ficial to the country at large, nor that mendicancy, even under the pretence of religious humility, was injurious in the long run to the recipient as well as the giver. They only saw a harsh measure dealt out to the people who had lived near them all their lives, and had been the newsmongers, and sport promoters, and show-givers of the neighbourhood. Many persons of higher station who had not shared in the Church spoils encouraged the spirit of resistance to what the dispossessed brotherhoods branded with the name of sacrilege, so that there was a great mass of anger and discontent, which only waited a fitting time to explode; and as if conscious of this fact, Cranmer put forth increased energy in the measures he introduced. Some secret sympathy, for which it is difficult to account, prevented the dominant party from treating the recusant Catholics with the rigour they showed towards other sects. No Roman Catholic was put to death on religious grounds during the whole reigns of Henry and Edward. Henry indeed was a Roman Catholic, in all but obedience to the Pope, to his last hour, and Cranmer, who was the moving authority on Church matters in Edward's time, retained so much reverence for the faith of which he had formerly been himself a conscientious adherent, that he would not carry the law to extremes against his ancient brethren; but against heretics of a lower grade his scruples were not so strong. His enemies accused him (falsely, as is now proved), of using his eloquence and authority in persuading the young king to sign the death-warrant of an enthusiast of the name of Joan Boucher, who denied the divinity of Christ. They said that Edward threw the responsibility of the woman's blood upon his adviser; but all that is now believed is that after great efforts were made to obtain a recantation, he allowed the law to take its course on the unhappy Joan, and showed that it was not the abstract love of free discussion which deterred him from sending his more illustrious antagonists to the pile. A.D. 1550-1553. INFLUENCE OF CRANMER. 457 The utmost he did against his resisting suffragans was to deprive and imprison them. Bonner and Gardner, Heath and Day, were all in the Tower, and good men and true selected to fill their dioceses. Ridley, Hooper, Latimer, Coverdale, and Cranmer himself, brought scholarship, earnestness, and self-devotion to the cause they espoused, which they must have felt to be pregnant with danger, for nothing lay between them and the vengeance of the next heir to the throne, the Princess Mary, except the life of a sickly boy. They therefore directed their efforts to the conversion of the princess herself. But she was the daughter of Catherine of Arragon, nieee of Charles V., sole hope in England of the glorious Catholic cause, and she welcomed persecution as a new thorn in her crown. Cranmer was repelled by her firmness, and the threat, at the same time, of a war with the German Empire. Already the question had become one of foreign policy as well as domestic order. Every movement of the English reformers was carefully watched by kings and statesmen as an indication of the probable action of the country on continental affairs. Cranmer's proceedings, therefore, were more important at this time, than the gradual innovations he introduced might have been expected to be, in Madrid or Paris. The nomination of bishops by the Crown, the suppression of the mass, the caution against the abuse of images, and the slight alterations in the ancient organization and public ceremonial of the Church might appear to refer almost entirely to England itself, or at most to her relations with the Sovereign Pontiff; but in all European States, and especially in Germany, where Charles was using religious dissensions to curtail the liberties of the different electorates and principalities of which he was the head, the smallest changes were followed with an anxiety far deeper than the ecclesiastical merits of the dispute would have produced. Other steps were taken by the archbishop to advance the cause he had at heart. § 8. Learned men were brought over to England to spread a knowledge of the new doctrines; for Cranmer was painfully aware of the almost incredible ignorance of the great majority of the clergy, whose whole accomplishment, under the old routine system of the breviary, had not extended beyond the faculty of reading the words of their prayers. So few indeed were judged capable of preaching, that a book of homilies was prepared for their use, in which the distinctive doctrines of the Reformation were clearly set forth. A few more years of the gradual extension of knowledge, and the benefits of royal countenance and support, might have settled the Reformation beyond the chances of a reaction; but this was not to be. § 9. Edward fell into a decline at the beginning of the year 1553, and terrible forebodings fell upon the rulers in Church and State. Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, procured a gift of all the great lands belonging to the princely See of Durham, and, throwing for the most desperate stakes, married his younger son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to a cousin of the royal house, Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, and grandchild, by her mother, of the Princess Mary of England, sister of Henry VIII. While the boyking was dying, Northumberland prevailed on him to make a disposition of the crown in favour of his daughter-inlaw, which by force and threatening he induced the Council to ratify, and on the demise of Edward had the boldness or madness to proclaim her queen. (July 6, 1553.) Of Navarre. Joan of Albret and her husband; An- EMPERORS OF GERMANY.-Charles V., King of Spain. § 1. State of parties in England. Proclamation of Lady Jane Grey. Want of enthusiasm in her favour.-§ 2. Accession of Mary.§ 3. Northumberland and his abettors tried and executed. Gardner made Chancellor.-§ 4. Mary restores the Popish religion, and negotiates a marriage with Philip of Spain.-§ 5. General dissatisfaction. Wyatt's rebellion. His capture and execution.-§ 6. Mary's persecuting spirit. § 7. Imprisonment of the Princess Elizabeth. Execution of Lady Jane Grey and numerous others.—§ 8. Acquittal of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, and the persecutions of the jury.§ 9. The Queen's marriage with Philip of Spain. Personal appearance of the two royal personages.-§ 10. Cardinal Pole. The Roman Catholic Church once more dominant in the land.-§ 11. The reigu of terror begins; the fires of Smithfield, and execution of Rogers, Ridley, and Latimer. Resistance of the people.-§ 12. Trial, recantation, and execution of Cranmer.-§ 13. The horrible persecutions of "bloody Mary's" reign. Her reported pregnancy.-§ 14. Visit of her husband Philip of Spain. War with France at the instigation of Philip. 15. The French defeated at St. Quintin. Calais surrendered to the French. Lamentations of Mary. Her death. § 1. BOLDNESS or madness, it depended entirely on the result which of these descriptions should apply to the Duke of Northumberland's action. If fear of popery, as represented by the Princess Mary, and desire to retain the new pro prietors in possession of the Church lands and livings they had obtained, had been strong enough to gain a national corroboration of the formal instrument under which he proclaimed the accession of Lady Jane Grey, history would have looked on him as a great and sagacious statesman, who saw the fitting time for converting a dubious title into a true one. But we have seen that Protestantism was not understood among the body of the people; the new proprietors had alienated their neighbours by abridging their ancient privileges; parishes lay at such a distance from each other, and even towns had so little communication, that there must have been large tracts of country where the late proceedings had never been heard of; and therefore it was impossible to get up any enthusiasm on behalf of a Protestant defender of the faith, without any hereditary right to the throne, amidst such a mass of ignorance, apathy, and discontent. Honest English sense of justice also, and the regard for lofty birth which has always distinguished our countrymen, were revolted by an attempt to exclude the eldest sister of Edward, and the daughter of a royal pair, in favour of the nominee of an unnatural brother on his death-bed, and wife of the grandson of Dudley the informer. When Northumberland, therefore, after concealing the death of Edward for two days, and failing in his attempt to entrap the two princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, into his power, ordered the pursuivants and heralds to proclaim Queen Jane, there was an ominous want of enthusiasm among the people. All the beauty, learning, and innocence which bestow so much interest on the person and fortunes of Lady Jane Grey were then unknown. She was considered an usurper, and shared in the obloquy of her father-in-law. The recurrence to the rule of hereditary succession was a step on the way to liberty, as it ignored the power of kings to leave these realms by will; and the falling away from the gentle bride of Lord Guildford Dudley, who had never sighed for a crown, but |