abroad,--that she had scarcely any sleep, a less than usual,-that she had so great a mouth and stomach that she was obliged to every instant in order that the burning p which she was often oppressed, might no Some people, he said, were of opinion tha had been brought on by her displeasure touc cession; some, that it had been caused by the her council having constrained her (agains and inclination) to grant a pardon to the Ear while others affirmed that she was possessed the death of the Earl of Essex. "It is ce the ambassador, "that a deep melancholy is countenance and actions. It is, however, probable that the sufferings incident to her fear of death, are the chief causes of all." despatch he says that the queen, who wo medicine whatever, was given up by the phys would not take to her bed, for fear, as some a prophecy she should die in that bed. two days," he adds, "she has been sitting on the floor, neither rising nor lying down, he most always in her mouth, her eyes open a the ground. Yet, as this morning band has gone to her, I believe she means to fully as she has lived." On the 21st of March she was put to bed force, and listened attentively to the praye courses of the Bishop of Chichester, the Bish don, but chiefly to Whitgift, archbishop of It is scarcely necessary to put the reader on against an over-positive belief in any of the what passed in these moments of mystery and the people about her were determined to ma the things that made most for their interest The narrative more generally received is, t 22nd of March, Secretary Cecil, with the Lo and the Lord Keeper, approached the dying begged her to name her successor: she started said, "I told you my seat has been the seat of The lords, not un will have no rascal to succeed me!" sleep, and ate much co bed, partly by prayers and dis Bishop of Lon of Canterbury r on his guard the accounts of and awe, when o make her say rest and plans. s, that, on the Lord Admiral Eng queen and ted, and then of kings;-I * Camden. - Somers. Birch.-D'Isracli.-Raumer. Lodge. THE history both of the changes that took this period in the constitution of the national also, to some extent, of the new opinions, th sies, and the persecutions out of which they which they were accompanied, has necessaril in the preceding chapter. The task that re here is little more than to fill up the outline already drawn. Throughout the reign of Henry VII., h the first half of that of his son and successor say, for rather more than a third of the prese the ancient Roman faith was still both the versal belief of the people, and the yet unn omnipotent religion of the law. As often ha institutions in the last stage of their existence and glory of the church of Rome, in Engla to blaze out to a new and unprecedented heig ately before its downfall. It is enough to this was the age of Wolsey, the most go puissant prelate that had arisen since Becket highest and most influential officers of the stat for the most part, in the hands of churchmen: monopolised, of course, the management of e affairs, the civil affairs of the kingdom were large extent, under their conduct and direct were generally both the ministers of the crow and its ambassadors and most trusted agents ab preference, which they had formerly dema struggled for so obstinately as their right, was fully accorded to them on the more reasonable their superior qualifications, a ground which 1. IGION. at took place during national church, and nions, the controver ch they arose, or by ecessarily been give that remains to us Outline that has been and wisest kings-those from whom they would have experienced the most determined resistance to their pretensions of a more absolute kind-were the readiest to admit. Thus, the politic, circumspect, and acquisitive character of Henry VII. made him a favourer both of the church and of religion, without being either really religious or superstitious. This great king was a distinguished upholder of the authority of the laws in ordinary cases. Among his other legal improvements, Henry attempted at one time "to pare a little," as Bacon expresses it, "the privilege of clergy, ordaining that clerks convict should be burned in the hand, both because they might taste of some corporal punishment, and that they might carry a brand of infamy." But all his known favour for, and patronage of, the church, did not prevent this innovation from being denounced as a daring infringement of the rights of the ecclesiastical order. The very circumstances of the time that in reality and in their ultimate result tended to bring down the ancient church, had the effect for the present of raising it to greater authority and seeming honour. The unaccustomed murmurs of irreverence and opposition with which it was assailed afforded a pretext for suffering it to exercise its recognised rights with a high hand, and even for endowing it with some new powers: the laws against heresy, for instance, were now stretched to a degree of severity never before known, and the church added to its ancient assumptions that of holding men's lives in its hands, and actually putting to death those of whose opinions it disapproved. These fires of martyrdom were more easily lighted than quenched. VII., however, and ccessor,-that is to e present periodh the all but uni yet unmodified and often happens with istence, the power England, seemed d height immedi h to remark that ost gorgeous and Becket. All the he state were still, men: while they of ecclesiastical were also, to a direction;-they crown at home, nts abroad. This demanded and was now more nable ground of hich the ablest It was in 1494, the ninth year of Henry VII., that the first English female martyr suffered. This was a widow named Joan Boughton, a woman of above eighty years of age. "She was," says Fox, "a disciple of Wycliffe, whom she accounted for a saint, and held so fast and firmly eight of his ten opinions, that all the doctors of London could not turn her from one of them." She was burned in Smithfield on the 28th of April.* Mrs. * Fox, Acts and Monuments, p. 671 (edit. of 1570). Boughton was mother to the Lady You also suspected of holding the same opini afterwards suffered the same death. In the next two or three years a few old me went with like heroism to the stake; but i persons charged with heresy at this time was as yet little general excitement to ani tain them, shrunk from that dreadful deatl view of it, and purchased, by a recantation, of satisfying the law by an exposure to the f the fire. The venerable historian of our mart curious notices of the fashion in which this c performed.* On other occasions, howeve muted punishment was not entirely formal at the same time that William Tylsworth wa Amersham,-his only daughter being comp fire to him with her own hands,-this daught husband, and, according to one account, mo persons besides, all bore fagots, and were af only sent from town to town over the county ham to do penance with certain badges affixe but were several of them burned in the cheek wise severely treated. "Divers of them,' were enjoined to bear and wear fagots at space of seven years, some at one time, some Among others who suffered in this reig Laurence Ghest, "who was burned in Salis matter of the Sacrament. He was of a com personage, and otherwise, as appeareth, not for the which the bishop and the close ( canons) were the more loth to burn him, bu in prison the space of two years. This Lau wife and seven children."+ Some notion of the peculiar opinions commonly held by the English heretics of t be gathered from the charges against son apprehended and examined by John Arun of Lichfield and Coventry, from 1496 to *Fox, Acts and Monuments, p. 671 (edit. of 1 † Ibid. p. 710. Ibid. p. 711. |