Chapter I: Queen Jane and Queen Mary (3)

Uncertain on whom she could rely, Mary sent for Renard (August 16), who could only repeat his former cautions, and appeal to what had occurred in justification of them. He undertook to pacify Lord Derby; but in the necessity to which she was so soon reduced of appealing to him, a foreigner, in her emergencies, he made her feel that she could not carry things with so high a hand. She had a rival in the Queen of Scots, beyond her domestic enemies, whom her wisdom ought to fear; she would ruin herself if she flew in the face of her subjects; and he prevailed so far with her that she promised to take no further steps till the meeting of parliament. After a consultation with the mayor, she drew up a hasty proclamation, granting universal toleration till further orders, forbidding her Protestant and Catholic subjects to interrupt each other's services, and prohibiting at the same time all preaching on either side without licence from herself.

Being on the spot, the ambassador took the opportunity of again trying Mary's disposition upon the marriage question. His hopes had waned since her arrival in London; he had spoken to Paget, who agreed that an alliance with the Prince of Spain was the most splendid which the queen could hope for; but the time was inopportune, and the people were intensely hostile. The exigencies of the position, he thought, might oblige the queen to yield to wishes which she could not oppose, and accept Lord Courtenay; or possibly her own inclination might set in the same direction; or, again, she might wish to renew her early engagement with the emperor himself. The same uncertainty had been felt at Brussels; the Bishop of Arras, therefore, had charged Renard to feel his way carefully and make no blunder. If the queen inclined to the emperor, he might speak of Philip as more eligible; if she fancied Courtenay, it would be useless to interfere--she would only resent his opposition.[87] Renard obeyed his instructions, and the result was reassuring. When the ambassador mentioned the word "marriage," the queen began to smile significantly, not once, but many times; she plainly liked the topic: plainly, also, her thoughts were not turning in the direction of any English husband; she spoke of her rank, and of her unwillingness to {p.039} condescend to a subject; Courtenay, the sole remaining representative of the White Rose except the Poles, was the only Englishman who could in any way be thought suitable for her; but she said that she expected the emperor to provide a consort for her, and that, being a woman, she could not make the first advances. Renard satisfied himself from her manner that, if the Prince of Spain was proposed, the offer would be most entirely welcome.[88]

[Footnote 87: Car si elle y avoit fantasie, elle ne
laisseroit, si elle este du naturel des autres
femmes, de passer oultre, et si se ressentiroit a
jamais de ce que vous en pourriez avoir dit.--Arras
to Renard: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv. p. 77.]

[Footnote 88: Renard to the Bishop of Arras:
_Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv. p. 79. Renard to
Charles V., August 16: _Rolls House MSS._]

The trials of the conspirators were now resolved upon. The queen was determined to spare Lady Jane Grey, in spite of all which Renard could urge; but the state of London showed that the punishment of the really guilty could no longer be safely delayed. On this point all parties in the council were agreed. On Friday, the 18th of August, therefore, a court of peers was formed in Westminster Hall, with the aged Duke of Norfolk for High Steward, to try John Dudley Duke of Northumberland, the Earl of Warwick, and the Marquis of Northampton for high treason. Forty-four years before, as the curious remarked, the father of Norfolk had sat on the commission which tried the father of Northumberland for the same crime.

The indictments charged the prisoners with levying war against their lawful sovereign. Northumberland, who was called first to the bar, pleaded guilty of the acts which were laid against him, but he submitted two points to the consideration of the court.

1. Whether, having taken the field with a warrant under the Great Seal, he could be lawfully accused of treason.

2. Whether those peers from whom he had received his commission, and by whose letters he had been directed in what he had done, could sit upon his trial as his judges.

The Great Seal, he was answered briefly, was the seal of a usurper, and could convey no warrant to him. If the lords were as guilty as he said, yet, "so long as no attainder was on record against them, they were persons able in law to pass upon any trial, and not to be challenged but at the prince's pleasure."[89]

[Footnote 89: _Queen Jane and Queen Mary._ The
anomaly in the constitution of the Court amused
Renard, who commented upon it to the Emperor, as an
illustration of England and the English
character.--_Rolls House MSS._]

The duke bowed and was silent.

Northampton and Warwick came next, and, like Northumberland, confessed to the indictment. Northampton, however, pleaded in his defence, that he had held no public office {p.040} during the crisis; that he had not been present at the making of Edward's device, and had been amusing himself hunting in the country.[90] Warwick, with proud sadness, said merely, that he had followed his father, and would share his father's fortunes; if his property was confiscated, he hoped that his debts would be paid.[91]

[Footnote 90: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._ _Queen Jane and Queen Mary_, Appendix.
Baoardo says, Northampton pleaded--Ch' egli non si
era mai messo in governo et che sempre attese alla
caccia.]

[Footnote 91: Ibid.]

But Northampton had indisputably been in the field with the army, and, as his judges perfectly well knew, had been, with Suffolk, the Duke's uniform supporter in his most extreme measures; the queen had resolved to pardon him; but the court could not recognise his excuse. Norfolk rose, in a few words pronounced the usual sentence, and broke his wand; the cold glimmering edge of the Tower axe was turned towards the prisoners, and the peers rose. Northumberland, before he was led away, fell upon his knees; his children were young, he said, and had acted under orders from himself; to them let the queen show mercy; for himself he had his peace to make with Heaven; he entreated for a few days of life, and the assistance of a confessor; if two of the council would come to confer with him, he had important secrets of state to communicate; and, finally, he begged that he might die by the axe like a nobleman.[92]

[Footnote 92: _Queen Jane and Queen Mary_, p 17,
Renard says that he asked the council to intercede
for his life.]

On the 19th, Sir John and Sir Henry Gates, Sir Andrew Dudley, and Sir Thomas Palmer were tried before a special commission. Dudley had gone with the treasonable message to France; the three others were the boldest and most unscrupulous of the Duke's partisans, while Palmer was also especially hated for his share in the death of Somerset. These four also pleaded guilty, and were sentenced, Palmer only scornfully telling the commissioners that they were traitors as well as he, and worse than he.[93]

[Footnote 93: So Renard states. The author of the
_Chronicle of Queen Mary_ says merely that he
denied that he had borne arms against the queen,
but admitted that he had been with the army.]

Seven had been condemned; three only, the duke, Sir John Gates, and Palmer, were to suffer.

Crime alone makes death terrible: in the long list of victims whose bloody end, at stake or scaffold, the historian of England in the sixteenth century has to relate, two only showed signs of cowardice, and one of those was a soldier and a nobleman, who, {p.041} in a moment of extreme peril, four years before, had kissed swords with his comrades, and had sworn to conquer the insurgents at Norwich, or die with honour.

The Duke of Northumberland, who since that time had lived very emphatically without God in the world, had not lived without religion. He had affected religion, talked about religion, played with religion, till fools and flatterers had told him that he was a saint; and now, in his extreme need, he found that he had trifled with forms and words, till they had grown into a hideous hypocrisy. The Infinite of death was opening at his feet, and he had no faith, no hope, no conviction, but only a blank and awful horror, and perhaps he felt that there was nothing left for him but to fling himself back in agony into the open arms of superstition. He had asked to speak with some member of the council; he had asked for a confessor. In Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, he found both.

After the sentence Gardiner visited him in the Tower, where he poured out his miserable story; he was a Catholic, he said, he always had been a Catholic; he had believed nothing of all the doctrines for which he had pretended to be so zealous under Edward. "Alas!" he cried, "is there no help for me?" "Let me live but a little longer to do penance for my many sins." Gardiner's heart was softened at the humiliating spectacle; he would speak to the queen, he said, and he did speak, not wholly without success; he may have judged rightly, that the living penitence of the Joshua of the Protestants would have been more useful to the church than his death.[94] Already Mary had expressed a wish that, if possible, the wretched man should be spared; and he would have been allowed to live, except for the reiterated protests of Renard in his own name and in the emperor's.

[Footnote 94: The authority for this story is
Parsons the Jesuit, who learnt it from one of the
council who was present at the interview. Parsons
says, indeed, that Mary would have spared the duke;
but that some one wrote to the emperor, and that
the emperor insisted that he should be put to
death. This could not be, because there was no time
for letters to pass and repass between Brussels and
London, in the interval between the sentence and
the execution; but Renard says distinctly that Mary
did desire to pardon him, and that he was himself
obliged to exert his influence to prevent it.]

It was decided at last that he should die; and a priest was assigned him to prepare his soul. Doctor Watts or Watson, the same man whom Cranmer long ago had set in the stocks at Canterbury, took charge of Palmer and the rest--to them, {p.042} as rough soldiers, spiritual consolation from a priest of any decent creed was welcome.

The executions were fixed originally for Monday, the 21st; but the duke's conversion was a triumph to the Catholic cause too important not to be dwelt upon a little longer. Neither Northampton, Warwick, Andrew Dudley, or Sir Henry Gates were aware that they were to be respited, and, as all alike availed themselves of the services of a confessor and the forms of the Catholic faith, their compliance could be made an instrument of a public and edifying lesson. The lives of those who were to suffer were prolonged for twenty-four hours. On Monday morning "certain of the citizens of London" were requested to be in attendance at the Tower chapel, where Northumberland, Northampton, Dudley, Henry Gates, and Palmer were brought in; and, "first kneeling down, every one of them, upon his knees, they heard mass, saying devoutedly, with the bishop,[95] every one of them, _Confiteor_."

[Footnote 95: Gardiner.]

"After the mass was done, the duke rose up, and looked back upon my lord marquis, and came unto him, asking them all forgiveness, the one after the other, upon their knees, one to another; and the one did heartily forgive the other. And then they came, every one of them, before the altar, every one of them kneeling, and confessing to the bishop that they were the same men in the faith according as they had confessed to him before, and that they all would die in the Catholic faith." When they had all received the sacrament, they rose and turned to the people, and the duke said:--

"Truly, good people, I profess here before you all, that I have received the sacrament according to the true Catholic faith: and the plague that is upon the realm and upon us now is that we have erred from the faith these sixteen years; and this I protest unto you all from the bottom of my heart."

Northampton, with the rest, "did affirm the same with weeping tears."[96]

[Footnote 96: _Harleian MSS._ 284. Compare the
account of the chronicler, _Queen Jane and Queen
Mary_, pp. 18, 19.]

Among the spectators were observed the sons of the Duke of Somerset.

In exhibiting to the world the humiliation of the professors of the gospel, the Catholic party enjoyed a pardonable triumph. Northumberland, in playing a part in the pageant, was hoping to save his wretched life. When it was over he wrote (August 22) a passionate appeal to Arundel.

{p.043} "Alas, my lord," he said, "is my crime so heinous as no redemption but my blood can wash away the spots thereof? An old proverb there is, and that most true--A living dog is better than a dead lion; oh that it would please her good grace to give me life, yea, the life of a dog, if I might but live and kiss her feet, and spend both life and all in her honourable service."

But Arundel could not save him--would not have saved him, perhaps, had he been able--and he had only to face the end with such resolution as he could command.

The next morning, at nine o'clock, Warwick and Sir John Gates heard mass in the Tower chapel; the two Seymours were again present with Courtenay: and before Gates received the sacrament, he said a few words of regret to the latter for his long imprisonment, of which he admitted himself in part the cause.[97] On leaving the chapel Warwick was taken back to his room, and learned that he was respited. Gates joined Palmer, who was walking with Watson in the garden, and talking with the groups of gentlemen who were collected there. Immediately after, the duke was brought out. "Sir John," he said to Gates, "God have mercy on us; forgive me as I forgive you, although you and your council have brought us hither." "I forgive you, my lord," Gates answered, "as I would be forgiven; yet it was you and your authority that was the only original cause of all." They bowed each. The duke passed on, and the procession moved forward to Tower Hill.

[Footnote 97: "Not for any hatred towards you," he
added, "but for fear that harm might come thereby
to my late young master."--_Queen Jane and Queen
Mary_, p. 20.]

The last words of a worthless man are in themselves of little moment; but the effect of the dying speech of Northumberland lends to it an artificial importance. Whether to the latest moment he hoped for his life, or whether, divided between atheism and superstition, he thought, if any religion was true, Romanism was true, and it was prudent not to throw away a chance, who can tell? At all events, he mounted the scaffold with Heath, the Bishop of Worcester, at his side; and then deliberately said to the crowd, that his rebellion and his present fall were owing to the false preachers who had led him to err from the Catholic faith of Christ; the fathers and the saints had ever agreed in one doctrine; the present generation were the first that had dared to follow their private opinions; and in England and in Germany, where error had taken deepest root, there had followed war, famine, rebellion, misery, tokens {p.044} all of them of God's displeasure. Therefore, as they loved their country, as they valued their souls, he implored his hearers to turn, all of them, and turn at once, to the church which they had left; in which church he, from the bottom of his heart, avowed his own steadfast belief. For himself he called them all to witness that he died in the one true Catholic faith; to which, if he had been brought sooner, he would not have been in his present calamity.

He then knelt; "I beseech you all," he said again, "to believe that I die in the Catholic faith." He repeated the _Miserere_ psalm, the psalm _De Profundis_, and the _Paternoster_. The executioner, as usual, begged his pardon. "I have deserved a thousand deaths," he muttered. He made the sign of the cross upon the saw-dust, and kissed it, then laid down his head, and perished.

The shame of the apostasy shook down the frail edifice of the Protestant constitution, to be raised again in suffering, as the first foundations of it had been laid, by purer hands and nobler spirits.[98] In his better years Northumberland had been a faithful subject and a fearless soldier, and, with a master's hand over him, he might have lived with integrity, and died with honour. Opportunity tempted his ambition--ambition betrayed him {p.045} into crime--and, given over to his lower nature, he climbed to the highest round of the political ladder, to fall and perish like a craven. He was one of those many men who can follow worthily, yet cannot lead; and the virtue of the beginning was not less real than the ignominy of the end.

[Footnote 98: Lady Jane Grey spoke a few memorable
words on the duke's conduct at the scaffold. "On
Tuesday, the 29th of August," says the writer of
the _Chronicle of Queen Mary_, "I dined at
Partridge's house (in the Tower) with my Lady Jane,
she sitting at the board's-end, Partridge, his
wife, and my lady's gentlewoman. We fell in
discourse of religion. I pray you, quoth she, have
they mass in London. Yea, forsooth, quoth I, in
some places. It may so be, quoth she. It is not so
strange as the sudden conversion of the late duke;
for who could have thought, said she, he would have
so done? It was answered her, perchance he thereby
hoped to have had his pardon. Pardon! quoth she,
woe worth him! He hath brought me and our stock in
most miserable calamity by his exceeding ambition;
but for the answering that he hoped for life by his
turning, though other men be of that opinion, I
utterly am not. For what man is there living, I
pray you, although he had been innocent, that would
hope of life in that case, being in the field in
person against the queen, as general, and after his
taking so hated and evil spoken of by the Commons;
and at his coming into prison, so wondered at as
the like was never heard by any man's time. Who can
judge that he should hope for pardon whose life was
odious to all men? But what will ye more? Like as
his life was wicked and full of dissimulation, so
was his end thereafter. I pray God I view no friend
of mine die so. Should I, who am young and in my
few years, forsake my faith for the love of life?
Nay, God forbid! Much more he should not, whose
fatal course, although he had lived his just number
of years, could not have long continued. But life
was sweet, it appeared. So he might have lived, you
will say, he did not care how; indeed the reason is
good; for he that would have lived in chains to
have had his life, by like would leave no other
means unattempted. But God be merciful to us, for
he saith, whoso denyeth him before men, he will not
know him in his Father's kingdom."--_Queen Jane and
Queen Mary_, p. 24.]

Gates was the second sufferer. He, too, spoke in the same key. He had been a great reader of Scripture, he said, but he had not read it to be edified, but to be seditious--to dispute, to interpret it after his private affection; to him, therefore, the honey had been poison, and he warned all men how they followed his ill example; God's holy mysteries were no safe things to toy or play with. Gates, in dying, had three strokes of an axe;--"Whether," says an eye-witness,[99] "it was by his own request or no was doubtful"--remarkable words: as if the everlasting fate of the soul depended on its latest emotion, and repentance could be intensified by the conscious realisation of death.

[Footnote 99: _Harleian MSS._ 284.]

Last came Sir Thomas Palmer, in whom, to judge by his method of taking leave of life, there was some kind of nobleness. It was he who led the cavalry forlorn hope, at Haddington, when the supplies were thrown in for the garrison.

He leapt upon the scaffold, red with the blood of his companions. "Good morning to you all, good people," he said, looking round him with a smile; "ye come hither to see me die, and to see what news I have; marry, I will tell you; I have seen more in yonder terrible place [he pointed towards the Tower] than ever I saw before throughout all the realms that ever I wandered in; for there I have seen God, I have seen the world, and I have seen myself; and when I beheld my life, I saw nothing but slime and clay, full of corruption; I saw the world nothing else but vanity, and all the pleasures and treasures thereof nought worth; I saw God omnipotent, his power infinite, his mercy incomprehensible; and when I saw this, I most humbly submitted myself unto him, beseeching him of mercy and pardon, and I trust he hath forgiven me; for he called me once or twice before, but I would not turn to him, but even now by this sharp kind of death he hath called me unto him. I trust the wings of his mercy shall spread over me and save me; and I do here confess, before you all, Christ to be the very Son of God the Father, born of the Virgin Mary, which came into the world to fulfil the law for us, and to bear our offences on his back, and suffered his passion for our redemption, by the which I trust to be saved."

{p.046} Like his fellow-sufferers, Palmer then said a few prayers, asked the queen's forgiveness, knelt, and died.

Stunned by the apostasy on the scaffold of the man whom they had worshipped as a prophet, the ultra-faction among the Protestants became now powerless. The central multitude, whose belief was undefined, yielded to the apparent sentence of Heaven upon a cause weakened by unsuccessful treason, and disavowed in his death by its champion. Edward had died on the anniversary of the execution of More; God, men said, had visited his people, and "the Virgin Mary" had been set upon the throne for their redemption.[100] Dr. Watson, on the 20th of August, preached at Paul's Cross under a guard of soldiers; on the 24th, two days after the scene on Tower Hill, so little was a guard necessary, that mass was said in St. Paul's Church in Latin, with matins and vespers. The crucifix was replaced in the roodloft, the high altar was re-decorated, the real presence was defended from the pulpit, and, except from the refugees, not a murmur was heard.[101] Catching this favourable opportunity, the queen charmed the country with the announcement that the second portion of the last subsidy granted by Parliament should not be collected; she gave her word that the currency at the earliest moment should be thoroughly restored; while she gained credit on all sides for the very moderate vengeance with which she appeared to be contenting herself. Ridley only, Renard wrote, on the 9th of September, would now be executed; the other prisoners were to be all pardoned. The enthusiasm was slightly abated, indeed, when it was announced that their forgiveness would not be wholly free. Montague and Bromley, on their release from the Tower, were fined L7000 a-piece; Suffolk, Northampton, and other noblemen and gentlemen, as their estates would bear. But, to relieve the burdens of the people at the expense of those who had reaped the harvest of the late spoliations was, on the whole, a legitimate retribution; the moneyed men were pleased with the recognition of Edward's debts, and provided a loan of 25,000 crowns for the present necessities of the government. London streets rang again with shouts of "God Save the Queen;" and Mary recovered a fresh instalment of popularity to carry her a few steps further.[102]

[Footnote 100: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]

[Footnote 101: Ibid.]

[Footnote 102: Noailles; Renard.]

The refugees were the first difficulty. They were too numerous to imprison; and the most influential among them--men like Peter Martyr--having come to England on the invitation {p.047} of the late government, it was neither just nor honourable to hand them over to their own sovereigns. But both Mary and her Flemish adviser were anxious to see them leave the country as quickly as possible. The emperor recommended a general intimation to be given out, that criminals of all kinds taking refuge in England would be liable to seizure, offences against religion being neither specially mentioned nor specially excepted.[103] The foreign preachers were ordered to depart by proclamation; and Peter Martyr, who had left Oxford, and was staying with Cranmer at Lambeth, expecting an arrest, received, instead of it, a safe-conduct, of which he instantly availed himself. The movements of others were quickened with indirect menaces; while Gardiner told Renard, with much self-satisfaction, that a few messages desiring some of them to call upon him at his house had given them wings.[104]

[Footnote 103: Renard to Queen Mary: _Granvelle
Papers_, vol. iv. p. 65.]

[Footnote 104: Renard to Charles V., September 9:
_Rolls House MSS._]

Finding her measures no longer opposed, the queen refused next to recognise the legality of the marriage of the clergy. Married priests should either leave their wives or leave their benefices; and on the 29th of August, Gardiner, Bonner, Day, and Tunstal, late prisoners in the Tower, were appointed commissioners to examine into the conditions of their episcopal brethren. Convocation was about to meet, and must undergo a preliminary purification. Unhappy Convocation! So lately the supreme legislative body in the country, it was now patched, clipped, mended, repaired, or altered, as the secular government put on its alternate hues. The Protestant bishops had accepted their offices on Protestant terms--_Quamdiu se bene gesserint_, on their good behaviour; and, with the assistance of so pliant a clause, a swift clearance was effected. Barlow, to avoid expulsion, resigned Bath. Paul Bush retreated from Bristol. Hooper, ejected from Worcester by the restoration of Heath, was deprived of Gloucester for heresy and marriage, and, being a dangerous person, was committed on the 1st of September to the Fleet. Ferrars, of St. David's, left in prison by Northumberland for other pretended offences, was deprived on the same grounds, but remained in confinement. Bird, having a wife, was turned out of Chester; Archbishop Holgate out of York. Coverdale, Ridley, Scory, and Ponet had been already disposed of. The bench was wholesomely swept.[105]

[Footnote 105: Some of the Protestant bishops
(Cranmer, Hooper, Ridley, and Ferrars were
admirable exceptions) had taken care of themselves
in the seven years of plenty. At the time of the
deposition of the Archbishop of York an inventory
was taken of the personal property which was then
in his possession. He had five houses, three very
well provided, two meetly well. At his house at
Battersea he had, of coined gold, L300; plate gilt
and parcel gilt, 1600 oz. Mitre, gold, with two
pendants set with very fine diamonds, sapphires,
and balists, and other stones and pearls, weight
125 oz.; six great gold rings, with very fine
sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, turquoises. "At
Cawood he had of money L900; mitres, 2. Plate gilt
and parcel gilt, 770 oz; broken cross of silver
gilt, 46 oz.; two thousand five hundred sheep; two
Turkey carpets, as big and as good as any subject
had; a chest full of copes and vestments. Household
stores: wheat, 200 quarters; malt, 500 quarters;
oats, 60 quarters; wine, five or six tuns; fish and
ling, six or seven hundred; horses at Cawood, four
or five score; harness and artillery sufficient for
seven score men."--Strype's _Crammer_, vol. i. p.
440.]

{p.048} The English Protestant preachers seeing that priests everywhere held themselves licensed _ex officio_ to speak as they pleased from the pulpit, began themselves also, in many places, to disobey the queen's proclamation. They were made immediately to feel their mistake, and were brought to London to the Tower, the Marshalsea, or the Fleet, to the cells left vacant by their opponents. Among the rest came one who had borne no share in the late misdoings, but had long foreseen the fate to which those doings would bring him and many more. When Latimer was sent for, he was at Stamford. On the 4th of September six hours' notice was given him of his intended arrest; and so obviously his escape was desired, that the pursuivant who brought the warrant left him to obey it at his leisure; his orders, he said, were not to wait. But Latimer had business in England. While the fanatics who had provoked the catastrophe were slinking across the Channel from its consequences, Latimer determined to stay at home, and help to pay the debts which they had incurred. He went quietly to London, appeared before the council, where his "demeanour" was what they were pleased to term "seditious,"[106] and was committed to the Tower. "What, my friend," he said to a warder who was an old acquaintance there, "how do you? I am come to be your neighbour again." Sir Thomas Palmer's rooms in the garden were assigned for his lodging. In the winter he was left without a fire, and, growing infirm, he sent a message to the Lieutenant of the Tower to look better after him, or he should give him the slip yet.[107]

[Footnote 106: _Privy Council Register, MS. Mary._]

[Footnote 107: Foxe.]

And there was another besides Latimer who would not fly when the chance was left open to him. Archbishop Cranmer had continued at Lambeth unmolested, yet unpardoned; his conduct with respect to the letters patent had been more upright than the conduct of any other member of the council by {p.049} whom they had been signed; and on this ground, therefore, an exception could not easily be made in his disfavour. But his friends had interceded vainly to obtain the queen's definite forgiveness for him; treason might be forgotten; the divorce of Catherine of Arragon could never be forgotten. So he waited on, watching the reaction gathering strength, and knowing well the point to which it tended. In the country the English service was set aside and the mass restored with but little disturbance. No force had been used or needed; the Catholic majorities among the parishioners had made the change for themselves. The archbishop's friends came to him for advice; he recommended them to go abroad; he was urged to go himself while there was time; he said, "it would be in no ways fitting for him to go away, considering the post in which he was; and to show that he was not afraid to own all the changes that were by his means made in religion in the last reign."[108]

[Footnote 108: Strype's _Cranmer_.]

Neither was it fitting for him to sit by in silence. The world, misconstruing his inaction, believed him false like Northumberland; the world reported that he had restored mass at Canterbury; the world professed to have ascertained that he had offered to sing a requiem at Edward's funeral. In the second week of September, therefore, he made a public offer, in the form of a letter to a friend, to defend the communion service, and all the alterations for which he was responsible, against any one who desired to impugn them; he answered the stories against himself with a calm denial; and, though the letter was not printed, copies in manuscript were circulated through London so numerously that the press, said Renard, would not have sent out more.[109]

[Footnote 109: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._ In these late times, when men whose temper
has not been tried by danger, feel themselves
entitled, nevertheless, by their own innocence of
large errors, to sit in judgment on the greatest of
their forefathers, Cranmer has received no tender
treatment. Because, in the near prospect of a death
of agony, his heart for a moment failed him, the
passing weakness has been accepted as the key to
his life, and he has been railed at as a coward and
a sycophant. Considering the position of the
writer, and the circumstances under which it was
issued, I regard the publication of this letter as
one of the bravest actions ever deliberately
ventured by man.

Let it be read, and speak for itself.

"As the devil, Christ's antient adversary, is a
liar and the father of lying, even so hath he
stirred his servants and members to persecute
Christ and his true word and religion, which he
ceaseth not to do most earnestly at this present.
For whereas the most noble prince, of famous
memory, King Henry VIII., seeing the great abuses
of the Latin masses, reformed some things therein
in his time, and also our late sovereign lord King
Edward VI. took the same wholly away, for the
manifold errours and abuses thereof, and restored
in the place thereof Christ's holy supper,
according to Christ's own institution, and as the
Apostles in the primitive Church used the same in
the beginning, the devil goeth about by lying to
overthrow the Lord's holy supper, and to restore
the Latin satisfactory masses, a thing of his own
invention and device. And to bring the same more
clearly to pass, some have abused the name of me,
Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, bruiting abroad
that I have set up the mass at Canterbury, and that
I offered to say mass before the Queen's Highness
at Paul's Cross and I wot not where. I have been
well exercised these twenty years, to suffer and to
bear evil reports and lies, and have not been much
grieved thereat, and have borne all things quietly;
yet where untrue reports and lies turn to the
hindrance of God's truth, they be in no ways to be
tolerated and suffered. Wherefore these be to
signify to the world that it was not I that did set
up the mass at Canterbury, but a false, flattering,
lying, and dissembling monk, which caused the mass
to be set up there without my advice and counsel:
and as for offering myself to say mass before the
Queen's Highness, or in any other place, I never
did, as her Grace knoweth well. But if her Grace
will give me leave, I shall be ready to prove
against all that will say the contrary, that the
Communion-book, set forth by the most innocent and
godly prince King Edward VI., in his High Court of
Parliament, is conformable to the order which our
Saviour Christ did both observe and command to be
observed, which his Apostles and primitive Church
used many years; whereas the mass in many things
not only hath no foundation of Christ, his
Apostles, nor the primitive Church, but also is
contrary to the same, and containeth many horrible
blasphemies."]

{p.050} The challenge was answered by an immediate summons before the council; the archbishop was accused of attempting to excite sedition among the people, and was forthwith committed to the Tower to wait, with Ridley and Latimer, there, till his fate should be decided on. Meantime the eagerness with which the country generally availed itself of the permission to restore the Catholic ritual, proved beyond a doubt that, except in London and a few large towns, the popular feeling was with the queen. The English people had no affection for the Papacy. They did not wish for the re-establishment of the religious orders, or the odious domination of the clergy. But the numerical majority among them did desire a celibate priesthood, the ceremonies which the customs of centuries had sanctified, and the ancient faith of their fathers, as reformed by Henry VIII. The rights of conscience had found no more consideration from the Protestant doctrinalists than from the most bigoted of the persecuting prelates; and the facility with which the professors of the gospel had yielded to moral temptations, had for the time inspired moderate men with much distrust for them and for their opinions.

Could Mary have been contented to pursue her victory no further, she would have preserved the hearts of her subjects; and the reaction, left to complete its own tendencies, would in {p.051} a few years, perhaps, have accomplished in some measure her larger desires. But few sovereigns have understood less the effects of time and forbearance. She was deceived by the rapidity of her first success; she flattered herself that, difficult though it might be, she could build up again the ruined hierarchy, could compel the holders of church property to open their hands, and could reunite the country to Rome. Before she had been three weeks on the throne, she had received, as will be presently mentioned, a secret messenger from the Vatican; and she had opened a correspondence with the pope, entreating him, as an act of justice to herself and to those who had remained true to their Catholic allegiance, to remove the interdict.[110]

[Footnote 110: Renard to Charles V., September 9:
_Rolls House MSS._]

Other actors in the great drama which was approaching were already commencing their parts.

Reginald Pole having attempted in vain to recover a footing in England on the accession of Edward, having seen his passionate expectations from the Council of Trent melt into vapour, and Germany confirmed in heresy by the Peace of Passau, was engaged, in the summer of 1553, at a convent on the Lago di Garda, in re-editing his book against Henry VIII., with an intended dedication to Edward, of whose illness he was ignorant. The first edition, on the failure of his attempt to raise a Catholic crusade against his country, had been withdrawn from circulation; the world had not received it favourably, and there was a mystery about the publication which it is difficult to unravel. In the interval between the first despatch of the book into England as a private letter in the summer of 1536, and the appearance of it in print at Rome in the winter of 1538-9, it was re-written, as I have already stated, enlarged, and divided into parts. In a letter of apology which Pole wrote to Charles V., in the summer or early autumn of 1538,[111] he spoke of that division as having been executed by himself;[112] he said that he had kept his book secret till the church had spoken; but Paul having excommunicated Henry, he could no longer remain silent; he dwelt at length on the history of the work which he was then editing,[113] and he sent a copy at the same time with a letter, or he {p.052} wrote a letter with the intention of sending a copy, to James V. of Scotland.[114]

[Footnote 111: Before his embassy to Spain.]

[Footnote 112: Opus in quatuor libros sum
partitus.]

[Footnote 113: "Scripta quae nunc edo," are his own
words in the apology, and therefore, in an earlier
part of this work, I said that he published his
book himself. There is no doubt, from the context,
that in the word _scripta_ he referred to that book
and to no other.]

[Footnote 114: "Eum ad te librum Catholice princeps
nunc mitto, et sub nominis tui auspiciis cujus te
strenuum pietatis ministrum praebes in lucem exire
volo."--Epistola ad Regem Scotiae: _Poli Epistolae_,
vol. i. p. 174.]

But Charles had refused to move; the book injured Henry not at all, and injured fatally those who were dear to Pole; he checked the circulation of the copies, and he declared to the Cardinal of Naples that it had been published only at the command of the pope--that his own anxiety had been for the suppression of it.[115] Thirteen years after this, however, writing to Edward VI., he forgot that he had described himself to Charles as being himself engaged in the publication; and he assured the young king that he had never thought of publishing the book, that he had abhorred the very thought of publishing it; that it was prepared, edited, and printed by his friends at Rome during his own absence;[116] now, at length, he found himself obliged in his own person to give it forth, because an edition was in preparation elsewhere from one of the earlier copies; and he selected the son of Henry as the person to whom he could most becomingly dedicate the libel against his father's memory.

[Footnote 115: "Qui si postea editus fuit magis id
aliorum voluntate et illius qui mihi imperare
potuit quam mea est factum, mea vero fuit ut
impressus supprimeretur."--Ibid. vol. iv. p. 85.]

[Footnote 116: "Nam cum ad urbem ex Hispania
rediens libros injussu meo typis excusos
reperissem, _toto volumine amicorum studio et opera
non sine ejus auctoritate qui jus imperandi haberet
in plures libros disposito quod ego non feceram_
quippe qui de ejus editione nunquam cogitassem,"
etc.

"Quid aliud hoc significavit nisi me ab his libris
divulgandis penitus abhorruisse ut certe
abhorrui."--Epistola ad Edwardum Sextum: Poli
_Epistolae_. The book being the sole authority for
some of the darkest charges against Henry VIII.,
the history of it is of some importance.

This was not the only instance in which his
recollection of his own conduct was something
treacherous. In the apology to Charles V., speaking
of a war against Henry, he had said: "Tempus
venisse video, ad te primum missus, deinde ad Regem
Christianissimum, ut hujus scelera per se quidem
minime obscura detegam, et te Caesar a bello Turcico
abducere coner et quantum possum suadeam ut arma
tua eo convertas si huic tanto malo aliter mederi
non possis." For thus, "levying war against his
country," Pole had been attainted. The name of
traitor grated upon him. To Edward, therefore, he
wrote: "I invited the two sovereigns rather to win
back the king, by the ways of love and affection,
as a fallen friend and brother, than to assail him
with arms as an enemy. This I never desired nor did
I urge any such conduct upon them. _Hoc ego nunquam
profecto volui neque cum illis egi._"--Epistola ad
Edwardum Sextum; Ibid.]

Edward did not live to receive this evidence of Pole's good feeling. He died before the edition was completed; and as soon as Northumberland's failure and Mary's accession were known at Rome, England was looked upon in the Consistory {p.053} as already recovered to the faith, and Pole was chosen by the unanimous consent of the cardinals as the instrument of the reconciliation. The account of the proclamation of the queen was brought to the Vatican on the 6th of August by a courier from Paris; the pope in tears of joy drew his commission and despatched it on the instant to the Lago di Garda; and on the 9th Pole himself wrote to Mary to say that he had been named legate, and waited her orders to fly to England. He still clung to his conviction that the revolution in all its parts had been the work of a small faction, and that he had but himself to set his foot upon the shore to be received with an ovation; his impulse was therefore to set out without delay; but the recollection, among other things, that he was attainted by act of parliament, forced him to delay unwillingly till he received formal permission to present himself.

Anxious for authentic information as to the state of England and the queen's disposition, Julius had before despatched also a secret agent, Commendone, afterwards a cardinal, with instructions to make his way to London to communicate with Mary, and if possible to learn her intentions from her own lips. Rapid movement was possible in Europe even with the roads of the sixteenth century. Commendone was probably sent from Rome as soon as Edward was known to be dead; he was in London, at all events, on the 8th of August,[117] disguised as an Italian gentleman in search of property which he professed had been bequeathed him by a kinsman. By the favour of Providence,[118] he fell in with an acquaintance, a returned Catholic refugee, who had a place in the household; and from this man he learnt that the queen was virtually a prisoner in the Tower, and that the heretics on the council allowed no one of whose business they disapproved to have access to her. Mary, however, was made acquainted with his arrival; a secret interview was managed, at which she promised to do her very best in the interests of the church; but she had still, she said, to conquer her kingdom, and Pole's coming, much as she desired it, was for the moment out of the question; before she could draw the spiritual sword she must have the temporal sword more firmly in her grasp, and she looked to marriage as the best means of strengthening herself. If she married abroad, she thought at that time of the emperor; if she accepted one of her subjects, {p.054} she doubted--in her dislike of Courtenay--whether Pole might not return in a less odious capacity than that of Apostolic Legate; as the queen's intended husband the country might receive him; he had not yet been ordained priest, and deacon's orders, on a sufficient occasion, could perhaps be dispensed with.[119] The visit, or visits, were concealed even from Renard. Commendone was forbidden, under the strictest injunctions, to reveal what the queen might say to him, except to the pope or to Pole; and it is the more likely that she was serious in her expressions about the latter, from the care with which she left Renard in ignorance of Commendone's presence.

[Footnote 117: He remained fifteen days, and he
left for Rome the day after the execution of
Northumberland.--Pallavicino.]

[Footnote 118: Caelitum ductu.]

[Footnote 119: "Nec destiterat regina id ipsum
Commendono indicare, eum percontata an existimaret
Pontificem ad id legem Polo relaxaturum, cum is
nondum sacerdos sed diaconus esset, extarentque
hujusmodi relaxionum exempla ingentis alicujus
emolumenti gratia."--Pallavicino.]

The papal messenger remained long enough to witness a rapid change in her position; he saw the restoration of the mass; he was in London at the execution, and he learnt the apostasy, of Northumberland; and he carried letters from Mary to the pope with assurances of fidelity, and entreaties for the absolution of the kingdom. But Mary was obliged to say, notwithstanding, that for the present she was in the power of the people, of whom the majority mortally detested the Holy See; that the lords of the council were in possession of vast estates which had been alienated from the church, and they feared their titles might be called in question;[120] and, although she agreed herself in all which Pole had urged (she had received his letter before Commendone left England), yet that, nevertheless, necessity acknowledged no law. Her heretical sister was in every one's mouth, and might at any moment take her place on the throne, and for the present, she said, to her deep regret, she could not, with prudence or safety, allow the legate to come to her.

[Footnote 120: Mary described her throne as,
"acquistato per benevolenze di quei popoli, che per
la maggior parte odiano a morte questa sancta sede,
oltre gl' interessi dei beni ecclesiastici occupati
da molti signori, che sono del suo
consiglio."--Julius III. to Pole: _Poli Epistolae_,
vol. iv.]

The queen's letters were confirmed by Commendone himself; he had been permitted to confer in private with more than one good Catholic in the realm; and every one had given him the same assurances,[121] although he had urged upon them the opposite opinion entertained by Pole:[122] he had himself witnessed the {p.055} disposition with which the people regarded Elizabeth, and he was satisfied that the queen's alarm on this head was not exaggerated.[123]

[Footnote 121: "Le parole che haveva inteso da lei
disse di haver inteso da persone Catholice et digne
di fede in quel paese."--Ibid.]

[Footnote 122: "Et similmente espose l' opinione
vostra con le ragioni che vi movano."--Ibid.]

[Footnote 123: Julius III. to Pole: _Poli
Epistolae_, vol. iv.]

In opinions so emphatically given, the pope was obliged to acquiesce, and the same view was enforced upon him equally strongly by the emperor. Charles knew England tolerably well; he was acquainted perfectly well with the moral and intellectual unfitness of the intended legate for any office which required discretion; and Julius, therefore, was obliged to communicate to the eager cardinal the necessity of delay, and to express his fear that, by excess of zeal, he might injure the cause and alienate the well-affected queen.[124] Though Pole might not go to England, however, he might go, as he went before, to the immediate neighbourhood; he might repair to Flanders, with a nominal commission to mediate in the peace which was still hoped for. In Flanders, though the pope forbore to tell him so, he would be under the emperor's eyes and under the emperor's control, till the vital question of the queen's marriage had been disposed of, or till England was in a calmer humour.

[Footnote 124: "Onde se per questa molta diligenza
nostra, le avvenisse qualche caso sinistro, si
rovinarebbe forse (il che Dio non voglie) ogni
speranza della reduttione di quella patria, levando
se le forze a questa buona e Catholica regina,
overo alienando la de noi par offesa
ricevuta."--Ibid.]

About the marriage Charles was more anxious than ever; Pole was understood to have declined the honour of being a competitor;[125] Renard had informed the emperor of the present direction of the queen's own inclinations; and treating himself, therefore, as out of the question on the score of age and infirmities, he instructed his minister to propose the Prince of Spain as a person whom the religious and the political interests of the world alike recommended to her as a husband. The alliance of England, Spain, and Flanders would command a European supremacy; their united fleets would sweep the seas, and Scotland, deprived of support from France, must become an English province; while sufficient guarantees could be provided easily for the security of English liberties. These, in themselves, were powerful reasons; Renard was permitted to increase their cogency by promises of pensions, lands, and titles, or by hard money in hand, in whatever direction such liberality could be usefully employed.[126]

[Footnote 125: "Ayant le Cardinal Pole si
expressement declaire qu'il n'a nul desir de soy
marier, et que nous tenons, que pour avoir si
longuement suivi l'etat ecclesiastique, et
s'accommode aux choses duysant a icelluy et estant
diacre."--Charles V. to Renard: _Granvelle Papers_,
vol. iv.]

[Footnote 126: Ibid.]

{p.056} The external advantages of the connection were obvious; it recommended itself to the queen from the Spanish sympathies which she had contracted in her blood, and from the assistance which it promised to afford her in the great pursuit of her life. The proposal was first suggested informally. Mary affected to find difficulties; yet, if she raised objections, it was only to prolong the conversation upon a subject which delighted her. She spoke of her age; Philip was twenty-seven, she ten years older; she called him "boy;" she feared she might not be enough for him; she was unsusceptible; she had no experience in love;[127] with such other phrases, which Renard interpreted at their true importance. With the queen there would be no difficulty; with the council it was far otherwise. Lord Paget was the only English statesman who listened with any show of favour.

[Footnote 127: "Elle jura que jamais elle n'avoit
senti esquillon de ce que l'on appelle amour, ny
entre en pensement de volupte, etc."--Renard to the
Bishop of Arras: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv.]

The complication of parties is not to be easily disentangled. Some attempt, however, may be partially successful.

The council, the peers, the Commons, the entire lay voices of England, liberal and conservative alike, were opposed to Rome; Gardiner was the only statesman in the country who thought a return to Catholic union practicable or desirable; while there was scarcely an influential family, titled or untitled, which was not, by grant or purchase, in possession of confiscated church property.