of which he had been himself the most per- nicious teacher ; especially he reflected with anguish that he had denied the presence of his Maker in the consecrated elements. He had deceived the living and he had robbed the souls of the dead by stealing from them their masses. He prayed the Pope to pardon him ; he prayed the King and Queen to pardon him ; he prayed God Almighty to pardon him, as he had par- doned Mary Magdalen ; or to look upon him as, from his own cross, He had looked upon the thief.1
The most ingenious malice could invent no deeper degradation, and the Archbishop might now die. One favour was granted to him alone of all the sufferers for religion — that he might speak at his death ; speak, and, like Northumberland, perish with a recantation on his lips.
The hatred against him was confined to the Court. Even among those who had the deepest distaste for his opinions, his character had won affection and respect ; and when it was known that he was to be executed, there was a wide-spread and profound emotion. ' Al- though,' says a Catholic who witnessed his death, ' his former life and wretched end deserved a greater misery, if any greater might have chanced to him ; yet, setting aside his offence to God and his country, beholding the
Recantations of Thomas Cranmer : JENKINS, vol. iv. p. 393.
588 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
man without his faults, I think there was none that pitied not his case and bewailed not his fortune, and feared not his own chance, to see so noble a prelate, so grave a councillor, of so long-: continued honours, after so many dignities, in his old years to be deprived of his estate, adjudged to die, and in so painful a death to end his life.' l
On Saturday, the 2ist of March, Lord "Williams was again ordered into Oxford to keep the peace, with Lord Chandos, Sir Thomas Brydges, and other gentlemen of the county. If they allowed themselves to countenance by their presence the scene which they were about to witness, it is to be remembered that but a few years since, these same gentlemen had seen Catholic priests swinging from the pinnacles of their churches. The memory of the evil days was still recent, and amidst the tumult of conflicting passions, no one could trust his neighbour, and organized resistance was impracticable.
The March morning broke wild and stormy. The sermon intended to be preached at the stake was ad- journed, in consequence of the wet, to St Mary's, where a high stage was erected, on which Cranmer was to stand conspicuous. Peers, knights, doctors, students, priests, men-at-arms, and citizens, thronged the narrow aisles, and through the midst of them the Archbishop was led in by the mayor. As he mounted the platform
1 Death of Cranmer, related by a Bystander : Harkian MS8., 442. Printed, with some inaccuracies, by STRYPE.
1556.] THE MARTYRS. 589
many of the spectators were in tears. He knelt and prayed silently, and Cole, the Provost of Eton, then took his place in the pulpit.
Although, by a strained interpretation of the law, it could be pretended that the time of grace had expired with the trial ; yet, to put a man to death at all after recantation was a proceeding so violent and unusual, that some excuse or some explanation was felt to be necessary.
Cole therefore first declared why it was expedient that the late Archbishop should suffer, notwithstanding his reconciliation. One reason was ' for that he had been a great causer of all the alterations in the realm of England ; and when the matter of the divorce between King Henry VIII. and Queen Catherine was commenced in the Court of Rome, he, having nothing to do with it, sat upon it as a judge, which was the entry to all the inconvenients which followed/ Yet in that Mr Cole excused him — that he thought he did it, not 'out of malice, but by the persuasion and advice of certain learned men/
Another occasion was, 'for that he had been the great setter- forth of all the heresy received into the Church in the latter times ; had written in it, had dis- puted, had continued it even to the last hour ; and it had never been seen in the time of schism that any man continuing so long had been pardoned, and that it was not to be remitted for example's sake/
' And other causes/ Cole added, ' moved the Queen
590
REIGN OF QUEEN' MARY.
[CH. 33.
and council thereto, which, were not meet and convenient for every one to understand/ l
The explanations being finished, the preacher ex- horted his audience to take example from the spectacle before them, to fear God, and to learn that there was no power against the Lord. There, in their presence, stood a man, once ' of so high degree — sometime one of the chief prelates of the Church — an Archbishop, the chief of the council, the second person of the realm : of long time, it might be thought, in great assurance, a king on his side ; ' and now, ' notwithstanding all his authority and defence, debased from a high estate unto a low degree — of a councillor become a caitiff, and set in so wretched estate that the poorest wretch would not change conditions with him/
Turning, in conclusion, to Cranmer himself, Cole then ' comforted and encouraged him to take his death well by many places in Scripture ; bidding him nothing mistrust but that he should incontinently receive that the thief did, to whom Christ said, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. Out of Paul he armed him against the terrors of fire, by the words, The Lord is
1 Narrative of the Execution of Thomas Cranmer : MS. Harletan, 422. Another account gives among the causes which Cole mentioned, that ' it seemed meet, according to the law of equality, that, as the death of the Duke of Northumber- land of late made even with Sir Thomas More, Chancellor, that died for the Church, so there should be
one that should make even with Fisher, Bishop of Rochester ; and because that Ridley, Hooper, and Ferrars were not able to make even with that man, it seemed that Cran- mer should be joined with them to fill up their part of equality.' — FOXE, vol. viii. p. 85. JENKINS, vol. iv. p. 133.
1556.] THE MARTYRS. 591
faithful, and will not suffer you to be tempted beyond that which you are able to bear ; by the example of the three Children, to whom God made the flame seem like a pleasant joy ; by the rejoicing of St Andrew on his cross ; by the patience of St Lawrence on the fire.' He dwelt upon his conversion, which, he said, was the special work of God, because so many efforts had been made by men to work upon him, and had been made in vain. God, in his own time, had reclaimed him, and brought him home.
A dirge, the preacher said, should be sung for him in every church in Oxford ; he charged all the priests to say each a mass for the repose of his soul ; and finally, he desired the congregation present to kneel where they were, and pray for him.
The whole crowd fell on their knees, the Archbishop with them ; and < I think/ says the eye-witness,1 ( that there was never such a number so earnestly praying together ; for they that hated him before, now loved him for his conversion, and hopes of continuance : they that loved him before could not suddenly hate him, having hope of his confession; so love and hope in- creased devotion on every side.'
' I shall not need/ says the same writer, * to describe his behaviour for the time of sermon, his sorrowful countenance, his heavy cheer, his face bedewed with tears ; sometimes lifting his eyes to heaven in hope, sometimes casting them down to the earth for shame —
1 MS. Rarleian, 422.
592 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
to be brief, an image of sorrow, the dolour of his heart bursting out of his eyes, retaining ever a quiet and grave behaviour, which increased the pity in men's hearts/
His own turn to speak was now come. When the prayer was finished, the preacher said, ' Lest any man should doubt the sincerity of this man's repentance, you shall hear him speak before you. I pray you, Master Cranmer/ he added, turning to him, ' that you will now perform that you promised not long ago ; that you would openly express the true and undoubted profes- sion of your faith.'
' I will do it,' the Archbishop answered.
'Good Christian people,' he began, 'my dear, be- loved brethren and sisters in Christ, I beseech you most heartily to pray for me to Almighty God, that he will forgive me all my sins and offences, which be many and without number, and great above measure ; one thing grieveth my conscience more than all the rest, whereof, God willing, I shall speak more ; but how many or how great soever they be, I beseech you to pray God of his mercy to pardon and forgive them all.'
Falling again on his knees ; —
' 0 Father of heaven,' he prayed, ' 0 Sou of God, Redeemer of the world, 0 Holy Ghost, three Persons and one God, have mercy upon me, most wretched caitiff and miserable sinner. I have offended both heaven and earth more than my tongue can express ; whither then may I go, or whither should I flee for succour ? To heaven I am ashamed to lift up mine
I556-} THE MARTYRS. 593
eyes, and in earth I find no succour nor refuge. What shall I do ? Shall I despair ? God forbid ! Oh, good God, thou art merciful, and refusest none that come to thee for succour. To thee, therefore, do I come ; to thee do I humble myself, saying, 0 Lord, my sins be great, yet have mercy on me for thy great mercy. The mystery was not wrought that God became man, for few or little offences. Thou didst not give thy Son, 0 Father, for small sins only, but for all and the greatest in the world, so that the sinner return to thee with a penitent heart, as I do at this present. Where- fore have mercy upon me, 0 Lord, whosp property is al- ways to have mercy ; although my sins be great, yet is thy mercy greater ; wherefore have mercy upon me, 0 Lord, for thy great mercy. I crave nothing, 0 Lord, for mine own merits, but for thy Name's sake, and, therefore, 0 Father of heaven, hallowed be thy Name.' Then rising, he went on with his address : — 'Every man desireth, good people, at the time of his death, to give some good exhortation that others may remember after his death, and be the better there- by ; for one word spoken of a man at his last end1 will
1 Shakspeare was perhaps thinking of this speech of Cranmer when he wrote the magnificent lines which he placed in the mouth of the dying Gaunt :—
4 0, but they say, the tongues of dying men Enforce attention, like deep harmony : Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain : For they breathe truth, that breathe their words in pain. He, that no more must say, is listened more Than they whom youth and ease have taught to gloze ; VOL. v. 38
594 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY [CH. 33.
be more remembered than the sermons made of them that live and remain. So I beseech God grant me grace, that I may speak something at my departing whereby God may be glorified and you edified.
' But it is an heavy case to see that many folks be so doted upon the love of this false world, and be so care- ful for it, that of the love of God or the world to come, they seem to care very little or nothing ; therefore this shall be my first exhortation — that you set not over- much by this glozing world, but upon God and the world to come; and learn what this lesson meaneth which St John teacheth, that the love of the world is hatred against God.
' The second exhortation is, that next unto God, you obey your King and Queen willingly, without murmur or grudging, not for fear of them only, but much more for the fear of God, knowing that they be God's ministers, appointed of God to rule and govern you, and there- fore whosoever resisteth them resisteth God's ordin- ance.
' The third exhortation is, that you live all together like brethren and sisters : but, alas ! pity it is to see what contention and hatred one man hath against an- other, not taking each other for brethren and sisters, but rather as strangers and mortal enemies. But I pray you learn and bear well away the lesson, to do good to
More are men's ends marked, than their lives before The setting sun, and music at the close, As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last ; Writ in remembrance more than things long past.'
1556.] THE MARTYRS. 595
all men as much as in you lietli, and hurt no man no more than you would hurt your own natural brother or sister. For this you may be sure, that whosoever hateth his brother or sister, and goeth about maliciously to hinder or hurt him, surely, and without all doubt, God is not with that man, although he think himself never so much in God's favour.
' The fourth exhortation shall be to them that have great substance and riches of this world, that they may well consider and weigh tli cse three sayings of the Scrip- tures. One is of our Saviour Christ himself, who saith that it is a hard thing for a rich man to come to heaven ; a sore saying, and spoken of Him that knoweth the truth. The second is of St John, whose saying is this : He that hath the substance of this world, and seeth his brother in necessity, and shutteth up his compassion and mercy from him, how can he say he loveth God ? The third is of St James, who speaketh to the covetous and rich men after this manner : Weep and howl for the misery which shall come upon you ; your riches doth rot, your clothes be moth-eaten, your gold and silver is cankered and rusty, and the rust thereof shall bear witness against you, and consume you like fire ; you gather and hoard up treasure of God's indignation against the last day. I tell them which be rich, ponder these sentences ; for if ever they had occasion to show their charity, they have it now at this present ; the poor people being so many, and victuals so dear; for al- though I have been long in prison, yet have I heard of the great penury of the poor.'
596
REIGN OF QUEEN
33-
The people listened breathless, ' intending upon the conclusion.'
' And now/ he went on, ' forasmuch as I am come to the last end of my life, whereupon hangeth all my life past and all my life to come, either to live with my Saviour Christ in joy, or else to be ever in pain with wicked devils in hell ; and I see before mine eyes pre- sently either heaven ' — and he pointed upwards with his hand — ( or hell/ and he pointed downwards, ' ready to swallow me. I shall therefore declare unto you my very faith, without colour or dissimulation ; for now it is no time to dissemble. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth ; in every article of the Catholic faith ; every word and sentence taught by our Saviour Christ, his apostles, and prophets, in the Old and New Testament.
1 And now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever I said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth, which here I now re- nounce and refuse,1 as things written with my hand
1 There are two original con- temporary accounts of Cramner's Vfords—Harleian M8S., 417 and 422, — and they agree so far almost word for word with 'The Prayer and Saying of Thomas Cranmer a little before his Death,' which was published immediately after by Bon- iier. But we now encounter the singular difficulty, that the con- clusion given by Bonner is altogether
different. The Archbishop is made to repeat his recantation, and ex- press especial grief for the books which he had written upon the Sacrament.
There is no uncertainty as to what Cranmer really said; but, in- •asmuch as Bonner at the head of his version of the speech has de- scribed it as ' written with his own hand,' it has been inferred that he
I556-]
THE MARTYRS.
597
contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death to save my life, if it might be ; and that is, all such bills and papers as I have written and signed with my hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue ; and forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall first be punished; for if I may come to the fire, it shall be the first burnt. As for the Pope, I utterly refuse him, as Christ's enemy and Anti- Christ, with all his false doctrine ; and as for the Sacra- ment, I believe as I have taught in my book against the Bishop of Winchester/
So far the Archbishop was allowed to continue, be-
was required to make a copy of what he intended to say, — that he actually wrote what Boimer printed, hoping to the end that his life would be spared ; and that he would have re" peated it publicly, had he seen that there -was a chance of his escape. Finding, however, that bis execution had been irrevocably determined on, he made the substitution at the last moment.
' There are many difficulties in this view, chiefly from the character of the speech itself, which has the stamp upon it of too evident sin- cerity to have been composed with any underhand intentions. The tone is in harmony throughout, and the beginning leads naturally to the conclusion Avhich Cranmer really spoke.
There is another explanation, which is to me more credible. The
Catholics were furious at their ex- pected triumph being snatched from them. AVhether Cranmer did or did not write what Bonner says he wrote, Bonner knew that lie had not spoken- it, and yet was dishonest enough to print it as having been spoken by him, evidently hoping that the truth could be suppressed, and that the Catholic cause might escape the injury which the Arch- bishop's recovered constancy must inflict upon it. A man who was capable of so considerable u false- hood would not have hesitated for the same good purpose to alter a few sentences. Pious frauds have been committed by more religious men than Edmund Bonner. See the Itecantation of Thomas Cranmer, reprinted from Bonner's original pamphlet : JENKINS, vol. iv. p. 393.
598 REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
fore his astonished hearers could collect themselves.
* Play the Christian man/ Lord Williams at length was able to call; ' remember yourself; do not dissemble/
* Alas ! my Lord/ the Archbishop answered, ' I have been a man that all my life loved plainness, and never dissembled till now, which I am most sorry for/ He would have gone on ; but cries now rose on all sides, ' Pull him down/ ' Stop his mouth/ ' Away with him/ and he was borne off by the throng out of the church. The stake was a quarter of a mile distant, at the spot already consecrated by the deaths of Ridley and Lati- mer. Priests and monks ' who did rue1 to see him go so wickedly to his death, ran after him, exhorting him, while time was, to remember himself/ But Cranmer, having flung down the burden of his shame, had re- covered his strength, and such words had no longer power to trouble him. He approached the stake with ' a cheerful countenance/ undressed in haste, and stood upright in his shirt. Soto and another Spanish friar continued expostulating ; but finding they could effect nothing, one said in Latin to the other, 'Let us go from him, for the devil is within him/ An Oxford theologian — his name was Ely — being more clamorous, drew from him only the answer that, as touching his recantation, ' he repented him right sore, because he knew that it was against the truth/
' Make short, make short ! ' Lord Williams cried, hastily.
1 Harleian MS., 422. Strype has misread the word into ' run,' losing the point of the expression.
1556.] THE MARTYRS. 599
The Archbishop shook hands with his friends ; Ely only drew back, calling, ' Recant, recant,' and bidding others not approach him.
' This was the hand that wrote it,' Cranmer said, extending his right arm ; ' this was the hand that wrote it, therefore it shall suffer first punishment.' Before his body was touched, he held the offending member steadily in the name, 'and never stirred nor cried/ The wood was dry and mercifully laid ; the fire was rapid at its work, and he was soon dead. ' His friends/ said a Catholic bystander, ' sorrowed for love, his enemies for pity, strangers for a common kind of humanity, whereby we are bound to one another/
So perished Cranmer. He was brought out, with the eyes of his soul blinded, to make sport for his enemies, and in his death he brought upon them a wider destruction than he had effected by his teaching while alive. Pole was appointed the next day to the See of Canterbury ; but in other respects the Court had over- reached themselves by their cruelty. Had they been contented to accept the recantation, they would have left the Archbishop to die broken-hearted, pointed at by the finger of pitying scorn ; and the Reformation would have been disgraced in its champion. They were tempted, by an evil spirit of revenge, into an act unsauc- tioned even by their own bloody laws ; and they gave him an opportunity of redeeming his fame, and of writ- ing his name in the roll of martyrs. The worth of a man must be measured by his life, not by his failure under a single and peculiar trial. The Apostle, thougr
6oo REIGN OF QUEEN MARY. [CH. 33.
forewarned, denied his Master on the first alarm of dan- ger ; yet that Master, who knew his nature in its strength and its infirmity, chose him for the rock on which He would build His Church.
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