led her horse in hand; and after her horse came another chariot covered all over with white silver cloth, wherein sat side by side, with smiling faces, the Princess Elizabeth and our old faircomplexioned and contented friend THE LADY ANNE OF CLEVES! On the morrow the queen went by water from Whitehall to the old palace of Westminster, and there remained till about noon, and then walked on foot upon blue cloth, which was railed on each side, to St. Peter's Church, where she was solemnly crowned and anointed by Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who took good care not to omit any of the ancient rites.' Five days after the coronation a parliament assembled at Westminster, and both lords and commons soon gave melancholy proofs that they had made up their minds to float with the prevailing current, and to make no efforts for the protection of anything except the estates of the church that had fallen into their own hands. As there was scarcely a member in the upper house but had shared in the spoil in the time of Henry and Edward, and as it was known that their only anxiety was for the preservation of what they had gotten, no apprehension was entertained of any serious opposition on the part of the peers; and as for the commons, they had long been timid Edward III., and every species of felony not set down in the statute-book previously to the first year of Henry VIII. They next declared the queen to be legitimate, and annulled the divorce of her mother pronounced by Cranmer, greatly blaming the archbishop for that deed. Then, by one vote, they repealed all the statutes of the late reign that in any way regarded religion, thus returning to the point at which matters stood in the last year of the reign of Henry VIII., when most of the offices and ceremonies of the Roman church, the doctrine of transubstantiation, the celibacy of the clergy, and other matters odious to Protestants, were fully insisted upon. The queen neither renounced the title of supreme head of the church-a title most odious, frightful, or ridiculous to Catholic ears-nor pressed QUEEN MARY.-After Zucchero for a restitution of the abbey lands; though, to give proof of her own disinterestedness, she prepared to restore of her own free-will all property of that kind which had been attached to the crown. It was quite certain that the lords, who were so compliant in matters of doctrine and faith, that concerned their souls, would have offered a vigorous resistance to any bill that touched their estates or their goods and chattels; and Mary had been well warned on this point. Gardiner, who had already dismissed all such and subservient in the extreme, and on the pre- | of the Protestant bishops as would not conform or sent occasion, out of a prudent regard to their personal safety, those who were not Papists had contrived to keep away from parliament. The very first act of the new parliament was decisive: proceedings were opened in each of the houses by celebrating high mass; and the men who, a few years before, had voted the observance to be damnable, all fell on their knees at the elevation of the host. Only Taylor, Bishop of Lincoln, refused to kneel; for which he was harshly treated, and kicked or thrust out of the House of Lords. The first bill that was passed, in imitation of what was done by the Protestant party at the accession of the late king, abolished every species of treason not contained in the statute of enter into a compromise, now summoned the convocation, to settle once more all doubts and disputations concerning the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. With the exception of a few words spoken by John Ailmer, Richard Cheney, John Philpot, James Hadden, and Walter Philips, the Papists had it all their own way. Harpsfield, the Bishop of London's chaplain, who opened the convocation with a sermon, set no limits to his exultation; and, in the vehemence of his joy and gratitude, he compared Queen Mary to all the females of greatest celebrity in Holy Writ and the Apocrypha, not even excepting the Virgin Mary. It would scarcely be expected by people of ordinary imagination that it was possible for any one to surpass the hyperbole of Harpsfield; and yet this feat seems fairly to have been performed by Weston, the prolocutor. 2 Parl. Jour.; Despatches of Noailles; Burnet. ນາຊ 2 After these orations the convocation proceeded | preaching at Paul's Cross in defence of Queen to business, and in some matters came to impor- Jane's title, and for "heretical pravity;" Poynet, tant decisions without waiting for the authority who had held the bishopric of Winchester during either of the queen or the parliament, being sure Gardiner's deprivation and imprisonment, was of the one and entertaining a well-merited con- also committed to prison for being married. tempt for the other. They declared the Book Taylor, Bishop of Lincoln, who had refused to of Common Prayer to be an abomination; they kneel at the elevation of the host in the House called for the immediate suppression of the re- of Lords, was deprived "for thinking amiss conformed English Catechism; they recommended cerning the eucharist;" Hooper, Bishop of Worthe most violent measures against all such of the cester and Gloucester, for having a wife, and clergy as would not forthwith dismiss their other demerits; Harley, Bishop of Hereford, for wives, and adopt the Catholic opinion as to the wedlock and heresy; Ferrar, Bishop of St. David's, real presence. In London and the great cities, for the same offences; Bird, Bishop of Chester, where the Protestant doctrine had taken deeper for marriage. Coverdale of Exeter, the transroot, the change, though rapid, was somewhat lator of the Bible, was also ejected and thrown less sudden; but in the rural districts generally, into prison, where he lay two years, not without where the population had never been properly danger of being burned. Barlow of Bath and converted, the mass re-appeared at once, and Wells, and Bush of Bristol, voluntarily resigned every part of the Reformed service was thrown their sees. aside even before any express orders to that effect from court or from convocation. Hosts of priests, and particularly the residue of the abbeys and monasteries, who had conformed to save their lives or to obtain the means of supporting themselves, declared that they had acted under compulsion, and joyfully returned to their Latin masses, their confessions, their holy water, and the rest. Many again, who really preferred the Reformed religion, were fain to conform to what they disapproved of, just as their opponents had done in the preceding reign, and from the same worldly motives. But still there were many married priests who would on no account part with their wives, or receive, as the rules of salvation, tenets which, for years, they had condemned as the inventions of the devil. Some, also, there were who had made to themselves, by their intolerance in the days of their prosperity, bitter enemies among those who were now in the ascendent. The prisons began to fill with Protestant clergymen of these classes; and others of them, being deprived of their livings, were thrown upon the highways to beg or starve, as the monks had been in the days of Henry VIII., their condition being so much the worse as they had wives and children. About half of the English bishops, bending to the storm, conformed, in all outward appearances, with the triumphant sect. Those who did not, or who were peculiarly obnoxious to the dominant party, were deprived of their sees and whatever they possessed, and cast into prison. We have already seen Cranmer and Latimer sent to the Tower. Shortly after, Holgate, Archbishop of York, was committed to the same state prison for marriage; and Ridley, Bishop of London, for In this number were some who were really Catholics all along, and who had strained their consciences by conformity in the Lust reigns. Insincere then, they were sincere now. On the 13th of November Cranmer was brought to trial for high treason, together with the Lady Jane Grey, her youthful husband Lord Guildford Dudley, and his brother Lord Ambrose Dudley. They were all condemned to suffer death as traitors, by the very men who a short time before had acted with them, and had sworn allegiance to Jane; but the youth of three of these victims to the ambition and imbecility of others excited a lively sympathy in the nation, and the queen sent them back to the Tower, apparently with no intention of ever bringing them to the block. Even the fourth victim, Craumer, was respited, and was pardoned of his treason; but he was sent back to the Tower on the equally perilous charge of heresy. He was strongly advised by his friends, both before his apprehension and also now, to attempt to escape out of the kingdom, but he is said to have replied, that his trust was in God, and in his holy word, and that he had resolved to show a constancy worthy of a Christian prelate. He repeatedly professed to have a great desire to be admitted to a private audience of the queen; but Mary had no inclination to receive the man who had sealed her mother's dishonour, and the party about her seconded this strong and natural feeling of aversion. Before parliament was dissolved the attainder of the old Duke of Norfolk was legally reversed, it being declared, with some reason, that no special matter had been proved either against him or his son the Earl of Surrey, except the wearing of part of a coat-of-arms. On the 21st of December, a few days after the dissolution of parliament, the church service began to be performed in Latin throughout England. At the same time the Lady Jane had the liberty of the Tower granted her, being allowed to walk in the Strype: Collier: Soames, Hist. Reform.: Blunt. queen's garden and on the hill; the Lord Guildford Dudley and his brother were treated more leniently than they had been; and the Marquis of Northampton was set at liberty altogether. This moderation was a matter of marvel in those days, nor did the queen fail in making a favourable impression by remitting the subsidy voted to her brother by the preceding parliament: but other circumstances sufficiently indicated that Mary was determined not only to re-establish the Roman church, but to prevent the teaching and preaching of the Reformed doctrine. There was scarcely by this time a pulpit in the kingdom that was not silenced; and Gardiner, Bonner, Tonstal, Day, Heath, Vesey, and others of the now restored Catholic bishops, were not likely to permit them to be eloquent again. The men of Suffolk, whose loyalty had placed her on the throne, ventured to recal to her mind her solemn promises given to them on that occasion, that she would not change the Reformed religion as established under her brother. One of these remonstrants, who was bolder than the rest, was set in the pillory; the others were brow-beaten and insulted. Judge Hales, who had defended the queen's title with a most rare courage, was arbitrarily arrested and thrown into a noisome prison as soon as he showed an opposition to these illegal, rash, and dangerous proceedings. The upright judge was treated with such severity that his body and mind became alike disordered - he fell into a frenzy, and attempted suicide by cutting his throat. He was at length liberated, but it was too late; insanity had taken a firm hold of him, and he terminated his life by drowning himself.'. Mary, who had been affianced in her infancy to the Emperor Charles, to the French king, to the dauphin, and who, in the course of the last two reigns, had been disappointed of several other husbands, now determined to marry, in order, it appears, to make sure of a Catholic succession. It should seem, however, that she was not wholly devoid of the tender passion, for it is said, on good authority, that she conceived an affection for the son of the Marquis of Exeter--murdered in her father's days-the handsome and accomplished young Edward Courtenay, whom she had liberated from the Tower on her first coming to London. Upon this kinsman, whose flourishing youth and courteous and pleasant disposition delighted the whole court, she lavished many proofs of favour: she hastened to restore to him the title of Earl of Devon, to which she added the whole of those patrimonial estates which his father's attainder had vested in the crown; and when people spoke or whispered of the wisdom and fitness of an English queen marrying a great English nobleman, descended (as she was herself by her grandmother) from the royal house of York, her countenance relaxed instead of increasing its habitual severity. But the accomplished Earl of Devon soon became suspected of indulging in anti-Catholic notions, and, what was almost as bad, he betrayed, as is said, a preference for the queen's half-sister Elizabeth. If there had been little affection between the royal ladies before, this circumstance was not likely to increase it; and a few months after Mary's accession, we find Elizabeth retiring to her house of Ashridge in Buckinghamshire, attended by Sir Thomas Pope and Sir John Gage, who were appointed by the queen to keep a watchful eye over her. The Emperor Charles, who had been solemnly affianced to her himself nearly thirty years before, was now most anxious to secure the hand of Mary for his son, the proud, the bigoted, the crafty, and cruel Philip, who then happened to be a widower. As Mary consulted her mother's nephew in all her difficulties, Charles was enabled to press this suit for his son with good effect. The imperial ambassadors had constant access, by night as well as by day, to the royal but elderly maiden; and one night, within three months after her accession, before any public negotiation had taken place, and without so much as consulting her council, Mary solemnly promised to marry Philip. For some time this engagement was concealed, but when it was whispered abroad it excited almost universal discontent, for the character of Philip, though not yet fully developed in action, was well known; and it was reasonably suspected that the once free kingdom of England would be wholly enslaved and made dependent upon Spain and the emperor. With these views the match was odious even to most of the Catholics, whose patriotism rose triumphantly above their bigotry. In the face of these feelings it was judged prudent to proceed slowly and with caution. The match, however, was spoken of in parliament, and the commons even petitioned against it—a circumstance which is supposed to have hurried on the dissolution. rations, had, after much suit on the emperor's men, and forty citizens of good substance, was and Prince of Spain's behalf, determined, with the consent of the council and nobility, to match herself with the said prince "in most godly and lawful matrimony." After this exordium Gardiner explained the conditions of the treaty, STEPHEN GARDINER, Bishop of Winchester.-After Holbein. which, to disarm opposition in England, had been made wonderfully mild, moderate, and generous on the part of Philip, who, of course, would reserve to himself the right of altering it thereafter as he should see occasion and find means for so doing. It was agreed that though Philip should have the honour and title of King of England, the government should rest wholly with the queen, he (Philip) aiding her highness in the happy administration of her realms and dominions; that no Spaniard or other foreigner should enjoy any office in the kingdom; that no innovations should be made in the national laws, customs, and privileges; that the queen should never be carried abroad without her free consent, nor any of the children she might have, without consent of the nobility (there was no mention made of the commons, nor indeed of the parliament). It was further agreed that Philip, in the unlikely case of Mary's surviving him, should settle upon her a jointure of £60,000 a-year; that the male issue of this marriage should inherit both Burgundy and the Low Countries; and that if Don Carlos, Philip's son by his former marriage, should die and leave no issue, the queen's issue, whether male or female, should inherit Spain, Sicily, Milan, and other dominions attached to the Spanish monarchy! On the next day the lordmayor of London, with his brethren the alder Rymer summoned to court, where Gardiner repeated his oration, desiring them all to behave themselves like good subjects, with humbleness and rejoicing for so happy an event. On this same day Robert Dudley, one of the sons of the late Duke of Northumberland, was condemned as a traitor, the Earl of Sussex pronouncing sentence that he was to be drawn, hanged, bowelled, and quartered.2 But if the treaty of marriage had been tenfold more brilliant in promises, it would have failed in satisfying the English people. Within five days the court was startled by intelligence that Sir Peter Carew was up in arms in Devonshire, resolute to resist the Prince of Spain's coming, and that he had taken the city and castle of Exeter. This news was followed, on the 25th, by intelligence that Sir Thomas Wyatt had taken the field with the same determination in Kent; and the mayor and aldermen, who had so recently been commanded to rejoice and make glad, were now told to shut the gates of the city, and keep good watch and ward, lest the rebels should enter. Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet of that name, who has been associated in glory with the Earl of Surrey, was a very loyal knight of Kent, and, apparently, a Papist;3 but he had conceived a frightful notion of the cruel bigotry and grasping ambition of the Spanish court. Although connected by blood with the Dudleys, he had refused to co-operate with the Duke of Northumberland in the plot for giving the crown to Lady Jane Grey, and had even been forward to proclaim Queen Mary in the town of Maidstone, before knowing that she had been proclaimed elsewhere. Wyatt appears to have been a brave and honest, but rash man; and the majority of those who had engaged to co-operate with him, from different parts of the kingdom, were either scoundrels without faith, or cowards. The highest name of all was both: this was the Duke of Suffolk, Lady Jane Grey's father, who, to the astonishment of most men, had been liberated from the Tower, and pardoned by Queen Mary. On the 25th of January, the very day on which it was known that Sir Thomas Wyatt had risen in Kent, this duke fled into Warwickshire, where, with his brothers the Lord John Grey and the Lord Leonard Grey, he made proclamation against the queen's marriage, and called the people to arms; "but the people inclined not to him." The plan of the conspirators seems to have been, that Wyatt should endeavour to seize the Tower, where Lady Jane and her husband lay, and get possession of the 2 Stow. 3 He was a commander at Henry VIII.'s siege of Boulogne, and made himself conspicuous by his daring. spirits were cheered by intelligence that the Duke of Suffolk had been discomfited in the midland counties, and that Sir Peter Carew and his friends had been put to flight in the west. She issued a proclamation of pardon to all the Kentish men with the exception of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir George Harper, and the other gentlemen, offering as a reward to the man that should take or kill Wyatt, lands worth £100 a-year to him and his heirs for ever. On the 3d of February, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, Wyatt and his host (who are differently estimated at 2000 and at 8000 men), marched from Deptford, along the river side, towards Southwark. Wyatt placed two pieces of artillery in battery at the Southwark end of the bridge, and caused a deep trench to be dug between the bridge and the place where he was. Contrary to his expectations, the Londoners did not throw open their gates, and he had not resolution sufficient to attempt an assault by the bridge. He again lost two whole days, and on the morning of the third day the garrison in the Tower city of London; that the Duke of Suffolk should | the same day on which she made this visit her raise the midland counties, and Carew the west: but in execution they proceeded with a miserable want of concert and arrangement. On the 29th the old Duke of Norfolk, with the Earl of Arundel, marched from London against Sir Thomas Wyatt, who had advanced to Rochester, and taken the castle. When the royalists reached Rochester bridge they found it defended with three or four double cannons, and by a numerous force of Kentish men. Norfolk sent forward a herald with a proclamation of pardon to all such as should quietly return to their homes, but Wyatt would not permit the herald to read this paper to the people. Norfolk then ordered an assault; but when five hundred Londoners-the trained bands of the city-led by Captain Brett, reached the head of the bridge, they suddenly stopped, and their captain, turning round at their head, and lowering his sword, said, "Masters, we go about to fight against our native countrymen of England and our friends, in a quarrel unrightful and wicked; for they do but consider the great miseries which are like to fall upon us, if we shall be under the rule of the proud Span-opened a heavy fire of great pieces of ordnance, iards; wherefore, I think no English heart ought to say against them. I and others will spend our blood in their quarrel." He had scarcely finished, when the band of Londoners turned their ordnance against the rest of the queen's forces, shouting every one of them, "A Wyatt! a Wyatt!" At this defection the Duke of Norfolk and his officers turned and fled, leaving ordnance and all their ammunition behind them. The Londoners crossed the bridge, and three-hoping to cross the river by the bridge there, fourths of the regular troops, among whom were and to fall upon London and Westminster from some companies of the royal guard, went after the west. It was four o'clock in the afternoon them, and took service with Sir Thomas Wyatt (on the 6th day of February) when he reached and the insurgents.' When the intelligence Kingston, and found about thirty feet of the reached London all was fright and confusion, bridge broken down, and an armed force on the especially at the court, where almost the only opposite bank to prevent his passage. He placed person that showed fortitude and composure was his guns in battery, and drove away the troops; the queen herself. Wyatt ought to have made a with the help of some sailors he got possession of forced march upon London during this conster- a few boats and barges, and repaired the bridge; nation, but he loitered on his way: he did not but it was eleven o'clock at night before these reach Greenwich and Deptford till three days operations were finished, and his men were sorely after the affair at Rochester bridge; and then he fatigued and dispirited. Allowing them no time lay three whole days doing nothing, and allow- for rest for his plan was to turn back upon ing the government to make their preparations. London by the left bank of the Thames, and to The queen, with her lords and ladies, rode from reach the city gates before sunrise-he marched Westminster into the city, where she declared to them on through a dreary winter night. When the mayor, aldermen, and livery, that she meant he was within six miles of London the carriage not otherwise to marry than as her council should of one of his great brass guns broke down, and think both honourable and advantageous to the he very absurdly lost some hours in remounting realm-that she could still continue unmarried, the piece; and so, when he reached Hyde Park, as she had done so long-and therefore she it was broad daylight, and the royal forces, comtrusted that they would truly assist her in re-manded by the Earl of Pembroke, were ready to pressing such as rebelled on this account. On Stow; Holinshed; Godwin. culverins, and demi-cannons full against the foot of the bridge and against Southwark, and the two steeples of St. Olave's and St. Mary Overy. As soon as the people of Southwark saw this, they no longer treated Wyatt as a welcome guest, but, making a great noise and lamentation, they entreated him to move elsewhere. Telling the people that he would not have them hurt on his account, he marched away towards Kingston, 2 Several of Carew's party played him false. He escaped to France. |