and this, notwithstanding the entreaties of the young king that they might be spared to live, and to be converted from their errors. Edward's early promise was very great, and his abilities were of a high order. His Latin exercises have been pre served, and, if he was not much assisted by his masters, do him great credit. His chief study was theology, and his greatest delight was listening to sermons. It will be interesting to know what became of all the old monasteries and nunneries Some were leveled with the ground; others, stripped of their timber and lead, were left in ruin, and still remain objects of admiration to all who delight in the relics of antiquity. Many were given or sold to laymen, who converted them into dwellinghouses, and others were turned into hospitals. Henry bestowed many of the religious houses on those who attended on his person. One of his attendants was rewarded with some abbey lands for having wheeled his chair farther from the fire; and a lady, whose name is not handed down to us, had a monastic house given to her for making the king a pudding which he liked. In this reign the convenience of ladies' dress was very much assisted by the invention of pins. To serve the purposes for which we employ that article, there were previously to the invention of pins, a variety of contrivances, buttons, hooks and eyes, laces and loops; and ladies used even wooden skewers to fasten on their dress. A needle was a very valuable implement at this time. None were made in England till the next reign, when a Spanish negro came to London, and made some. CHAPTER XXVII MARY. [Years after Christ, 1553-1558., As soon as Edward had breathed his last, the duke of Northumberland went to Sion-house, where lady Jane What were the favorite pursuits of Edward VI. ? What became of the religious houses sequestered by Henry VIII.? Who saluted lady Jane Grey as queen of England? Grey lived, and saluted her as queen: but she, far fron being ambitious of this dignity, entreated that it might not be forced upon her, and pleaded the superior claims of the two princesses. But the duke had gone too far to be stopped by the scruples of a young creature of sixteen ; and lady Jane, who was naturally of a timid and gentle disposition, was soon persuaded by her father-in-law, and suffered herself to be proclaimed. No applause followed the proclamation, and no one seconded this bold step of Northumberland. Lady Jane, after a joyless reign of ten days, thankfully returned from the royal apartments in the Tower, in which she had been placed, to the privacy of her own house and the princess Mary, arriving from her retreat in Suffolk, was welcomed by the people with the loudest acclamations. For though the consequences of her stern bigotry were dreaded by those of the new religion, they yet dreaded still more the unprincipled character of Northumberland. When the duke saw his project entirely overthrown, he sought to save his own life by the meanest supplications. He fell on his knees before lord Arundel, who was sent by the queen to apprehend him; and while in that posture, a woman rushed up to him, and held a handkerchief to his face, which she told him was stained with the blood of his innocent victim the duke of Somerset. Northumberland was condemned, and beheaded on Tower-hill. His son Guildford, and lady Jane, were also condemned to death: but on account of their youth and innocence, their sentence was not then executed; but they were kept in prison. Mary was in her thirty-seventh year at the time of her Dother's death. Her person is described as having been very ordinary, and her manner unengaging. Her education had probably been much neglected, and she inherited her mother's gravity, with her father's violence and obsti nate temper She was old enough at the time of Catharine's divorce to feel keenly the king's injustice, and the being forbidden to see her injured mother, was a great aggravation of her wrongs. She and Anne Boleyn never concealed their mutual dislike. When was queen Mary proclaimed? Mary invariably refused to give her sister Elizabeth the atle of princess; and her obstinacy in this and other particulars, had often drawn upon her her father's displeasure and he had frequently put her under confinement. These early mortifications increased the natural sourness of her temper. The first act of Mary's reign showed a compassionate feeling, which raised the people's hopes of her character. She restored to liberty the old duke of Norfolk, who had languished in prison, with his unexecuted sentence hanging over his head, ever since the death of Henry VIII. She released also Courtenay, son of the marquis of Exeter, a young nobleman whose youth and talents had been wasting in a prison from his childhood, but who, soon after he was restored to the world, acquired a degree of grace and accomplishment, that made him an ornament to the court. The queen's next act was to release Gardiner, Bonner, and Tonstall, who had been deprived of liberty, and of their bishoprics, in the last reign; and she hastened, with their assistance, to overturn the Reformation, and to restore the old religion, and, as much as possible, to replace every thing on its former footing. She was greatly anxious for a reconciliation with the pope, who, at first, made some difficulty to receive within the pale of the church such a country of heretics as England was now become: but this difficulty was at length overcome, and cardinal de la Pole was appointed legate in England. But Mary, though she could restore the mass, the praying to images, and all the other ceremonials of the Romish church, found it impossible to recover to their former uses the lands and buildings of the religious houses. The foreign protestants, who had brought many useful arts into the country, now hastily left it, and were followed by many English gentlemen, who were glad to escape from the persecutions which they foresaw were at hand. Cran How did Mary regard her sister, and what soured her temper? Did Mary ever exhibit any generosity? Did Mary restore the Catholic religion in England? Could Mary recover the church property? How did Cranmer and other Protestants demean themselves in the pres er.t juncture? mer was advised to fly; but he said he had been too rauch concerned in every measure of the Reformation to desert its cause. The queen had early marked him for destruction. She was not of a temper to forget an injury, and hated him for the share he had had in her mother's divorce; which many good offices he had done for herself could never atone for in her eyes. A marriage was agreed upon between the A. D. 1554. queen and Philip of Spain, only son of Charles V. The match was exceedingly disliked by the English; but the archduke was made to agree, that the administration of the government should remain entirely with the queen and her ministers; and that no foreigner should be permitted to hold any public office. Still so great was the alarm excited, that a formidable insurrection arose in Kent, which was headed by sir Thomas Wyatt, who having traveled in Spain, brought home such an account of Philip as added to the previous horror of him that had existed. The object of the insurrection was to dethrone Mary, and to place lady Jane Grey on the throne; and if her father, the duke of Suffolk, did not actually join, he at least showed some approbation of it. Wyatt, at the head of 4000 men, entered London; but many of his followers, perceiving that no men of note joined his standard, silently left him. He was summoned to surrender; and having done so, he was tried, condemned, and executed: 400 of his unfortunate followers suffered with him; and 400 more were conducted to the queen, with ropes about their necks, and falling on their knees, received their pardon. Soon afterwards, lady Jane Grey, whose fate it was al ways to suffer for the faults of others, was warned that she must prepare for death. The queen sent a priest of the Romish church to harass her last moments, by attempting to convert her; but her constancy was not to be shaken, and she employed the small portion of time that was left her What marriage contract was made for cucen Mary in 1554' Who heade? a rebellion at this time? What became of sir Thomas Wyatt? What sentence was passed upon lady Jane Grey? in prayer, and in writing, in Greek, a íarewell letter to her sister, in which she exhorted her to be firm in her faith. Lord Guildford Dudley was also condemned to die, and entreated to have a parting interview; but Jane refused it lest the affliction of such a meeting should overcome their fortitude. She appeared on the scaffold with a serene countenance, and declared that she had greatly erred in not having more firmly refused the crown; but that filial reverence, and not her own ambition, had been the cause of her fault. Her father was beheaded soon after; and the queen became so suspicious of almost every body, that she illed the prisons with nobles and gentlem.en. The time now arrived that had been fixed A. D. 1555. for the archduke's coming to England; but the admiral of the fleet which Mary had sent to escort him, dared not take him on board, lest the sailors should commit some violence against him. Such was the detes. tation in which he was held. At last he arrived: the marriage was celebrated at Westminster; and Philip, by his distant and reserved behavior, increased the previous dislike of the English. From this time the chief business of parliament was to guard against the encroachments of Philip; while Mary's only anxiety was to increase the power and influence of a husband, on whom she doted with a troublesome fondness, though he, on his part, could with difficulty conceal his own dislike to his unengaging partner. On one subject, however, they were perfectly agreed, namely, in the desire to extirpate heresy, by the most violent and sanguinary measures. Gardiner willingly entered into the views of Philip and Mary; but finding this work of cruelty more arduous than he had expected, he made it over to Bonner, a man of such inhumanity that he even delighted to see the dying agonies of the sufferers; and would often take on himself the office of executioner, adding to the misery of the poor creatures who suffered, by a mockery and levity, which, had it not What was the end of lady Jane and her husband? Was Philip of Spain liked in England? In what was Philip and Mary agreed? Was the extirpation of heresy, as the bigots of this reign callca perseou tion, attended with manifestations of cruelty? |