rity, his cause was submitted to the infallible wisdom of the papal chair. After a short delay the sentence of deprivation and degradation was pronounced, and Master Thomas Cranmer, now neither priest nor bishop, was condemned to the same fate with his friends. But the mere death of his body would not satisfy the refined malignity of his enemies. Naturally of a mild and feeble temperament, and now reduced to great bodily weakness by the anxieties and trials he had undergone, he was first sent back to a dungeon, where the harshness of his treatment and insufficiency of his food still further diminished his strength, and then they took him to the spacious house and pleasant grounds of the Dean of Christchurch. There he had kind and friendly treatment, he played at bowls, and entered into familiar discussions with his host and his visitors, and over him all the time hung the dreadful sentence under which, at any time, he might be hurried to the pile. "Life is very sweet," they said, "and you are only sixtyseven. You have many years to live, and the queen is most anxious to see you renounce your errors." The old man yielded, and signed a paper of recantation; and the queen, in the midst of her rejoicings over the recovery of the lost sheep, gave secret orders to the provost of Eton to prepare his condemned sermon. Having saved his soul, she was more than ever determined to have his life.

The smiling Dean of Christchurch and the sly ecclesiastics, who thought they had convinced the redoubtable Cranmer, and were proud of their convert, brought him into St. Mary's Church to hear the sermon prepared for the occasion, and afterwards to make open acknowledgment of his errors. But in Cranmer the bitterness of death had passed away along with the hope of life. He spoke in that howling assembly with dauntless words and high, recanting his recantation, and confessing the weakness of his flesh, and his foolish fear of what man could do unto him. He was seized in the middle of his speech, and carried off by raging priest and shrieking

A.D. 1556.]

EXECUTION OF CRANMER.

469 undergraduate, and fettered to the same stake that had seen the martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer five months before. "Hand!" he said, pushing it into the flames, "that didst sign that shameful apostasy, be first to suffer for thy deed." And as the flames rose, and the smoke enclosed him from the furious and learned mob, he was only heard to say "Lord, receive my spirit!"—and the Reformation was secure. If he had lived to be a pauper dependent on the bounty of his foes, and a scoff and byeword to his late adherents, a stain might have abided on the cause, from which it would have taken years to cleanse it. Men's hearts were revolted by the ruthlessness of the execution, and the unfair means used to obtain his recantation. In the fires of his death the greatness of his services and the modest benevolence of his life were purified from the dross of weakness and contradiction with which they were accompanied, and his disciples could look without a blush to a teacher who had so nobly redeemed his faults.

Compared to others of his rank and station, Cranıner appears a miracle of constancy and perseverance. Lords and ladies were almost everywhere on the side of the queen. Elizabeth herself was an assiduous embroiderer of petticoats for female saints, and a devout walker in solemn processions. Cecil, Sadler, and all the great names we shall meet with in the next reign, were vacillating bondsmen of the pope; and yet, far down in the great and honest heart of the English people, the detestation of popery grew with every fresh batch of sufferers sacrificed to maintain its power. It was seennot for the first nor the last time in our rough island story— that subjection to a foreign pontiff is equivalent to a loss of independence; and that a separation from Rome is a hostage to the people that a national church shall be the servant, and not the master, of the State.

§ 13. Of this reign, and of the place of England in general history, there is little left to tell. It is a tale of religious

struggle, and leaves its indelible mark upon the chief personage of the story in the title of Bloody Mary. With the long list in her hand of the two hundred and eighty-eight persons who had died at the stake; the multitudes who had been tortured and sunk in dungeons for their faith; and even the bodies of the dead which had been dug from their graves and committed to the flames, she was justified, perhaps, in expecting a miraculous interference in her behalf; and she joyfully proclaimed that heaven had vouchsafed her an heir. The child, she said, leapt into existence when she received the blessing of Cardinal Pole, when he first appeared in England; and from that period she had had occasional evidences that the prince was about to be born, and debar Elizabeth for ever from the throne. While the priests were full of joy at this divine interposition, the doctors perceived it was the dropsy, and Elizabeth was looked on with more respect.

§ 14. Philip came over in the spring of 1557 to conquer the public admiration by the greatness he had attained; for his father had retired to a cell, where the ambition of an emperor degenerated into the puerile fanaticism of a monk, and left him Lord of Spain and Flanders, the beautiful kingdom of Naples, and the immeasurable realms beyond the Atlantic. The doting love of the queen needed no inducement to fulfil all his wishes; but Parliament was not so complying. In spite of the majesty of the Most Catholic king, and the entreaties of their own sovereign, they were loth to draw the sword on compulsion, or go to war with France for merely Spanish interests.

§ 15. The national valour, however, showed itself at St. Quentin, where the English auxiliaries, few as they were, contributed to the great victory which crowned the Spanish The Duke of Guise, the best general of France, was called to the head of the army to retrieve the great disaster, and Philip was either timid or cautious, and made no use of his success. Guise, however, was neither cautious nor timid. He

arms.

A.D. 1558.] LOSS OF CALAIS-MARY'S DEATH.

471

learned that the garrison of Calais was almost entirely withdrawn during the winter, and resolved to take it by surprise. Scarcely were the churches of London silent after the Te Deums for St. Quentin, when news came that the French had crossed the marshes, on which Calais relied for safety, in a hard frost; and that the Fleur-de-lis hung once more from the walls of the last of all the foreign possessions of the crown. The English standard had floated on them since Edward III. had added it to his continental states. All had now gone, and Mary was in despair. Other things turned against her. The Dauphin of France married the hapless and beautiful Mary of Scotland, now in her sixteenth year, and the northern boundaries of England were exposed. The illusions of her life disappeared from her one by one. She knew that her husband's coldness had grown into dislike. She discovered that her hopes of offspring were the result of disease; she knew that her successor, whom she hated on account of her youth and talents as much as on account of her birth, would undo all the religious work she had done. When the dark hour came, she dwelt on none of these sources of disquiet but the falsehood of Philip and the failure of her arms. "When I die," she said, with the only touch of patriotism or English feeling recorded of her, "you will find Calais on my heart."

472

CHAPTER V.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

FROM A.D. 1558 TO A.D. 1603.

CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS.

FRANCE -Francis II.; Charles IX.; Henry III.; Henry IV. (the Great).

SCOTLAND.-Mary; James VI., who succeeds to the throne of England in 1603.

SPAIN.-Philip II.; Philip III.

Of Navarre.--Henry III., of Bourbon, who, in 1589, became King of France, under the title of Henry IV. EMPERORS OF GERMANY.-Ferdinand I.; Maximilian II.; Rudolph II.

POPES.-Paul IV.; Pius IV.; Pius V.; Gregory XIII.; Sixtus V.; Urban VII.; Gregory XIV.; Innocent IX.; Clement VIII.

§ 1. Accession of Elizabeth. Her judicious choice of counsellors, and wise policy. 2. Insolence of the Pope. The English Church restored to the condition it was in during the time of Edward VI. The queen's supremacy declared.-§ 3. Peace with France. Disturbed state of Scotland. - § 4. Contentions respecting the possession of Scotland. § 5. The combinations of Popery against Protestantism. -§ 6. The French invade Scotland. Claims of Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne.-§ 7. Elizabeth assists the Protestants of Normandy. Her growing popularity.-§ 8. Mary of Scotland leaves France on the death of her husband Francis. Her character and reckless behaviour. Murder of her husband Darnley, and her marriage with Bothwell Seeks an asylum at the British Court. Her long imprisonment.-§ 9. Conspiracies in Mary's favour. Energetic measures of the queen. The rebels defeated, and the leaders executed.- 10. Conspiracy of the Duke of Norfolk, and his execution. -§ 11. Bitter hostility of the Catholic powers of France and Spain against Protestantism. Massacre of St. Bartholomew.-§ 12. Elizabeth's active support of the Protestant cause at home and abroad. Sir Francis Drake.-§ 13. The commencement of our maritime and colonial enterprise. Sir Walter Raleigh.-§ 14. Elizabeth accepts the protectorate of the Netherlands. Romish plots for effecting § 15. The Babington conspiracy defeated.—

her assassination.

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