illness, was brought prisoner from Ashridge to London, whither she arrived on the 23d of February. Mary declined seeing her, and caused her to be accommodated in a part of the palace from which neither she nor her servants could go out, without passing through the guards. The only part of her suite permitted to wait on her were two gentlemen, six ladies, and four servants, the rest of her train being lodged in the city of London. She was conveyed prisoner to the Tower on Sabbath, the 21st of March.

Among all the enemies of Elizabeth none was more persevering in pushing on the prosecution against her and Courtenay, and none more intent upon bringing both of them to capital punishment, than Simon Renard, ambassador of Charles V. He was extremely dissatisfied at the slowness of the proceedings, and blamed Bishop Gardiner as the main cause of the delay, representing the bishop as intending thereby to save the lives of the two distinguished prisoners. His letters to Charles evince throughout a spirit of intense hatred to Elizabeth, and an unmitigated desire to get rid of her as speedily as possible. This must have been in conformity with the counsels of Charles; for, had it not been so, Renard would hardly have dared, as he does, to dwell emphatically on the subject in his letters to his master. Charles hated Elizabeth because she was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, the cause of the divorce of his aunt from Henry VIII; and if the death of this princess would tend to establish the authority of Mary, and remove the obstacles to the popularity of the marriage of his son Philip with that queen, as he was erroneously taught to believe, he was prepared to make the sacrifice. It was well for Elizabeth that at this time Mary's councillors were divided on the Spanish match, one party favouring it, and another, headed by Gardiner, opposing it. Gardiner's hostility to the Spanish faction, and not any attachment he felt towards Elizabeth, led him, for a short time, to thwart their intentions of involving her and Courtenay in destruction.

1 See his letter to the emperor, dated March 14, 1554, in Tytler's Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. 1, p. 337. 2 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 342.

Gardiner, however, finding that Mary was bent upon marrying Philip of Spain, soon yielded in his opposition to the match, and fell in with the Spanish faction, which greatly increased Elizabeth's danger. Not being disposed to sacrifice Mary's favour and the advantages of place for the praise of justice and moderation towards Elizabeth, he abandoned the protection of the princess, and concurred with her enemies in the proposal to put her to death. Renard was strenuous in urging this sanguinary deed, as a preliminary step to Philip's landing in England as the queen's consort. "I observed to the queen," writes he to Charles, "that it was of the utmost consequence that the trials and execution of the criminals, especially of Courtenay and of the Lady Elizabeth, should be concluded before the arrival of his highness." To this the queen replied, “that she had neither rest nor sleep on account of her anxiety for the security of his highness at his coming." Gardiner, perceiving that Renard's proposition was not unacceptable to her majesty, recommended its adoption as a measure necessary for the public good. "As long," said he," as Elizabeth is alive, there is no hope of the tranquillity of the kingdom. If every body went as roundly to work, in providing the necessary remedies as I do, things would go on better." Gardiner's expressed apprehension that, from Elizabeth's popularity, new commotions might arise from renewed attempts to raise her to the throne, to the exclusion of her sister, who had lost the popular favour, was not unplausible, and Mary, who felt the force of his observation, was extremely desirous to find evidence of Elizabeth's being a party in Wyatt's rebellion, in order to bring her to the block. But, notwithstanding the most persevering efforts, no proof of her guilt could be discovered.

What, then, was to be done with a princess who had already eclipsed the queen in popular favour, and to whom many had begun

"If they let her go," says Renard, in another letter to Charles, "it seems evident that the heretics will proclaim her queen.' And in another he says, "Your majesty may well believe in what danger the queen is, so long as both [Elizabeth and Courtenay] are alive.”—Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 375, 400.

2 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 365.

to look as the chief hope of the nation from the tyranny with which it was now threatened? This was a perplexing question to Mary and her councillors. Failing to find adequate ground for Elizabeth's condemnation, Gardiner proposed to have her declared incapable of inheriting the crown. "Behold he whom you wot of" [Gardiner], says Renard, in a letter to Charles, dated 28th April, 1554, "comes to me since dinner with a sudden and strange proposal; saying that, since matters against Madame Elizabeth do not take the turn which was wished, there should be an act brought into Parliament to disinherit her." So determined was Gardiner upon this point, that he brought in a bill before the new Parliament for declaring her illegitimate and incapable of succeeding to the throne. The bill was rejected by a large majority. But still persisting in his object, and having recourse to his usual circuitous policy, he soon after brought in another bill for investing the queen with the power conferred upon her father by his servile Parliament--that of appointing a successor. In this again he was defeated. It being confidently believed that the queen, in default of children of her own body, would bequeath the crown to her husband Philip, the House of Commons, too just and patriotic to deprive Elizabeth of her rightful inheritance, and in dread of being brought under the yoke of a foreigu despot, threw out the bill.

Another mode of disposing of Elizabeth was to send her out of the kingdom, and to marry her to some foreign prince. Taking their lesson from the proverb, "Out of sight, out of mind," her enemies jadged that in that case she would soon be forgotten by the people, and might, without difficulty or danger, be excluded from the succession. "After having communicated at great length with Paget," says Renard, in a letter to Charles, dated 3d April, 1554, "on the Babject of the said Elizabeth, he told me that if they could not find proof enough to bring her to death, he saw no surer expedient to secure her than to send her out of the kingdom, to be married to a stranger," and he suggested "the Prince of Piedmont" for her con

1

Tytler's Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. ii.,
P. 382.

sort. This suggestion being adopted, she was offered her liberty on condition of her engaging to marry the Duke of Savoy. But she had penetration enough to see that under the guise of providing for her happiness by a suitable marriage, the design was to send her into a kind of honourable banishment, and ultimately to deprive her of the English crown. Oppressed and persecuted, therefore, though she was, and hourly in dread of being brought to the scaffold, she had the resolution to refuse-which she did modestly but decidedly -the offered matrimonial alliance, which, probably, most women in her circumstances would have gladly accepted.

In the Tower Elizabeth was kept under rigorous restraint; and when, a few weeks after her imprisonment, she obtained permission to walk in the royal apartments, the windows were to be shut, and she was not to be permitted to look out at them. When a further indulgence was granted her of walking in the garden of the Tower, strict orders were given that the gates should be barred, and that the keepers should watch the prisoners whose windows looked into the garden, in order to prevent them from interchanging any word or sign with the princess.3

4

After being imprisoned for two months in the Tower, Elizabeth was removed to Richmond Palace, where she was kept a prisoner for a short time, and then to Woodstock, where she was committed to the custody of Sir Henry Beddingfield. Here, as in the Tower, she was closely shut up, guarded night and day by soldiers, and secluded from seeing any but the few attendants who were allowed to remain about her person. She was also so strictly interdicted all epistolary correspondence, that Sir John Harrington, for simply carrying

1 Tytler's Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. ii., p. 367.

2 There were afterwards some deliberations, though no resolution was come to about sending her to the court of the Queen of Hungary, provided that queen would receive her. This Renard states in a letter to Charles, dated 9th June, 1554-Tytler's Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, vol. ii., p. 414.

3 Renard grudged her even this small favour. "Already," says he in a letter to Charles, dated 22d April, 1554, "she has liberty to walk in the garden of the Tower." • Lodge's Shrewsbury Papers, vol. i., p. 1.

letter to her, was, by the orders of Gardiner, thrown into the Tower, where he remained for twelve months. Nor was she particularly fortunate in her keeper, Sir Henry Beddingfield, who is said to have

treated her with great rudeness and severity, using his office more like a jailer than a gentleman. By this rigorous confinement her health became much impaired, and on the 8th of June, two physicians were sent from the court, who attended her for several days.

What she said to him, upon her accession to the throne, on dismissing him from the court, has been adduced in proof of this: "God forgive you what is past, as we do; and if we have any prisoner whom we would have straitly kept and hardly handled, we Will send for you." Some writers question the truth of Beddingfield's using her harshly, and affirm that these words were spoken to him in jest, resting, as their authority, upon the facts that he was afterwards frequently at her court, and that she honoured him with a visit on one of her progresses. But this is scarcely a sufficient vindication of Beddingfield; for Elizabeth, as is well known, is entitled to the praise of having generously forgiven such as had acted towards her with cruelty in the time of her sister; and she even placed some of them in honourable situations in or under her government.