the excellent virtues of obedience and pa- base interest, in prizing most highly those triotism beyond their reasonable boundaries. places which have no value but that which The combined army was commanded by arises from being the scene of a virtue Philibert duke of Savoy, the most renown- which reminds the people of the glory of ed captain of his age, whom Henry II. had their forefathers. The garrison of Calais robbed of his dominions. Gaspar Chatillon, amounted only to 800 men. They were better known as the admiral Coligny, aided by 200 townsmen; and the whole threw himself as governor into the place of population within the walls was 4200. To St. Quentin, which was speedily invested reduce it cost Edward III. eleven months; by the enemy; his uncle, the constable de and the English flag had waved from its Montmorency, advancing at the head of a battlements for two hundred years and powerful army intended to raise the siege. more. The duc de Guise, having surprised These combinations led to the celebrated and mastered the outposts, made a feint of battle of St. Quentin, which was fought on preparing for an assault, by a cannonade the 10th of August, 1557. The constable which destroyed part of the walls. He advanced very near, to cover a detachment really contemplated the capture of the casintended to be carried over a morass, or tle which commanded the town. Scarcely lake, which extended to the walls of the had he turned his artillery against the cascity. The difficulties in the way of the tle, when it was evacuated by the garrison, boats were so unexpectedly great, that the who relied upon the efficacy of a strataSpanish army attacked Montmorency while gem. They placed several barrels of gunhis troops were divided and exposed. The powder under the castle, and connected defeat was total. The greater part of the them with the place to which they had reartillery was captured. The loss of the tired by a train, to which they were to set Spaniards was inconsiderable. Three thou-fire as soon as the French should enter the' sand Frenchmen were killed, among whom keep. But, if we may believe the chroniwere the most illustrious of the nobles, and cler, the French, who had waded through the most skilful of the veteran officers. The the ditch, were so wetted that the moisture constable himself was made prisoner with dropping from their clothes damped the 6000 men who remained with him. gunpowder, probably that which formed In spite of the immense loss, and of the the train; a small interruption of which dismay, which is generally far more than must have been fatal to the whole project, proportioned to the other evils of discom- which seems also to have been rendered fiture, Coligny, with his little garrison, abortive by a partial explosion. Some demaintained his ruined fortress after the fence was made after this disastrous occurdefeat and dispersion of his countrymen. rence.* But on the sixth night of the siege, The earl of Pembroke with the English terms of capitulation were offered to Guise auxiliaries seem to have been very active by lord Wentworth, the English governor in the attack, perhaps because they were of Calais. A capitulation was concluded not so much exhausted in the previous en- next morning, by which the surrender of gagement. Henry Dudley was killed. the town, with all its military instruments Philip rewarded the English with the hor- and stores, was stipulated; and all the inrible monopoly of sacking the town. The habitants were allowed to go where they black Reuters, or mercenary cavalry of listed, except the governor and fifty persons Germany, were jealous of this license for to be named by the duc de Guise, who all crimes granted to a favored nation. A were to be enlarged only on the payment bloody scuffle between the two bands of of ransom. Thus fell Calais, after a siege plunderers closed the scene. of eight days; and the dishonor of the

In spite of this defeat the French mon- English arms was the more signal, because arch speedily collected a considerable ar- the place was taken in the midst of winter my; which, about the beginning of Janu- when the adjacent ground was covered ary, 1558, advanced, under the command with water. The surrender was ascribed of the celebrated duc de Guise, to avenge by general rumor to treachery, the usual the discomfiture at St. Quentin, and to de- expedient by which the mortified pride of prive the English of Calais, the only re- a nation seeks to escape from imagined maining fragment of the Plantagenet mon-degradation. No nation has less need of archy which had once comprehended the such suppositions than the English, yet moiety of France. This town was dear to none, perhaps, is more prone to them. It is the English, as the representative of their apparent that the fall of Calais arose from ancient renown in war. Brave nations the inadequacy of the garrison to the deoften value possessions more which are the fence of the fortress, which must have mere prize of valor, than those which pro- been the fault either of the government duce vulgar advantage. There is something noble, and seemingly raised above!

* Holinshed, iv. 90.

at home or of the earl of Pembroke, the hopes of offspring. When on the point of commander of the army in France; if it death she said "If you open me, you will was not occasioned by the overruling in- find Calais written on my heart;" mistaking, fluence of Philip II. intent on other objects. probably, the subject on which her despondThe town was cruelly pillaged. "Thus," ing thoughts brooded for the source of dissays old Holinshed, "dealt the French with order, and thus ennobling, by the fiction of the English in recompense of the like a mental origin, a distemper which sprung usage to the French when the forces of from causes of a mere bodily and humiliking Philip prevailed at St. Quentin, where, ating nature.

not content with the honor of victory, the Mary is a perfect and conspicuous examEnglishmen sought nothing more than the ple of the fatal effects of error in rulers; satisfying of their greedy vein of covetous-for to error alone the greater part of the ness. "* Lord Grey made an obstinate de- misery caused by her must be ascribed. fence of the small fortress of Guines, but The stock was sour, and, perhaps, no culwas compelled to surrender on the 20th of ture could have engrafted tenderness and January, with a loss of 800 of his garrison, gentleness upon it. She adhered to her and after having slain about an equal num-principles; she acted agreeably to conber of the enemy. From the small for- science: but her principles were perverted tres of Hammes, which was the only place and her conscience misguided by false nounsubdued in the English pale, the garrison tions of the power of sovereigns and of made their escape by night over a marsh. laws over religious opinions. A right judgThe triumphs in France, the sorrow in ment on that single question would have England, were equally excessive, or, at changed the whole character of her adminleast, equally disproportionate to their pro-istration, and altogether varied the impresfessed and immediate object; for it must be sion made on posterity by the history of her owned that a keen sense of the bitterness reign.

of defeat is one of the firmest safeguards Ön the next day the death of Mary was of every nation. In the end of January, followed by the demise of her relation, carHenry II. visited Calais in triumph, and dinal Pole, a person far more amiable by loaded the duc de Guise with honors which nature; who, at the time of his decease, were well earned by that renowned cap-was, both by learning and virtue, regarded tain. The greatness of the princes of the throughout Europe as the most distinguishhouse of Lorraine received a new accession ed ornament of the old church. Messages by the marriage of their niece, Mary Stu- passed between them to the last moment; art queen of Scotland, to Francis the dau- and when he was apprized of her departure, phin, which was celebrated on the 28th of he calmly prepared for his own. This dying September, at Paris, with a festal magnifi- friendship between the two remnants of a cence worthy of the union of the most royal race, the stays of an ancient religion, beautiful queen, perhaps the most beautiful has a natural power of raising the thoughts woman of her age, to the heir of the great-and touching the feelings of man. est among the European monarchies.f

Unhappily, Pole acquiesced in the sysIn the month of September, the emperor tematic persecution of Protestants. His Charles V. expired at his seclusion in Es- opinions, indeed, appear to have been those tremadura. In England the persecution of a good man, disposed to a very merciful. still vainly raged. On the 17th of Novem- application of intolerant laws, rather than ber, Mary, deserted by an ungrateful hus- denying the justice, or refusing, in cases band, perhaps overcome by misgivings on where all other remedies failed, to carry reviewing her fruitless barbarity, or at least them into execution. But it is probable occasionally haunted by those visitings of that if he had been the sole master of nature which never leave an undisturbed Mary's councils, his lenient temper and sway to the artificial power of dogmas, Christian compassion would have almost breathed her last in London, to the great stood instead of the principles of religious relief of the larger portion of her subjects. liberty.

She died of dropsy, of which the earlier The last act of Mary's reign was the attacks had probably excited her illusive dispatch of ambassadors, to negotiate a gen

eral peace, to Cambray, then a city of the

Thuanus, lib. xvii. Philips's Life of Pole, sect. x. London, 1767; an elegant work, of which this portion is stained by the attempt of the writer to cover his church by an appeal to the exhortation to the civil power, to be merciful on delivering a here tic into their hands, which is an aggravation of cruelty by hypocrisy. He rightly remarks, that Pole's speeches for toleration are the offspring of Mr. Hume's ingenuity.

Low Countries. This important negotia-ring the Anabaptist domination in Lower tion was not closed till the month of March Germany, had furnished the most ample following: but it was opened by Mary un-proofs of a cruelty which spared neither der the influence of considerations which age nor sex, and of the tendency of their began to outweigh those of local and tem- doctrines to destroy property, as well as to porary policy in the minds of Roman Cath- overthrow lawful authority in church and olic monarchs. The king of France agreed state." Peace and friendship between the to restore Calais and its territory to Eng- two monarchs, with the concealment of land within eight years, under a penalty of these designs for the present from all 500,000 crowns; and the treaty compre- Frenchmen (the cardinal was a prince of hended Francis and Mary, " king and queen Lorraine), were absolutely necessary to the dolphin," with the kingdom of Scotland.* probability of success in an enterprise so The stipulations of this treaty, however, as hazardous.

they affected the British islands, were of There is reason to believe that ten years little moment compared with the fears of before, at the first convocation of the counreligious revolution becoming universal, cil of Trent, Perrenot had prepared the which for a time suspended the rivalships young prince for the favorable reception of and enmities of Catholic monarchs. It was these political doctrines. Some historians now evident to the great sovereigns that an tell us that secret articles against the Proalliance between France and Spain (origi- testants had been adopted in the meeting at nally intended to comprehend England) Peronne. Certain it is, that Henry II. was was necessary, to reduce an armed heresy, induced, by the plausibility of Perrenot's which threatened not only to level the reasonings, and by their concurrence with church to the ground, but, in their opinion, the most approved policy of that age, to to overthrow the thrones of kings, and to make peace with Spain, and to begin that bury the whole order of human society un- persecution of his Protestant subjects der the ruins of government and religion. which grew into civil wars of forty years' Experience had taught, in all ages, that duration, attended with events so horrible these great principles stood or fell together. as to be without parallel in the history of Two religions, it was then believed, were civilized Europe. These alarming confedno more reconcilable in a state than two eracies were accidentally disclosed to one governments; and recent events had de- of the illustrious persons who were most monstrated, to the conviction of the ruling deeply interested in their discomfiture. ministers, that men could not be taught to William of Nassau, prince of Orange, was, throw off the dependence on priests, with- according to the usage of that period, sent out learning to examine the limits of the to Paris at the head of the hostages for the power of kings. There are many dispersed observance of the treaty of Câteau-Camand indistinct traces of such reflections and bresis. He was received with the honors projects having been the subject of discus- of an independent sovereign, and with the sion in 1545, at the first meeting of the respect due to his high descent. Henry council of Trent. To forward a concert treated him with unreserved freedom; as against heresy seems to have been avowed one who lived in the chamber of the emby cardinal Pole as one of the motives for peror, and was privy to all the thoughts of the zeal with which he promoted peace be- that great monarch, and who was now, as tween France and Spain. These projects he had been in the reign of Charles thought ripened in the spring, 1558, at the private to be, admitted into the most secret counconferences of Perrenot bishop of Arras, cils of his royal master. At one of the better known to history under his subse- hunting parties of the court, when Henry quent name of cardinal Granville, with the and the prince were in the same carriage, cardinal of Lorraine, at Peronne, in which the the king spoke to William as to a man who former minister strongly represented "the knew the secret stipulations or understandinfatuation and dishonor of the continuance ing between the crowns for the extirpation of hostilities between the two first crowns of heresy. William spoke little, which his of Christendom, in which France and Spain ordinary modesty and taciturnity enabled turned against each other those arms which him to do without affectation. He thus conought to be combined against the Turk, cealed his ignorance, and yet avoided an the common enemy of the Christian name; express breach of truth. He suffered the but if not against that odious but distant French monarch gradually to betray the and not formidable adversary, then surely against those far more perilous foes, fostered in the bosom of the great monarchies themselves, the modern heretics, who, du

*Dumont, Corps Diplom. tom. v. part i. pp. 28, 29.

†Thuani, Hist. lib. xx. c. 9. and lib. xxii. c. 10.

Wagenaar Vaderlandsche Historie, part vi. pp. 30,
Walsingham's Letters, xcix.

31.

The account received by Thuanus from his father, who vainly endeavored to stem the tide, is equally authentic and curious.

full extent of the designs of the royal al- ment, on the right balance of which, the lies. "I heard," says the prince himself, quiet and well-being of society are sus"from the mouth of king Henry, that the pended often by too slender a thread. duke of Alva had agreed with the French Of the various projects now proposed for minister on the means of exterminating the extinction of the heresies of the age, all who were suspected of Protestantism in the first place seemed to be due to the plan France, in the Netherlands, and throughout of extending to all Christendom the system Christendom, by the universal establish- of "inquisition into heretical pravity," ment of an inquisition worse and more which subsisted in full vigor only in Spain. cruel than that of Spain. I confess that I This famous tribunal originated in the comwas moved to pity by the thoughts of so missioners for inquest or inquiry regarding many good men doomed to the slaughter, the crime of heresy, who were appointed and I deliberately determined to do my ut- by successive popes to aid the bishops, or, most for the expulsion of the Spanish army, in case of necessity, to act with them during the instrument of these wicked designs, the wars, which in the thirteenth century from a country to which I was bound by were waged with unmatched cruelty against the most sacred ties."* Henry had then the people of Languedoc. The emperor no suspicion that William secretly inclined Frederic II., about 1220, had added the to the cause of the reformation, which was sanction of the imperial authority (then openly embraced by some branches of his deemed to have a certain influence among family; and that Philip disliked and dis- all European nations) to the decrees of the trusted the favorite of his father, who was council of Lateran, by an edict, in which now confined to missions or employments he commanded all incorrigible heretics to of magnificent parade, but was excluded be punished with death. The formalities from those mysterious counsels on which of an inquisition spread over several counPerrenot and Alva only were consulted. tries, where it preserved a languid existence The Roman court had generally betrayed for more than two centuries. But it was the same disinclination to assemble general in the latter years of the fifteenth century councils, as absolute monarchs have usually that it was established with terrific powers, manifested to the convocation of represent- and moved to sanguinary activity over the ative or legislative assemblies.† Spanish peninsula, of which every part, For the first twenty years after the dis- except Portugal, was united under one sent of Luther from the church, the de- sceptre by the marriage of Ferdinand and mands of the emperor and the empire for Isabella, the sovereigns of Aragon and Casthe convocation of a general council were tile. It was at first chiefly pointed against evaded by successive pontiffs on various the Jews, who, though always plundered pretexts. The history of this period is full by the kings of Spain, and not seldom masof instruction relating to the course of hu- sacred by the populace, had, by their expeman affairs in those critical periods of gen- rience in commerce, and their knowledge eral changes in opinions and institutions of of books and business, found their way, mankind, which are seldom accomplished through intermarriage and feigned converwithout terrible collisions of immense mass- sion, into the centre of the Spanish nobility. es, attended by such ruin, rapine, and blood- All the nonconforming Jews were banished shed, that good men too often recoil from from the whole monarchy by an edict which any share in them, and thus leave them to immediately followed the conquest of Grethe exclusive guidance of those whose most nada. The avowed Mahomedans of Greeminent quality is boldness, and who often nada were afterwards subjected to the same make amends for the want of that two- banishment, in spite of the promises made edged quality, by servility towards every to them when they were finally subjugated, prevalent faction. In the writings of the under a pretext, copied by tyrants of afterperiod now under consideration, we see all times, "that, it having pleased God that the commonplaces, on the side either of there were no longer any unbelievers in establishment or innovation, as ably pre- the kingdom of Grenada, their majesties sented and as thoroughly exhausted as in were pleased to forbid, under pain of death, any age of the world. The forms and lan- the entry of the Moors into that province, guage are, indeed, peculiar to the time: lest they might shake the faith of the new but the substance is that struggle between converts." The power of the inquisition, the principles of preservation and improve- now more and more relieved from the re

straints of an appeal to Rome, was exerted

Llorente, Hist. Crit. de l'Inquisit. d'Espagne, i. chap. ii. Sismondi, Hist. des François.

* Apologie de Guill. Prince d'Orange, 13th Dec. in every case where suspicions were enter1580. in Dumont, Corps Diplomat. tom. v. part i. p. 392. Vander Vinkt, Troubles des Pays Bas, i. p. 180. Wagenaar, Vaderl. Hist. lib. xxi. c. xi. part ii. p. 35. †The repugnance is owned, and the parallel admitted, by Pallavicino. VOL. I.

23

§ 20th July, 1501, and 12th February, 1502. Lla rente, i. 335.

"We

tained of the sincerity of the new Christians. John Louis Vives, a Spaniard of great Such was the unwearied cruelty of the tri- learning and reputation, bewails the fate bunal in its state of youthful vigor, that of moderate and charitable Catholics in Torquemada, the first inquisitor-general, is Spain, nearly thirty years before the period believed, in the eighteen years of his ad- which we are now contemplating. ministration, to have committed to the live," says he in a letter to Erasmus, on the flames more than 10,000 victims.* To 18th of May, 1534, "in hard times, in which these are added more than 90,000 persons we can neither speak nor be silent without condemned to the punishments which were danger." In the forty-three years of the called secondary-infamy, confiscation, per- administrations of the first four inquisitors petual imprisonment. They were appre- general, which closed in the year 1524, hended on slight suspicion; they never they committed 18,000 human beings to heard the names of their accusers; the in- the flames, and inflicted inferior punishquisitors communicated only such parts of ments on 200,000 persons more, with varithe supposed evidence to the accused as ous degrees of severity, indeed, but the such judges deemed fit; the prisoners re- least of which the judges intended that mained for years in their dungeons, alone, bigoted and frantic multitutes should look ignorant of what passed without, and in a on with aversion and abhorrence, as an state where no man dared to attempt to indelible brand of infamy, and a badge of correspond with them, who was not willing, perpetual proscription. Some of these ocwithout serving them, to share their fate. currences in Spain, and the numerous exeTorture was applied to them in the pres-cutions in the Netherlands, must have been ence of two inquisitors. Sentence was pro- well known in England about the period nounced in secrecy, and executed at "the of the death of Mary, and could not fail to acts of faith," as they were called, where affect the state of opinion in this island so multitudes of the impenitent heretics, clad much that a writer of English history canin woollen garments, on which were paint- not with justice exclude all mention of ed monstrous forms of fiends, and hideous them from his narrative; especially when representations of hell-fire, walked in pro- the memorable circumstances are considercession to the flames. These acts of faith ed, which we learn from the weighty teswere solemnized with a religious cere- timony of the prince of Orange, that the monial, combined with such splendor and Spanish and French monarchs meditated magnificence as fitted them for exhibition the extension over all Christendom of such at the coronation of a king or the nuptials a tribunal as the inquisition had already of a young queen. In the year 1560, when shown itself to be by its exercise of auPhilip II. wedded the princess Elizabeth of thority in Spain.

France, the inquisitors of Toledo, among The second expedient proposed for quietother preparations for the welcome and be- ing the disorders of Europe, was that of coming reception of a queen of thirteen assembling a general council. Had such years old, exhibited one of the acts of faith, an assembly been convened early, had they when Lutherans, Mahometans, Jews, and then adopted effective reforms in the consorcerers, were burnt alive in her presence, stitution of the church, and rigorously enbefore the eyes of many nobles and prelates, forced amendment in the conduct of the and of the assembled cortez of the kingdom, clergy; had they, before the breach was who met together to swear allegiance to visible and wide, seasonably granted two the wretched Don Carlos, the heir apparent concessions, the marriage of ecclesiastics of the crown. Forty-five persons, of whom and the use of the cup by the laity, which, many were distinguished men, had been as both were owned to be prohibited by burnt alive as Lutherans at Valladolid, in mere human authority, might have been the year before, in the presence of the king surrendered without any sacrifice of the and a numerous assembly of noble Span- highest pretensions of Rome herself,-it iards and of foreign guests of high station. seems very probable that farther reformaWe find the names of at least six English- tion might have been evaded, that its promen, in two years, in the list of victims, gress might have been retarded, and that though the two countries were then at its complete accomplishment at some repeace, and though the persons put to death mote period, after a long course of insenwere probably traders or mariners earning sible approximation, might have at last octheir subsistence under the faith of treaties.

* Llorente, i. 280. His calculations appear to be fairly made from reasonable data. The last person burnt alive by the inquisition was an unfortunate

woman at Seville in 1781, for licentious intercourse with a demon. Llorente, iv. 270.

† Llorente, ii. chap. 24.

curred without a shock. The ambition or avarice of princes; the furious zeal of multitudes, especially of sectaries, who swelled the animosities of the great parties by their absurd and odious opinions; and the anger, the pride, the passion for mental domination, which tarnished the piety and sincerity of