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Title: The Spanish Marriage (1933)
Author: Helen Simpson
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Title: The Spanish Marriage (1933)
Author: Helen Simpson

[The INDEX has not been included in this ebook.]




FOREWORD

This book pretends to be a narrative only, and not a work of reference.
Those who like to go direct to the authorities will find a list of these
in another place. The headings to the chapters are taken from the
Colloquies of Erasmus.

I have thought it as well when quoting from documents to simplify the old
capricious spelling, which has its charms, but arrests the unaccustomed
eye, and will not let the sense flow freely; 'qweyn,' for example, is not
readily to be identified with our 'coin.'

I am happy to pay tribute here to the knowledge and discrimination of
Miss Scott-Rogers, who found all my illustrations for me.




[ILLUSTRATIONS

1. QUEEN MARY
(From the portrait by Sir Antonio Moro in the Prado Museum, Madrid)

2. CHARLES V AS A BOY
(From the portrait by an unknown artist of the Flemish School in the
National Gallery of Scotland)

3. TREATY BETWEEN FRANCIS I AND CARDINAL WOLSEY FOR AN ALLIANCE DEPENDING
ON A MARRIAGE BETWEEN HENRY, DUKE OF ORLEANS AND PRINCESS MARY

4. KATHERINE OF ARAGON
(From the portrait by an unknown artist in the National Portrait Gallery)

5. THE PALACE OF GREENWICH FROM THE OBSERVATORY HILL
(From a contemporary drawing by A. van den Wyngaerde in the Bodleian
Library)

6. QUEEN ELIZABETH AS PRINCESS
(From the portrait by an unknown artist of the school of Holbein, in the
Royal Collection at Windsor. Reproduced by gracious permission of His
Majesty the King)

7. THE TOWER OF LONDON
(From a contemporary drawing by A. van den Wyngaerde in the Bodleian
Library)

8. WESTMINSTER
(From a contemporary drawing by A. van den Wyngaerde in the Bodleian
Library)

9. PHILIP II OF SPAIN
(From the portrait attributed to Sofonisba Angiusciola, in the National
Portrait Gallery)

10. LADY JANE GREY
(From the portrait by an unknown artist in the National Portrait Gallery)

11. SIR THOMAS WYAT
(From a contemporary portrait of the school of Holbein)

12. LONDON BRIDGE
(From a contemporary drawing by A. van den Wyngaerde in the Bodleian
Library)

13. THE QUEEN'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LORD PRIVY SEAL TO RECEIVE KING
PHILIP AT SOUTHAMPTON

14. REVERSE OF MEDAL COMMEMORATING SPANISH MARRIAGE

14a. OBVERSE OF MEDAL COMMEMORATING SPANISH MARRIAGE

15. PASSPORT FOR RICHARD SHELLEY, ESQUIRE, selected to announce to the
King of Portugal and the Princess of Portugal, Regent in Spain, the
Queen's happy delivery of a prince. Signed _Philippus_ and _Marye
the Quene_. (Queen Mary, when under the delusion that she was
pregnant, caused such letters to be addressed to several foreign princes,
announcing her confinement, and with the approval of her husband,
selected the messengers who were to convey them)
(Public Record Office)]



INTRODUCTORY


England in the early years of Henry VIII may be seen as a newly risen
power, with continental commitments; a rich country, thanks to the
economies of the King's father, and for this reason sought as an ally by
the more considerable States. Her traditional friendships were with Spain
and Portugal, her enmities with Scotland and France; of these latter,
Scotland, crushed by the victory of Flodden in 1513, gave little trouble
during Henry's reign.

The Empire was a sprawling net of territories that included Spain, the
Netherlands, Burgundy, Sicily, and Naples, with a host of small
principalities, electorates, and bishoprics in Central Europe, now
drawing together against the advancing menace of the Turk. These
territories encircled France, and perpetually threatened, according to
the temper of their masters, that compact kingdom. In 1521, Charles,
grandson of Ferdinand of Aragon, was elected to the imperial throne, and
thereby found himself heir to an alliance with England, together with a
considerable debt; Henry VIII had lent money to his wife's relatives for
wars in Barbary and for the quieting of the Low Countries. Charles was
prepared to accept and further this alliance, without any wish to add to
his responsibilities by conquest, and to pay the debt by any means which
did not involve the passing of money. The New World had not yet begun to
yield its treasures. The Emperor, for all his power, was poor.

France was ruled by a young man of great personal courage but indifferent
judgment, Francis I. He succeeded Louis XII, who had no children by his
marriage with Mary, a sister of Henry VIII. This marriage left no trace
in French history, and English history is concerned with it only because
Louis' death left his widow free to marry the Duke of Suffolk; from her
Jane Grey's claim to the English Crown derived. Francis, quarrelsome,
still had the wit to perceive that no country could deal successfully
with enemies attacking from all sides; and when Burgundy, Spain, Navarre
and the Netherlands came together under Charles, he attempted to shield
himself against invasion from the west by friendship with England. This
plan wrecked itself on the personality of Henry, jealous of the French
King's success in war--he had won Milan and Genoa at the age of
twenty--and inclined by tradition and family ties to side with the
Empire.

The Pope from 1513 to 1521 was Leo X, a Medici, whose predecessors in
Florence France had, not long before, dispossessed. As a temporal
sovereign he was England's ally, and when his spiritual authority began
to be disputed he found English theology at his service. Luther's theses
on Predestination and the Sacraments were combated, the first by Erasmus,
the second by Henry, who gained thereby the title of Defender of the
Faith which has remained with the English Crown. Germany took the disease
of heresy first and badly; ten years of it threatened to split the
Empire. Persecutions had not been unknown hitherto in Europe, but as
printing and translation spread knowledge of the Bible, they multiplied.
The Reformation was a political force from its inception.

At the time Mary, Princess of England, was born her father was
twenty-five, Francis three years younger, and Charles a boy of sixteen,
not yet Emperor. The two former were near in temperament as in years,
warlike, absolute, and jealous. Charles physically was no match for
either; he was poor, prudent, and peaceful to hold his own, though he had
a heavy hand with rebellion. The approaches and withdrawals of these
three men, with the spiritual war in which according to temperament they
took sides, made twenty years of the history of Europe.



I


PAMPHILUS. The maid, as I said, came of very honest parents,
had a good fortune, was very handsome; in a word, was a match for a
prince.


By the time she was ten years old Henry VIII's elder daughter had been
three times betrothed. At the age of two she stood in a great room at
Greenwich Palace with her mother's hands on her shoulders, her father and
her aunt, the Queen of France, beside her; and heard, without heeding
greatly, an oration from the Bishop of London praising and recommending
the holy estate of matrimony. At the end of this--it was a speech of some
length--the Venetian ambassador says that the Princess Mary was taken up
in arms; her parents and the French ambassadors were asked if they
consented on behalf of the contracting parties to a betrothal between the
Dauphin of France and the King of England's daughter. Cardinal Wolsey
presented a ring; the Lord Admiral put it on her finger, a gold band with
a great diamond in it. There was a blessing; a further exordium, this
time from the Cardinal; and the proceedings ended with High Mass, which
if it were sung with full ceremony, as the Venetian declares that it was,
must have taken at least an hour and a half longer. The choir was dressed
in cloth of gold, and the display altogether was of a magnificence that
astounded even the rich Republic's man.

Promises were lavish, too. The contract which was drawn up some ten days
later provided for a dowry with Mary of a hundred thousand marks on the
day that she should marry the Dauphin, at this time only a few months
old. And there was what Portia calls 'old swearing,' to the effect that
Henry regarded this vow as binding; if he failed to fulfil his part of
the contract, he consented that his kingdom should be bound by interdict;
the King of France, more discreetly, promised only to match the hundred
thousand marks with 'as large a dowry as any Queen of France had ever
had,' under similar pain if he broke his oath.

So much for the first betrothal, and the first contract with France. It
was signed in October 1518; the terms were read out at Mass by a priest
from the altar. A year later, the whole aspect had changed. The Dauphin
was, in 1518, one of the best _partis_ in Europe, but by 1520 there
was a better, Charles, Katherine's nephew, King of Spain, now elected
Emperor. Francis too had been a candidate for the imperial Crown, and a
good deal of money had been spent in convincing the German electors that
it would be for their good to have as ruler a prince whose character is
given by the Venetian ambassador as follows:

'His looks are most royal; his mind and body robust. He is a great eater,
a good drinker, and a better sleeper than either. He is all for
enjoyment, his dress always very fine, rich in stones and pearls, to say
nothing of broidery. As for the things of the mind and spirit, these are
not so much to his taste.'

The German electors very prudently took money from both sides; and having
by these means disposed of any charge of partiality that might lie
against them, declared for Charles, whereby he became absolute lord of a
third part of Europe at twenty years of age.

He had almost split Spain in two in the attempt to push his claim. He was
a Fleming, brought up in the Low Countries, who spoke Spanish badly, and
knew nothing at all of the prides and jealousies to which he was heir. He
needed money, and summoned the Cortes, as was constitutional, to get it;
but he regarded his own convenience by appointing as the place of meeting
Galicia, whence, the money secured, he could depart at once by sea.
Galicia was an inaccessible rustic province, offensive to Castilians.
There was rebellion in Valladolid; Madrid, Toledo, Cordoba protested.
Charles yielded so far as to change the place of convocation to Coruña,
and got his subsidies on May 19th, 1520; next day he set sail, leaving
Spain in a turmoil, and his Flemish chancellor to deal with it, which he
did by fines so heavy that for some time afterwards a Castilian would
take off his hat at sight of a piece of gold.

It was evident that the rejected candidate--'We both court the same
mistress,' was Francis' phrase, 'and each should urge his suit with all
the address of which he is master'--would not long leave his successful
rival in peace. The old military arguments presented themselves with
their usual impressiveness; as that when an attack is certain it is good
tactics to forestall it; that a man who has much will certainly want
more; and that passivity under insult is dishonouring to a king and the
nation he rules. Francis, besides, had something of a taste for war, and
had been brilliantly successful at Marignano, when he beat Sforza and won
Milan for France. His challenge was not so rash as it sounded. Charles
was nominally lord of Austria, Spain, the Low Countries, the Sicilics,
and the Americas, with all the wealth at his back that such lordship
implied. But Francis had Switzerland to draw on for troops, a privilege
for which he had paid 700,000 crowns annually, awaiting just such a
moment as this. Charles' possessions were scattered and troublesome;
France was compact and loyal: 'the French,' said Carvalli, 'seem to have
abandoned their wills wholly to the King.' But he needed a free hand, or
rather the certainty that England would not pounce when his back was
turned. There had been uncomfortable rumours; a contract of marriage,
relationship _in petto_, was not much to set against the Emperor's
blood tie with the English throne. Urgent letters of regard and esteem
suggested the immediate marriage of the two babies, and appointed a place
where the two Kings might confer in amity on French soil.

Charles' ministers too held conclaves, not liking the alliance, but could
find no way to prevent it except by marrying off their own master. True,
Charles was betrothed to the Princess Charlotte of France, aged three,
and the King of Portugal had a grown daughter for disposal with 80,000
crowns who seemed very willing to have him. But there was not much money
with the Princess Charlotte, and as for Portugal, it was a quarter from
which at the moment no danger threatened. The statesmen, with their
quaint belief, surviving betrayals untold, that family ties protect a
country in war, waved away these various contracts, and combined the
available pieces to make another pattern; England and the Empire against
France.

For England, Spain was not yet the enemy. It was a country, to English
minds, too far away to be dangerous, even with the Low Countries tacked
on to it by the accident of a crown. France, on the other hand, was
resented as an upstart; Paris had had an English governor only a century
before. The English view was that Frenchmen were rebels, insufficiently
persuaded of the benefits that flowed inevitably from English rule, and
that their King, instead of treating on something more than equal terms
with a Tudor, ought to be cap in hand to him. In England too, therefore,
there were conclaves, and plans centring upon the figure of the small
yellow-haired Princess, 'right merry, daily exercising herself in
virtuous pastimes and occupations,' and still the Dauphin's bride,
wearing his ring.

The Venetian ambassador, Giustiniani, met Mary one day being carried in
her nurse's arms, her father walking by her. He knelt, then reached up to
kiss her hand. 'By Almighty God, my lord,' said Henry, in the colloquial
Latin which was his usual speech with foreigners, 'there's never a tear
from this girl of mine.' 'Her destiny does not move her to tears,' the
Venetian answered, 'how should it, since she is to be Queen of France?'

Thus there was no outward admitting of the fact that the whole European
case was altered. Spies presented their reports, letters went to and fro
carrying rumours; when these became too detailed and convincing Henry
sent civil disclaimers to Francis, protesting that their bargain still
held; to which Francis responded, saying that for his own part he would
rather have the Princess Mary for his son, 'though the King's grace had
ten children, than the King of Portingale's daughter, with all the spices
her father hath.'

At this time there was hardly a princess in Europe of whatever age with
any dowry that was not provisionally betrothed in this manner. Some were
puppets and remained so. Some that were older knew their own minds, and
made negotiation difficult by a frank statement of their intentions. The
Portuguese Princess Isabella, for example, Isabella the small and fair,
so short lived and dearly loved, was determined to be Empress. She took
for her motto _Aut Caesar, aut nihil_, and announced it to Europe,
while her father increased his offer to a million crowns in gold. This
was tempting, and Charles hesitated, necessary though it was for him to
break the Francis-Henry alliance. Marriage alone would settle matters
with Henry, from whom already he had borrowed 30,000 crowns, a fact which
Wolsey, when the dealing between them came down to figures, did not allow
him to forget. Charles, bargaining, asked a million crowns with the
English princess. Wolsey coolly offered 80,000, from which the original
debt was to be deducted. Charles, a good deal taken aback at this view of
his value through English eyes, played for time, while Francis, not
merely suspicious, but perfectly well aware of all that was going on and
determined to put a stop to it, pressed for a ratification of the
marriage treaty with his son. A date was fixed, reluctantly, by the
English plotters; the end of the month of May was appointed, and orders
went out to all the tailors, armourers, and upholsterers of two
countries.

It was too much for Charles' resolution. Five days before the meeting at
the Field of the Cloth of Gold he appeared in England; 'specially to see
the Queen of England, his aunt,' says Hall's Chronicle, 'was the intent
of the Emperor.' He went no further than Canterbury, where Henry met him,
and Wolsey, at whose invitation he was in England. 'Come, and you shall
be welcome; ask, and you shall have; speak openly and freely, and we
shall say Amen to whatever you say.' The people were pleased with the
simplicity of the Emperor, his foreign manner and meekness.' What passed
at the interview nobody at this present date knows.

Mary did not go with her parents to France, but stayed quietly with her
governess, Lady Bryan, at Richmond, where some French gentlemen came to
see her and compliment her from the Dauphin. The council wrote to Henry,
busy with festivities but not to the neglect of all domesticity, that the
Princess 'welcomed the French gentlemen with most goodly countenance,
proper communication, and pleasant pastime in playing on the virginals;
and they greatly marvelled and rejoiced at the same, her young and tender
age considered.' She was only four, very small, a pretty child, 'who
promises,' the Spaniard de Sabinas wrote, 'to be a handsome lady.'

The French gentlemen thus solemnly commending the two infants to each
other were made very welcome. Their entertainment cost thirty-five
shillings and threepence, and consisted of cherries, old apples (this was
in June), wafers and strawberries, with four gallons of hippocras. They,
or similar French gentlemen, were continually during this year keeping an
eye on the Princess, while equivalent English gentlemen crossed the
Channel to condole with the little Dauphin on an accident, or to take him
precious stones and toys. The outward show of friendship and alliance was
never allowed to lapse.

The Emperor was making up his mind. His dash to England in June had been
an unusually impulsive action, and the probability is that he had at that
time committed himself. Certainly about the middle of next year a
commission was appointed to consider all arrangements for his marriage
with Mary, which included, since he and she were first cousins, a
dispensation to be procured from the Pope. The commission took no great
time over their business. The Pope was complaisant, the money was ready;
in addition to the marriage matter, and in the same treaty, Henry and
Charles bound themselves to attack Francis by a certain date, he being
meanwhile a prospective father-in-law of the one and standing in the same
relation to the other's daughter. Two years after his first visit Charles
landed at Dover.

There was no doubt about his popularity with the English. They had some
notion of him as the King of the world, and his choice of an English
princess for consort confirmed them in their new and excellent national
conceit of themselves. There was enthusiasm which may be compared, not
happily, with the kind of welcome his son found in 1554, when
'demonstrations of joy were obliged upon the people,' says the French
ambassador, 'on pain of death'; and Philip's envoy, Count Egmont, was
brought down Cheapside, 'where the people nothing rejoicing held down
their heads sorrowfully.' All the way from Dover to Greenwich Charles was
applauded, and when at last he arrived at the gates of the palace the
Queen herself stood there, holding her daughter's hand, to welcome him.
He asked her blessing on his knees, which must have made the watching
crowds proud of their King's wife, and 'had great joy to see his young
cousin german the Lady Mary.'

There were the inevitable festivities in London, followed by a removal to
Windsor to consider more soberly the treaty of marriage, in which certain
clauses appear to cancel each other out. One provided that the existing
differences between the Emperor and the King of France should be settled
as soon as might be; another, for the invasion of France by a joint
expedition to recover English ground there lost; those cities quite
honestly and legally purchased by Francis in the year 1516 with money won
in the Italian campaign. Another clause insisted that the Princess at
twelve years old should be sent to Spain to finish her education there.

This treaty, though officially no word was breathed of its existence, was
no secret so far as Francis was concerned. He was aware of it; he was
alarmed by it. He was spoiling to attack the Emperor over the border in
the vulnerable Low Countries, but held back for fear lest Henry should
strike, very well aware how the loss of those once English towns Tournai,
St. Amand, Mortagne--rankled in English memories. He perceived that it
was not the moment for any kind of action. He held his hand and his
tongue, and let time, and the Emperor's difficulties, unravel the tangle
for him.

It seems fairly evident that Henry, though he coveted this splendid
marriage for his daughter, had no real hope of it. While the treaty still
held, and Charles wrote from Spain of 'my beloved bride, future
imperatrix, the Princess,' a rumour was favoured among the ambassadors
that some intrigue was going on with the King of Scots, who was to have a
pension and a claim upon the English Crown if he would marry Mary. But
while the chance of the more brilliant match still held, Henry was
neglecting no means to bring it about. Ambassadors extraordinary went to
Spain, one of them that same Bishop of London, Tunstall, who had so
exhorted the Princess and her parents concerning the sanctity of marriage
contracts years ago when she was pledged to the Dauphin. And Mary
herself, now nine years old, sent Charles a message with a gift, an
emerald, by which the symbolists of the period represented chastity;
traditionally, such stones burst asunder in the presence of illicit love.

'Her Grace hath devised this token, for a better knowledge to be had,
when God shall send them grace to be together, whether his majesty do
keep himself as continent and chaste as with God's grace she will,
whereby ye may say, his majesty may see that her assured love towards the
same hath already such operation in her, that it is also confirmed by
jealousy, being one of the greatest signs and tokens of hearty love and
cordial affection.'

Jealousy, of a man she had seen only for a day or two three years before,
is a preposterous word in the mouth of this child. Her mother dictated
the letter, perhaps; quite certainly her mother was for ever talking to
her daughter of Spain. Katherine had never forgotten her country.
Gentlemen who wished to please her spoke to her in Spanish, the arms of
Spain were embroidered with those of England on her cloth of estate, and
she kept her pride as Ferdinand and Isabella's daughter. It must have
seemed to her the fate of all others to be prayed for, that her child
should sit on the throne her own mother had made glorious. She must have
prayed for her nephew's victory in the war which was declared as a result
of the provisions of the Treaty of Windsor becoming known. Such petitions
are dangerous; they may be granted. Francis lost at Pavia; he went to
Madrid a prisoner, stripped of power, and the one reason for the
Emperor's condescension to a princess none too well portioned ceased to
exist.

With Francis out of the way, Henry became unimportant, and the Emperor
set about getting out of his bargain. He was peremptory. Mary was to be
sent to Spain at once. Her dowry was to be increased to 400,000 ducats,
with a further 200,000 crowns towards the expense of the war with France,
in which he had engaged on Henry's behalf. As to the 30,000 already
owing, nothing was said about that. Wolsey was firm. The Princess would
only be exchanged for a hostage of equal rank; she was too young and too
precious to be taken otherwise out of the kingdom. The ambassadors bowed,
and after saluting the King and Queen, made a brief address in Latin to
the Princess, who replied with fluency in the same tongue. But they too,
in spite of politeness, were firm. They were instructed to take
possession of the Princess and the money at once, or else the King must
release the Emperor from his promise. Henry gave an angry answer, refused
to consider an increase of dowry; as for the Spanish upbringing, if the
Emperor 'should seek a mistress for her, to frame her after the manner of
Spain, and of whom she might take example of virtue, he should not find
in all Christendom a more meet than she now hath, that is the Queen's
grace, her mother, who is comen of the house of Spain, and who for the
affection she beareth the Emperor will nourish and bring her up as may be
hereafter to his most contentation.'

Charles protested. It was time he should marry; his subjects expected it,
and favoured the Portuguese princess, not only for her dowry, but because
she was more of an age to have children; Isabella was at this time
twenty-three years old. Henry, seeing his mind made up, was unwilling to
quarrel. He agreed to call the bargain off; on condition that Charles
should make peace with France and pay his debts to England. The Emperor
agreed, and in a few days his marriage contract with Isabella was signed.
As for the 30,000 crowns, they were conveniently forgotten; certainly
they never returned to the English treasury, though perhaps Wolsey's
pockets knew something of their whereabouts. The Emperor at his second
visit had increased the Cardinal's pension--already, from this source,
3000--to something more like 7000 crowns a year.

Mary Tudor, at this breakdown of both her marriage chances, was nine
years old. It was not to be supposed that her discreet governess, her
silent mother, did not now and then tell her stories of what her life as
Empress would be. She had seen Charles; the little Dauphin, never, though
they had exchanged toys. The normal small girl falls in love very easily,
wreathing her imagination round such objects as chance may present. A
young man of twenty, with a great name, ruler of half a dozen sounding
countries; a simple and dignified young man, who went on his knee for her
mother's blessing; such a husband, together with the thought of seeing
Spain, must have made a curious and attractive picture in her mind, of
orange trees, and deep rivers, with herself sitting on a throne
surrounded by gentlemen wearing their hats. Mary was half a Spaniard, and
the country of a mother's exile takes on colours not altogether earthly.

But she was now proclaimed Princess of Wales, heiress, that is, to the
Crown; and sent off to make the acquaintance of her principality
'accompanied with an honourable, sad, discreet, and expert counsel.' With
travelling, music, and the practice of four languages it is not to be
supposed that the child had leisure or inclination to speculate on her
destiny. It is notable, however, that she became 'very perfect in
Spanish.'

The political game, played then as always with small regard for the
decencies, took, in 1527, another turn. By this time, despite an ugly
display of double-dealing on both sides, Francis and Henry were friends
again, and the next move came from the King of France, once more
suggesting marriage; not this time on his son's behalf, but on his own.
He was told that Mary, 'the pearl of the world,' would be handed over as
the price of alliance and in return for the town of Boulogne. Alliances
were cheap, they could be made and unmade with the help of a scrap of
paper and a seal; towns, once ceded, were not so easily regained. The
King hesitated, and his mother, Louise of Savoy, took it upon herself to
move the hard hearts of the English envoys. Her son, she said, had for
many years been eager to marry Princess Mary, both for her manifold
virtues and other gay qualities.' Francis at this time was thirty-three,
had been married and widowed twice, and had seven legitimate children.

Ambassadors after this drove like shuttles across and across the Channel,
with requests for pictures, civil letters, the pictures themselves, and
the usual reports of spies; most of which latter insisted that the King
of England had no intention of marrying his child to any foreigner; that
the people would not bear it; and that if he did there would be general
war. The Princess Mary, however, was put through her paces for the envoys
as before, showing her writing, her skill at music and Latin; which being
satisfactory there was another magnificent betrothal, with a sermon from
yet another bishop, a Frenchman this time, on the beauties and duties of
matrimony; and afterwards dancing in the Queen's apartment at Greenwich.

One of the French envoys, de Turenne, who danced with Mary, running an
expert eye over her frailness--she was a slender, shortish girl--gave
his master his opinion, that she would not be fit for marriage for
another three years. She looked, however, very well, particularly in the
masque or play that followed. The scene opened with the view of a cave,
guarded by gentlemen of the court in cloth of gold doublets and tall
plumes, carrying torches. Eight girls were grouped within the cave, their
dress as splendid as that of the torchbearers; cloth of gold, hair
gathered in nets, with richly jewelled garlands over velvet caps, and the
sleeves of their surcoats so long that they almost touched the ground.
The Princess was distinguished by the astonishing display of jewels that
she wore; carrying, said the Venetian ambassador, all the gems of the
eighth sphere. The dancing noblemen were masked and wore black velvet
slippers, the King, having recently been hurt at tennis, being obliged to
ease his foot in this way. The Princess at last took off her cap, and
over her shoulders fell her hair, which was a silver colour, very thick
and curly. The festivities went on till morning. It was one of the most
splendid days of Mary's life.

Wolsey in person was the next to meet the French King, now alarmed by the
Emperor's success in Rome, and something more than anxious for an ally of
good standing. Wolsey wrote after his interview that Francis was in a
good disposition concerning the Princess, 'and I, being her godfather,
loving her entirely, next unto your Highness, and above all other
creatures, assured him I was desirous she should be bestowed upon his
person, as in the best and most worthy place in Christendom.' Back came
the ambassadors from England, full of praise of the Princess, urging
their King to conclude matters, until he, well aware of the value of the
match, and doing his best to argue on equal terms with the cleverest
diplomat in Europe, lost his temper.

'I know well enough her education, form, fashion, beauty and virtue, and
what father and mother she comes of. It is expedient and necessary for me
and this Kingdom that I should marry her; and I assure you that for this
reason I have as great a mind to her as ever I had to any woman.' But
Wolsey continued to play for time; he had other matters in his head
besides the marriage, a divorce for his master among them. He wanted,
too, to see just what would happen to the couple of armies Francis had
sent into Italy. Both were beaten, and the terms on which the Emperor
insisted in the ensuing treaty of peace left no room for negotiations
with England; left, in fact, nothing for Francis to do but keep some of
his old promises. He had made proposals to the Emperor's sister, he was
now to marry her. The Dauphin, still betrothed to Mary, was to take a
Portuguese princess instead, and leave Mary to the Duke of Orleans, his
brother. A contract was accordingly drawn up and signed by Francis in
August 1527.

Mary's list of suitors was not yet complete; but there can have been very
few women, few princesses even, who have been in their time betrothed to
a father and two of his sons; or who, pledged to one man at the age of
nine, come to marry his son thirty years later. It is ironic to find
Henry VIII on the verge of his great quarrel, clamouring to all
Christendom that it was not lawful for a man to marry his brother's wife,
here preparing for his daughter the fate of her own mother, the rejected
Queen; and to see how this very quarrel brought the contract to nothing.
The divorce transformed the Princess of Wales to a bastard without any
claim upon the throne of England, and so annulled her value as a factor
in bargains. This aspect of the matter claims attention.

A citizen of London kept a careful list of the Lord Mayors of his period
with the chief doings during each year of their office. His records begin
with Sir William Remington, under whose name for sole entry stand the
words:

'Then came my Lady Katherine, the King's daughter of Castille, in to
England.'

Sir John Shaw's mayoralty followed. Under this is the entry:

'Then was Prince Arthur, the son of K. H. the VIIth, married unto my lady
Katherine above said at Paul's, and against her coming into London was
many goodly pageants made in the City at All-Hallowtide when they were
married.'

Next, under Sir Bartholomew Rede:

'Then died Prince Arthur above said.'

Five years pass, under which are noted the burning of London bridge, the
arrival of Duke Philip of Burgundy at Plymouth, driven out of his course
by bad weather, the blowing down, in this same storm, of the weathercock
on Paul's; then comes the entry:

'Then did the duke of York, which was brother unto Prince Arthur
aforesaid, marry with my lady Katherine, his brother's wife, and was
crowned both King and Queen on midsummer day Sunday next after
following.'

There was no doubt in this citizen's mind that Katherine had been
Arthur's wife. She was loved, 'as though she had been of the blood royal
of England,' says one ambassador. But the King in putting her away, had
law, though not public opinion, on his side. Erasmus, his friend, wrote
in perplexity:

'No mortal ever heard me speak against the divorce or for it. I should
have been mad to volunteer an opinion when learned doctors and prelates
could not agree. I love the King, who has always been good to me. I love
the Queen too, as all good men do, and the King, I think, still does. How
could I thrust myself unasked into a dispute so invidious?'

This represents, probably, the feeling of most Englishmen in the matter.
When the Queen had five still-born children in eight years there were
many who attributed this series of disasters to heavenly impatience with
incest. It was then, as it is now, a crime in civil law to marry a dead
husband's brother. It was then, as now it is not, a thing quite out of
the contemplation of statesmen that a woman should reign alone. Married,
she would be ruled by her husband; unmarried, she would be, as Elizabeth
later became, a prey for all the princes of Europe to come hawking at.
Katherine could now have no son; a son was needed to save the kingdom
from civil war at Henry's death. His passion for another woman was only a
lesser aspect of the main question, and he had at first, as Erasmus
perceived, who knew them both, no unkindness for the Queen. It was hinted
that retreat to a nunnery by Katherine would meet the required
conditions; she was assured by Henry in person that he could not marry
while she lived. But Katherine was a daughter of Spain, a great princess
on whose bed-hangings the arms of Spain, with those of England, were
embroidered. A bill of dispensation had been granted by the Pope, and she
demanded that the matter should be referred to his successor. She had to
he content with appearing before his legate. When she had pleaded, and
withdrawn, Henry spoke to the court:

'She is, my lords, as true, as obedient, as conformable a wife as I could
in my phantasy wish or desire. A woman of most gentleness, most humility
and buxomness, and of all qualities pertaining to nobility.'

But she had, and could have, no son. The trial dragged on, with rulings,
overrulings, canvassing of foreign and English universities for opinions,
a memorial to the Pope. Katherine remained silent, except for a repeated
refusal to be tried in England. She was ordered to leave the court, to
give up communication with her daughter, and obeyed both sentences.
Months passed. At the New Year Katherine ventured to send her husband a
gold cup; she was ordered to write no more to the King's grace, and the
cup was returned.

Six months before, though the business of the divorce was in full bustle,
Henry still treated Katherine as his queen; 'although,' an observer says,
'he sore lamented his chance, and made no mirth as he was wont to do,'
'he dined and resorted to the Queen as he was accustomed, and minished
nothing her estate, and much loved and cherished their daughter, the Lady
Mary.'

Mary's marriage was very much a question of the moment, if only because
Anne Boleyn detested and was jealous of her. The contract with Orleans
still held, but now, with the divorce in debate, it was Francis who
objected, being uncertain of her status and afraid, as he said, lest the
world should say he had married his son to a bastard. At this other
suitors, some of them improbable, and who would not have pretended to a
legitimate daughter and heiress of England, timidly put in their claim:
King John of Poland, the Duke of Cleves, the paralysed Duke of Milan.
With all these Henry dealt in his bluffest manner. He might ill-treat
Mary at home, but foreigners should respect any daughter of his; who
dared to call her illegitimate did so at the risk of his head. There had
been a rumour at the court of the Emperor, grown probably out of Anne's
known spite, that she was to be married off to some base-born person. The
King wrote in a fury to contradict it: 'we hear such natural and entire
affection to our daughter, as when we shall happen to bestow her, it
shall well appear that we have no less regard to our honour and the
advancement of our blood.' The aspirants retired.

Despite this natural and entire affection Mary's allowances and her
household were cut down, while Anne, at the top of her power, squandered
gloriously, and was unsatisfied. An attempt to browbeat Katherine out of
her own personal jewels brought a reproof from the King's granddaughter
to the tradesman's, though no less an envoy than the Duke of Norfolk was
sent for the ornaments, which Anne proposed to wear at a meeting with the
French King at Calais.

'The Queen answered, that she would not send jewels or aught else to the
King, who had long since forbidden such communication; it was, besides,
against her conscience to give her jewels to adorn a person, the scandal
of Christendom, and the King's disgrace.' However, since he commanded he
should be obeyed, in this as in all things.

Anne wore the stones, and made at the conference the sort of figure that
might have been expected. No royal lady was there. Francis was courteous,
gave her a trinket and approved her dancing, but did not treat her as a
Queen. She returned to England, angry, and more determined than ever to
be done with her ambiguous position.

She had not long to wait. Cranmer--with, it must be said, many opinions
on his side, though the Pope's against him--pronounced the necessary
sentence of divorce, and a time of terror began for Queen Katherine.
Anne's boasts had set the ugliest talk on people's tongues, which
certainly the Emperor's ambassador took seriously, reporting that she
would do the Princess all the harm she possibly could, 'which is the
thing your aunt dreads most.' And he goes on to say that his insistence
must be forgiven: 'the great pity I have for the Queen and the Princess
oblige me to take this course. The King is by nature kindly and inclined
to generosity, but this Anne hath so perverted him, that he does not seem
the same man.'

For all that, Henry did maintain his daughter in something like
appropriate state even after his second marriage; made her an occasional
present--ten pounds to distribute in alms, ten pounds 'for her use to
make pastime withal,' twenty pounds 'for to disport her with this
Christmas.' With the birth of Elizabeth these poor tokens of kindness
came to an end. Mary's own chamberlain was sent to her with the order
that she must no more call herself Princess, which title might only
rightly be borne by the Lady Elizabeth, and Giustiniani wrote to the
Signory that the King did not choose the Princess to be called so, but
only 'Madam Mary,' and that now there would be no rich marriage abroad
for her, but a nunnery more likely, as for her mother.

Mary was living alone near Chelmsford, not, except by letter, able to be
advised by her mother at Buckden. But in the matter of the King's message
to his daughter there is no doubt that the mother would have counselled
the proud answer Mary gave. She was accused of usurping arrogantly the
title of Princess, pretending to be heir apparent; 'she cannot in
conscience think,' said this communication, delivered by two earls and a
dean, 'that she is the King's lawful daughter, born in true matrimony';
she had deserved the King's high displeasure for calling herself so, and
punishment by the law. She answered--it is a girl of seventeen writing:

'I desired to see the letter in which was written the lady Mary, the
King's daughter, leaving out the name of Princess. I marvelled at this,
thinking your Grace was not privy to it, not doubting but you take me for
your lawful daughter, born in true matrimony. If I agreed to the
contrary, I should offend God; in all things else you shall find me an
obedient daughter.'

'From your manor of Beaulieu.'

Henry's answer was to take that manor away from her use and give it to
Anne's brother, while talk went on dropping from the courtiers to the
common people, that this new Queen meant the old one, now styled Princess
Dowager, some kind of mischief; there were hints of poison. Katherine did
not, as the Emperor's man saw, and she said, care a rush for herself, but
she was frightened for Mary, and wrote urgently and mysteriously, a
letter terrifying from its changes of mood; warning, making light,
warning again. The beginning hints at danger close at hand:

'Daughter, I heard such tidings to-day that I do perceive, if it is true,
the time is come that Almighty God will prove you.'

And she goes on to speak of a visit from a lady, who might bring a letter
from the King; the Queen insists on absolute obedience to his orders;
'obeying the King your father in everything'; 'wheresoever and in
whatsoever company you shall come, obey the King's commandments.' But
such obedience might very well have implied the sin of acquiescing in
injustice, and seeming to approve the King's actions: and so the poor
lady begs the child to speak few words, to go no further with learning
and disputation in the matter, and to meddle not at all. She sends with
the letter two books in Latin, the life of Christ and the Epistles of
Jerome, and suggests that Mary for distraction should play the
virginals, if she had any. There is a recommendation that she should
keep herself chaste, not desiring any husband, which may be an echo of
the rumour that she was to be married to some commoner; an outburst of
affection comes after, with an endeavour to seem cheerful, and a
pretence of unconcern that cannot have deceived Mary: 'I dare make sure
that you shall see a very good end, and better than you can desire.'
Then a sentence bidding her, if she should suddenly find herself in any
place without friends, to keep her keys herself. In the last few phrases
of the letter warning sounds again, this time without hope. 'And now you
shall begin, and by likelihood I shall follow. I set not a rush by it;
for when they have done the uttermost they can, then I am sure of the
amendment. I pray you, recommend me unto my good Lady Salisbury, and
pray her to have a good heart, for we never come to the Kingdom of
Heaven but by trouble. Daughter, wheresoever you become, take no pain to
send to me, for if I may I will send to you.

'By your loving Mother,

'KATHERINE THE QUEEN.'

The two were knit together in their pride. From this time Mary set her
whole will to one end, the keeping of her rightful rank and title, with
an obstinacy which brought her, in certain tempers of the King, near
enough to the block. If it should seem ridiculous thus to quarrel, pray,
weep, in a matter involving change of livery, or the precedence of a
baby's litter, it is to be remembered that here the lesser thing stood
for the greater. If Mary had precedence and her title, then she was
legitimate; if she were legitimate, then Katherine was Henry's rightful
wife and Queen. The solitary girl, resisting for two years all promises
and threats, shaken by her mother's death but maintaining the fight for
her mother's honour, is by no means a trivial or ridiculous figure,
though there were ridiculous incidents in this battle, as in most others.
The King's two daughters were to move from one palace to another; there
were days of dispute as to the method of transport, since if they went by
road one litter must necessarily walk ahead of the other, and Mary would
not take second place. She travelled by barge in the end, leaving the
road to Elizabeth, after alarms and excursions by courtiers to find a way
out without resort to an order from the King. It was absurd and sad.

Henry set himself to break this will. On the day of the Princess
Elizabeth's christening, which was undertaken with all imaginable
ceremony, the herald who proclaimed the baby Princess of England gave out
Mary's degradation from that estate. It was not announced in so many
words that she was disinherited, but the proclamation forbade her to wear
the royal badge that she had used hitherto on her liveries. Next, it was
the King's wish that she should go to Hatfield, there to be in waiting on
her half-sister. This move the Emperor's envoy, Chapuys, countered with
something very like a threat to make trouble if any such humiliation were
put upon his master's cousin. The King gave up the plan, but insisted
that his daughter should at any rate go to Hatfield. The Duke of Norfolk
brought the order, which Mary did not dispute, only begging the Duke to
speak to her father, so that her servants' wages should be paid for the
full year. The Duke told her that she would need few servants where she
was going, and refused the offer of Lady Salisbury to come and serve the
Princess at her own expense. Mary went by litter to Hatfield.

There she was required to pay a visit of respect to the Princess
Elizabeth; she did not refuse to call the daughter of Lady Pembroke (Anne
had been created a Marchioness before her marriage) her sister, as she
called brother the Duke of Richmond that was her father's son; but her
respects she would not pay. The Duke of Suffolk, leaving the palace to
report to Henry, asked if there were anything she wished him to carry to
the King. 'Nothing, but that the Princess, his daughter, asks his
blessing.' The Duke said bluntly that he would carry no such message, and
Mary as bluntly told him he might leave it.

A strange little scene comes next. Henry, riding down to see his younger
daughter, aware that Mary was in the house, had given orders that she was
not to attempt to speak with him, and sent Cromwell and his captain of
the guard to her room with instructions to keep her safe. She managed to
send him a message, however, asking if she might kiss his hand. He
refused, and went out to his horse again; but with his foot in the
stirrup, looked up by some chance. Mary was on the terrace, kneeling,
with her hands clasped and held out to him. He hesitated, bowed to her,
put his hand to his hat, and departed. An explanation was given to the
French envoy a few days later; his daughter was obstinate by reason of
her Spanish blood, and until she yielded he would not speak to her. The
ambassador gently said that she had been very well brought up; 'on which
the tears came into his eyes, and he could not refrain from praising
her.'

The contest of the prides went on. Anne came to Hatfield, and sent for
Mary, as Queen. The girl answered that she knew no Queen in England but
her own mother. Anne in rage swore that she would--almost the King's
phrase--'break the haughtiness of this Spanish blood,' and took such
measures as she might. Mary was not allowed henceforth to take her
breakfast in her own room, as she had always done; she must eat at the
public table or not at all. She was without money or proper clothing; she
was forbidden to hear Mass; she was forbidden private speech with her old
tutor, Featherstone, but contrived it by talking to him in Latin, which
none of her other hearers understood; she was forbidden to communicate by
speech or letter with her mother or with Chapuys. When she was ordered to
Greenwich, just to have sight of him she made the steersman of her barge
keep the wrong side of the river, so as to pass by a little house in the
fields that Chapuys kept, he said, for a resort in time of plague. He
stood on the bank, and she on deck, and they looked at each other until
the barge drew out of his sight.

In 1535 Mary was ill. Her mother heard of it, and begged permission for
them to be together; she wrote in Spanish to her nephew's envoy, keeping
clear of all pitfalls of nomenclature, a letter that he might show to the
King:

'I beg you will speak to his Highness, and desire him from me to do me
the charity to send his daughter and mine where I am; treating her with
my own hands, and by the advice of other physicians and of my own, if God
pleases to take her from this world my heart will rest satisfied; but
otherwise, much troubled. You shall also say to his Highness that there
is no need of any other person but myself to nurse her; that I will put
her into my own bed where I sleep, and watch her as may be needed.'

The King refused. The whole trouble between himself and his daughter came
from her mother's teaching, he told Chapuys; and perhaps remembered his
own letter to Chapuys' master concerning Katherine; how there was none in
Christendom more meet to frame the girl after the manner of Spain. The
mischief was done already. But he would not let the Lady Mary go to the
Princess Dowager.

All this Chapuys told his master in letters that grew increasingly
insistent on danger. Sir Thomas More's death seemed to him ominous for
the Queen's safety and her daughter's. The Queen was kept in an unhealthy
place with few servants, her meals cooked in her bedchamber, and--an
ominous detail--the essai, or testing of her food, no longer was made.
She too was ill in the autumn; the sickness had brought her to emaciation
when Chapuys saw her; she could swallow no food, and keep none down. It
was, however, not regarded as a grave matter, and when news of her sudden
death came, two days after she had been supposed out of danger, there was
a general guess at poison--unjustly; for the doctors who opened
Katherine's body found 'some black round thing clung closely to the
outside of the heart'; a rupture. Mary, learning the event four days
afterwards, was left with the memory of much tenderness thwarted, and
many indignities suffered. By the Queen's will she received two legacies
only; one the fur, royal miniver and ermine, that had trimmed her
dresses; the other, all that was left to the daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella of old splendours in her own country, 'my collar of gold, that I
brought out of Spain.'

To the King this tussle with his daughter had become a matter of _amour
propre_; he set out to break her as he had broken horses in his youth.
The death of Anne made a little difference in the position. Katherine
dead, Anne dead, the new young Queen was lawfully her father's wife, and
Mary made a timid move, writing to Cromwell to speak for her to her
father. 'I perceive that no body durst speak for me so long as that woman
lived which now is gone, whom I pray our Lord of his great mercy to
forgive.' (Anne too had sent a message in her extremity, asking
forgiveness from Mary.) She was permitted to write, and did so. Her
letter was not answered. She wrote again:

'For the which I humbly desire your Grace to pardon me, though I trouble
you with my continual suit and rude writing, for nature will suffer me to
do none otherwise; and that obtained, I shall have my chief worldly joy
and desire, as I take Almighty God to my record, whom I do and shall
daily pray to preserve your Grace and Queen with long life, and much
honour, and shortly to send a Prince between you both.'

The King did not answer; it appeared, Cromwell told her, that she had
given offence by putting her father second in her obedience to Almighty
God. The secretary drafted for her a humble appeal, in a style very
different from her own forthright manner; this she copied and sent. It
was abject enough. Henry supposed her beaten, and sent commissioners to
Hunsdon to obtain her signature to a statement admitting illegitimacy.
She refused, temporised, and wrote to Cromwell asking his help. In return
came an alarming letter. She was wilful and obstinate, diverse and
contrary, lost in folly, presumptuous, unnatural and ungrateful, unfit to
live in a Christian congregation; this abuse, with a curt refusal, since
she would not be taught, to advise her, was all Mary's answer. She had
appealed to Cromwell as to a friend; except Chapuys she had no other, and
his indignation frightened her. She was cut off from Chapuys, who
nevertheless got a message through to her begging her to yield, insisting
that it was a question of her life. Some of the arguments used by the
Councillors, a duke, an earl, and the Bishop of Chester, have been
preserved.

'They told her, since she was so unnatural as to oppose the King's will
so obstinately, they could scarce believe she was his bastard, and if she
were their daughter they would beat her and knock her head so hard
against the wall that they would make it as soft as baked apples; that
she was a traitress and should be punished and several other words.'

The King, knowing that she was isolated from all outside advice--her
governess and another had been ordered never to lose sight of her, day or
night--supposed her refusal to be due to the stubbornness of her
servants, and the Council was given leave to examine these. Certain known
sympathisers were arrested and questioned. Thus one of them, Sir Anthony
Browne:

'Since Master Fitzwilliam's coming to court, he hath demanded of him
whether the Lady Mary be heir apparent or no, to whom he had answered,
that in case she would submit herself and be obedient as she ought to be,
he trusted she should; and if she will not be obedient to his Grace, I
would, quoth he, that her head was from her shoulders, that I might toss
it here with my foot, and so put his foot forward, spurning the rushes.'

Thus Chapuys:

'I wrote to her very fully, telling her among other things...that to save
her life, on which depended the peace of the realm, and the redress of
the great evils that prevail here, she must do everything, and dissemble
for some time; seeing that nothing was required expressly against God, or
the articles of the Faith.'

Thus Cromwell:

'I beseech God never to help me, if I know it not so certainly to be your
bounden duty, by God's laws and man's laws...to the witness whereof I
take Christ, whose mercy I refuse if I write anything unto you that I
have not professed in my heart and know to be true.'

Mary was beaten at last. She signed three articles; in the first she
submitted herself to her father; in the second she recognised him as the
head of the Church in England; the third, very brief, may be quoted in
full:

'Item, I do frankly, and for the discharge of my duty towards God, the
King's highness, and his laws without other respect, recognise and
acknowledge that the marriage heretofore had between his majesty and my
mother, the late princess dowager, was by God's laws and man's law,
incestuous and unlawful.

'MARYE.'

'Thenceforth a cock crew in my breast,' wrote one of the saints who had
been unfaithful; so must Mary have felt. She never forgot the signing of
those two last articles. She fought down two rebellions so that she might
have power from the throne to atone for her betrayal of the Church and
her mother. The one object was achieved eighteen years later, when by law
of the Parliament of 1554 she resigned the title of supreme head of the
Church of England; the other when she made King a prince of her mother's
house, and saw the sons of her father's councillors on their knees to
him.



II


ALASTOR. What cannot a well-dissembled religion do, when to
this is added youth, inexperiencedness, ambition, a natural animosity,
and a mind propense to anything that offers itself?...The cities murmur
at the load of calamities they must bear, and some there arc, I cannot
tell who, that in whispers say it is an unreasonable thing that the world
should be turned upside down for the private angers and ambitions of two
or three persons.


Mary had to fight for her throne. English social conditions had thrown up
in her father's last years a whole new class of people, those who, having
enriched themselves by despoiling the old religion, were henceforth all
for simplicity in worship; willing to take their own chance at the
needle's eye provided their pastors and churches got through. By these
means they made the best of both worlds, and it is not surprising to
find, grouped round the young King, a number of lords of the new
persuasion, very much concerned to keep the Pope out of England, and
their own possessions out of his clutches. The Princess, the Crown's next
heir, was the conduit, as one of them put it, by which the rats of Rome
might creep into their stronghold. She heard Mass daily, 'said both with
elevation over the head, the pax-giving, blessing, and crossing on the
crown, breathing, turning about, and all the other rites and accidents of
the old time appertaining.' She kept four chaplains of the old order
despite her signed protestation in the matter of the supremacy. They
called her brother's attention to the matter of the Lady Mary.

She was Edward's godmother, and he was fond of her, but he was zealous
for the new Church and his own dignity as head of it. He sent for Mary to
Westminster, and talked with her, in the presence of his advisers, for
two hours. The scene is noted in his journal:

'March 18th. The L. Mary, my sister, came to me to Westminster, where,
after salutations, she was called with my council into a chamber, where
was declared how long I had suffered her Mass _against my will_
[these words in the original are crossed out] in hope of her
reconciliation, and how now being no hope, which I perceived by her
letters, unless I saw some short amendment, I could not bear it. She
answered, that her soul was God's, and her faith she would not change,
nor dissemble her opinion with contrary doings.'

It may be supposed from the wording--'it was declared'--that the King in
person had nothing to do with this decision, but sat mum while the
Councillors spoke in his name. The fact seems rather that the Council and
bishops were put to much trouble and humiliation by his insistence, for
the Emperor at once despatched an envoy threatening war if his cousin
were compelled to act against her conscience. Alarmed, they advised the
King for a while 'to wink' at Mary's proceedings, and sent off Dr. Wotton
to the Emperor, who was brief with him.

'Ought it not to suffice you that ye spill your own souls, but that ye
have a mind to force others to lose theirs? My cousin the princess is
evil-handled among you, her servants plucked from her, and she still
cried upon to leave Mass, to forsake her religion, in which her mother,
her grandmother, and all of our house have lived and died. I will not
suffer it.'

Dr. Wotton reasoned with him.

'The Lady Mary, though she had a King to be father, hath a King to her
brother, and is kin to the Emperor, yet in England there is but one King,
and the King hath but one law to rule all his subjects by. The Lady Mary
being no King must content herself to be a subject.'

'A gentle law!' said the Emperor; and ended the interview with a
repetition of his threat.

The Council, having received Wotton's report, decided to take the chance
of the Emperor's anger, and proceeded with the enforcement of the Act of
Uniformity. Commissioners were sent to Mary to forbid the saying of Mass
in her house. She was gentle, but obstinate as ever.

'When the King's Majesty shall come to such years that he may be able to
judge these things himself, his Majesty shall find me ready to obey his
orders in religion; but now in these years, although he, good sweet King,
have more knowledge than any other of his years, yet it is not possible
that he can be a judge in these things. For if ships were to be sent to
the seas, or any other thing to be done touching the policy of the
government of the realm, I am sure you would not think his Highness yet
able to consider what was to be done.' She would not constrain her
chaplains in any way, she said; but if they read the new service in her
house she would walk out of it.

The commissioners found the four chaplains more amenable than their
mistress. They promised to be obedient, and the commissioners were
departing, when the Princess spoke to them from her window. Her
comptroller was kept in London for refusing to carry to her this same
message that the commissioners had now delivered, and she asked for him
to be sent back. She had been doing his work, she said, learning how many
loaves went to a bushel of wheat, and 'ye wis my father and mother never
brought me up to baking and brewing, and to be plain with you, I am weary
of mine office.'

The Council's answer was to intensify the lesser grievance, and leave the
greater one alone; her comptroller was put in the Tower, but her worship
left free. There were reasons for this behaviour. Her chief enemy among
Edward's advisers, Somerset the Protector, friend and correspondent of
Calvin, was accused of high treason; and the King's health was failing.
Mary was next heir, as the increasing number and dignity of her visitors
witnessed when she came a second time to Westminster to see her brother.
He was pitifully ill, and obstinate as his father before him. Henry could
dissimulate, while remaining of his own opinion still. Edward knew
nothing of concealment, wept when the Bishop advised him to wink at his
sister's idolatry, and was, however the conviction may have been arrived
at, very fully convinced that the reformed religion was necessary to the
throne.

He ensured by Letters Patent that it should not lack; Jane Grey, his
cousin, daughter to the Duke of Suffolk and wife to the Duke of
Northumberland's son, was to succeed. The clauses of the will were
roughly set out in his own hand before he submitted it to the law
officers of the Crown, with the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. These
considered the document with despondency and alarm, seeing perhaps a
little further ahead than did the King and Council; they raised
objections at once. Such a bequest was contrary to the will of Henry
VIII; they, the judges, by meddling in such matters would incur the
penalties of high treason. The Duke of Northumberland insisted, and
threatened; they turned to the King, who ordered them to do as the Duke
bade, and Parliament should ratify what they did. The Council were afraid
of the one, said the Chief Justice, justifying himself to Mary later; and
he himself 'was in as great fear as ever he was in all his life before,
seeing the King so earnest and sharp.'

Edward died in July 1553, and the strange document, disinheriting Henry
VIII's two daughters in favour of his great-niece, was held to be legal
and so proclaimed, four days after the King's death. Mary had been sent
for, to see her brother; she was at Hunsdon in Hertfordshire, and could
have reached Greenwich in a day's ride. But she had some suspicion; the
progress of the King's illness had been kept secret, and this sudden
summons had a threatening look; she neither answered nor came. The
Council waited two days while a garrison with cannon was installed in the
Tower, then sent for the Lord Mayor, who came to Greenwich with six of
his aldermen, and twelve other City dignitaries, merchant adventurers and
merchants of the staple. They were told of the King's death and of his
will, which they saw, and set their names to; then were dismissed, with
the order to keep the matter to themselves. Officially, neither of the
King's sisters knew of his death; but Sir Nicholas Throckmorton got the
news to Mary through her goldsmith, then going to Hunsdon in the way of
business. The story is set out by him in rhyme:

Mourning, from Greenwich did I straight depart,
To London, to an house that bore our name.
My brethren guessed by my heavy heart
The King was dead, and I confessed the same.
The hushing of his death I did unfold,--
Their meaning to proclaim Queen Jane I told.

And though I liked not the religion
Which all her life Queen Mary had professed,
Yet in my mind that wicked notion
Right heirs for to displace I did detest.

Mary distrusted the news, coming in so roundabout a fashion, but the
goldsmith assured her that Sir Nicholas knew it verily.' She had no
doubts as to the succession, that the throne was rightfully hers, but not
knowing what London was doing, or what support she might count on, she
considered expediency, and rode for the coast. At Kenninghall she halted
to send out proclamations as Queen, astonishing the Emperor's men, who
would have advised her to wait for her cousin's help, or else to quit
England and return with a borrowed army. (Lord Guildford Dudley was
already soliciting 6000 men from France.) But Mary was sure of herself.
The throne was hers, righteously to be fought for. She had waited long,
and endured much to be Queen, and now she drove at the Crown with
astonishing vigour. In a week she had gathered together 30,000 men and
could write to the usurper's Council a letter showing entire confidence:

'We are not ignorant of your consultations to undo the provision made for
our preferment, nor of the great bands and provisions forcible wherewith
ye be assembled and prepared, by whom, and to what end, God and you know;
and nature can but fear some evil.'

They might still avoid bloodshed by yielding, which she summoned them to
do, and to cause her 'right and title to the crown and governance of the
realm to be proclaimed in our city of London, and other places, as to
your wisdom shall seem good, and as to this case appertaineth; not
failing hereof, as our very trust is in you.'

The Council answered insolently that Mary had been pronounced a bastard
by the everlasting laws of God, and most of the noble and learned
universities of Christendom, and therefore she should cease to vex and
molest the true Queen and her subjects, and be glad with her quietness to
preserve the common state of the realm. They signed themselves--Cranmer
is among the signatories, and William Cecil--'Your ladyship's friends,
showing yourself an obedient subject.' This despatched, Northumberland
set out of London with what troops he could gather, some six hundred men,
to arrest the pretender; but before he set out spoke to the lords,
reminding them that so far as treason was concerned they were all of a
guiltiness. 'My lord,' said one, if ye mistrust any of us in this matter,
your grace is far deceived; for which of us can wipe his hands clean
thereof? Therefore herein your doubt is too far cast.' 'I pray God it be
so,' said the Duke, 'let us go in to dinner.'

Next day inquisitive and silent London crowds watched him ride through
Shoreditch. 'They press to see us,' said the Duke to his captain, 'but
not one saith, God speed us.' Within the Tower itself, counsel was
divided; each message that came from the counties split loyalties and
dismayed opportunists; not one of the prisoner-dictators trusted his
associates; and when the ship that had been sent to Yarmouth to prevent
Mary's escape yielded cannon and men to her, and this submission was
known in the Tower, it caused, says the writer of the Chronicle of Queen
Jane, each man there to pluck in his horns. Three days passed.
Northumberland wrote sharply for men and supplies; his soldiers were
deserting, the country would not feed those that remained. But Queen Jane
was in no better case, and 'a slender answer he had again.'

The first waverers, Pembroke and Cheney, left the Tower, on some pretext
of consulting with the French ambassador, on the 13th of July. Lord
Winchester had meant to follow, but Queen Jane 'feared some packing in
the Lord Treasurer,' and had him brought to her at midnight from his
house, together with the keys of the Tower. She could send no help to her
lieutenant Northumberland, now, at the news of his betrayal by the
shipmasters, retreating on Cambridge. She had no power even in London,
though her soldiers took up a young man who had protested when her first
proclamation was read and cut off his ears. She had no contact with the
foreign ambassadors. Her advisers were afraid of them, and blustered.

'The Lord Cobham and Sir John Mason repaireth to the same ambassadors to
give them notice of the Lady Mary's proceeding against the state of this
realm, which is not to meddle in their causes of policy neither directly
nor indirectly, and so to charge them to use themselves as they give no
occasion of unkindness to be ministered unto them, whereas we would be
most sorry for the amity which on our part we mean to conserve and
maintain.'

The ambassadors, despite the threat, understood by this time how the
business would go, and reported against intervention. Charles V, that
cautious cousin and ruler, sent a gentleman to talk with the English
commissioners unofficially at Brussels. This personage made excuses for
not proffering his condolences and congratulations before, but seemed
well informed; in fact (the foreign envoys had been quick with their
news) he was able to give the Englishmen details of the King's will, and
tell them for certain that Queen Jane was proclaimed. 'We said we had
hitherto received the sorrowful news, but the glad tidings were not as
yet come to us by no letter.' Don Diego, walking with them in the garden,
had more to say, in confidence. 'Whether the two daughters be bastard or
no, or why it is done, we that be strangers have nothing to do with the
matter. You are bound to obey and serve his majesty (Lord Guildford
presumably) and therefore we take him for your King, and saith he, for my
part of all others I am glad that his majesty is set in this office.'

This was better than any of the Council in England had expected. Two days
later the commissioners were sent for to speak with Charles in person,
who was properly regretful for the departed King, 'considering he was of
such a great towardness, and of such a hope to do good, and be a stay to
Christendom.' But as for recognising the new Queen, nothing was said of
that, and the Emperor was so vague in his manner and speech that the
puzzled gentlemen could only record that he seemed not unfriendly. 'Yet,'
they wrote, 'to decypher him better herein, it were not amiss in our
opinions, when your lordships shall advertise him either with some new
league, or to tempt him what he will say to the old, or by some means
which your wisdom can better devise.'

The Council, understanding from this that until they could show a Queen
_de facto_ they would get nothing categorical out of Charles, took
such measures as in the absence or the ill-success of their soldiers were
all that remained, and set the preachers to work at Paul's Cross. Many
listened; but there was no overwhelming demonstration of sympathy for the
new order. The people, in spite of King Edward's Letters Patent and the
good fame of Queen Jane herself, were not clear as to her claim, which
was as confusing to them as any theological mystery. That Mary should
come after her brother they could understand, if he left no direct heir;
but how Jane, the old King's great-niece, came into the succession at all
they could not make out. She was granddaughter of Henry VIII's younger
sister; what of the elder sister, married into Scotland, and her
children? What of Queen Jane's own mother, nearer one step to the throne
than herself? If that mother should have a son, as she very well might,
being only in her thirties, what of Queen Jane then? The two Princesses
in the direct line were disinherited, both for reasons of divorce; but
what of Queen Jane's own grandfather, who had divorced his lawful wife to
marry the widowed Queen of France? And of her father, who had divorced
Lord Arundel's sister, without cause, to marry the Lady Frances, Queen
Jane's mother? The daughters of Henry VIII, each with one divorce in her
history, dispossessed in favour of the daughter of two generations of
divorced parents, and this with her mother, the actual heir, still
alive--it was too much for the preachers; they let the whole question
alone in their sermons, hammering away at the dangers of Popery.

In this they showed more wisdom than did the Council which sent them out
to preach. The feeling of the people for years had been bewildered in the
matter of legitimacy; they were, wrote Chapuys some years earlier, 'so
much accustomed to see and tolerate such disorderly things that they
tacitly commit the redress of the same to God.' But there was, in London
at any rate, no bewilderment concerning the Pope. He was a foreigner, and
the English nation, that brew and blend of a dozen raiding nationalities,
was beginning to dislike foreigners on general grounds. Hitherto there
had been some specific grievances; for example, they detested the French
as subjects who had beaten their English masters in fair fight, and the
Dutch as skilful poachers of fishing. But for twenty years, since Wolsey
pulled England into the Continent's politics, the feeling against
strangers as such had been growing, until in the troubles to come Wyat
could set out his chief ground for discontent in the words: 'Lo, a great
number of Strangers be now arrived in Dover.' The Pope, therefore, with
his Masses (idolatrous), confessions (State secrets coming to Rome's
ear), inquisitions (the rack to restore Church property), and Peter's
pence (spent to arm England's enemies), was a very sure card for the
preachers to play. The Emperor might have been held up as the second
bogey that Mary with her Spanish blood and her determined Popishness
would bring into the affairs of the realm; a friendly power and cousin
who might not keep his distance, whose Flemish soldiers might be whistled
into England to support present claims or deal with future risings.

Either of these personages would have served the purpose of Queen Jane's
councillors very well had expediency been their sole consideration; but
they were concerned, being Englishmen, first to justify themselves, to
prove that their course of action had been undertaken in the best
interests of the country and with approval from on high. They insisted
upon Queen Jane's right to the Crown, leaving the possibility of invasion
by foreign potentates to take second place. Letters went out from the
Tower requiring levies to be made, not for the purpose of keeping
religion safe, but 'for the repression and subduing of certain tumults
and rebellions moved there against us and our crown by certain seditious
men.' The preamble runs:

'Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well, because we doubt not but
this our most lawful possession of the crown, with the free consent of
the nobility of our realm and other estates of the same is both plainly
known and accepted of you, as our most loving subjects, therefore we do
not reiterate the same.'

Every document of the brief reign does reiterate it; and while the
distracted gentlemen in the Tower thus argued and pleaded, Mary, by the
mere fact of being daughter to the old King, was gathering the eastern
counties round her. Queen Jane since she came to the Tower on the 10th of
July had not quitted it nor showed herself. She had signed what papers
she was told, played with some few of the Crown jewels kept in the
Tower--pendants enamelled with such subjects as John the Baptist's head,
gold and damascene buttons, and a 'fish of gold, being a tooth pick'; and
she had twice given orders that were not disregarded, one which kept her
father with her, and one which refused to style her dearly-loved husband
King.

At this time were with her in the Tower Archbishop Cranmer and the Bishop
of Ely; her father, Suffolk; the Earls of Arundel, Shrewsbury, and
Pembroke, two barons, and six knights; with that Marquis of Winchester,
the Lord Treasurer on whose account she had been obliged one night to
send for the keys. Bad news had already dwindled this poor number of
supporters; Cecil had gone; those that remained could not trust each
other, and could not rest. With every runner into London came the
troubling certainty of Mary's triumph, and the letters sent out by the
Council reflected their despair. To Lord Rich in Essex, writing of
failure and desertions, and imploring help, they could only answer:

'Though the matter be grievous to us for divers respects, yet we must
needs give your lordship our hearty thanks for your ready advertisement
thereof. Requiring your lordship nevertheless like a nobleman to remain
in that promise and steadfastness to our sovereign lady Queen Jane's
service...which neither with honour, with safety, nor with duty, may we
now forsake.'

This was on the 18th of July. Next day--Cecil, the far-seeing, had been
first to slip away--Pembroke and Arundel went out of the Tower to
Baynard's Castle, and sent for the Lord Mayor. He came, with the Recorder
of the City and many of the aldermen. Arundel spoke to them cautiously;
their troubles were due to the ambition of the Duke of Northumberland,
who had thought to set up his family and enrich himself; who had
prevailed on King Edward, a minor and sick, to lend himself to the
lawless project. It was a long speech. Pembroke cut into it with a
gesture, pulling his sword from the sheath:

'And if the arguments of my lord Arundel do not persuade you, this sword
shall make Mary queen!'

They shouted; there was no need to canvass opinion. The Recorder sat down
to draw up a proclamation in form, and the Duke of Suffolk was sent for
from the Tower. The game was not even played out to its last counter. He
came with a train of unarmed men, and before he had speech with the rest
of the Council, himself proclaimed Queen Mary on Tower Hill.

Queen Jane's late lords, with her father and the Mayor at their backs,
rode through London to Paul's Cross, where ten days before Bishop Ridley
had declared Mary a bastard, and there proclaimed her Queen. A
news-letter man then in London sent out to his clients a description of
the scene, which he had the luck to see first-hand; how there were caps
unnumbered going up, Lord Pembroke filling his with money and tossing it
to the crowd, money thrown out of windows, bonfires: 'what with shouting
and crying of the people, and ringing of bells, there could no one hear
almost what another said.'

Sir Nicholas Throckmorton's wife had been that day attending a
christening as proxy for Queen Jane. She came back late to the Tower with
news of the baby, Edward Underhill's son, called after Lord Guildford. In
the chamber where the Queen had been used to sit, she saw, astounded,
that the cloth of estate, with the great embroidered arms of England, was
down; the Queen's possessions all were gone. The Duke of Suffolk had
ordered it, she was told. As for the Queen, she was separated from her
husband and lodged in another part of the Tower, in the house of one of
the warders, Master Partridge, two women servants only being left in
attendance.

The Council had forgotten her. They were from this moment only concerned
to prove their loyalty to the triumphant cause, and to convince Mary of
their entire faith, hope, and trust in her.

'Our bounden duties most humbly remembered to your most excellent
majesty; it may like the same to understand, that we, your most humble,
faithful and obedient subjects, having always (God we take to witness)
remained your highness true and humble subjects in our hearts, ever
sithens the death of our late sovereign lord and master, your highness
brother, whom God pardon--' a long letter, asking Mary graciously to
accept their meaning, to pardon and remit their former infirmities, was
despatched at once by Lord Arundel, dated 'as from your majesties city of
London.' Mary received it at its face value; she had seen, in her life,
much shifting of loyalty, and knew very well how to assess that
quicksilver quality. But she had soldiers with her, and an overwhelming
courage and purpose. She came straight to London on the strength of this
letter, making the move safely that would have meant death three weeks
before. On the 3rd of August, with her sister Elizabeth riding among her
ladies, Mary came into the City by Aldgate. 'The number of velvet coats
that did ride before her, as well strangers as others, was 740; and the
number of ladies and gentlemen that followed was 180. The queen's grace
stayed in Aldgate Street before the stage where the poor children stood,
to hear an oration that one of them made.'

She had always a liking for magnificence. On this day the short, fair,
pale woman wore a splendid dress of violet velvet, her white horse's
trappings were fringed with gold, six footmen walked by her, dressed
wholly in cloth of gold; her guard wore scarlet bound with black velvet,
the Beefeaters' dress, with a rose and a true-lover's knot embroidered on
the breast in gold. She wept very easily always, for joy as well as
sorrow, and it is not matter for surprise that the onlookers found her
white-faced, her eyes heavy. At the Tower, in which every English king
began his reign, a great peal of ordnance was shot off; Jane had been
greeted with just such a peal when she came down the river from Syon
House; and there on the Green the State prisoners--but not Jane or her
husband--were brought out to kneel as the Queen entered: two bishops,
Courtenay, the old Duke of Norfolk, and the wife of her enemy, Somerset
the Protector. The Queen kissed and raised them, and with an exclamation
tenderly ironical--'These are my prisoners'--at last released her tears.

The usurpation was ended. Mary was secure, and her next actions were easy
enough to forecast. The papal nuncio in France wrote at this date to
Rome:

'As soon as the Queen arrives in London it is supposed that she will have
the marriage between her mother and father declared valid, she is said
much to desire it, and wills it to be declared by all Parliaments and
statutes, 'so that her mother's and her own honour may be satisfied.'
This determination of Mary's was a commonplace of the chanceries.
'Another of her intentions is to re-establish religion under the
obedience of his Holiness.' She had made that clear enough by her answers
to her brother's insistence. She had done what she could by patience and
steadfastness, during the years that had passed since she signed
Cromwell's infamous articles, to atone for that yielding. She would have
died to atone; in her father's lifetime she had risked death more than
once, and during the Protectorship there had been moments when her fate
seemed to tilt towards the block. But always at the last moment pressure
lessened, so that the easy and swift way was closed again and she had to
endure, withdrawn in her country manor, a double impotence, as daughter
of the Church and of Katherine of Aragon. Her one opportunity, martyrdom,
never came. Violent death for a cause would have made a heroine of her,
as of Jane Grey, but she was not allowed it; and though her courage never
sank, her judgment did, until it became fixed, a sword thrust into a
rock; while the judgment of her sister Elizabeth, a shifting flame,
preserved both her and her kingdom when the time came. If Mary could have
died for her two fixed ideas they might have triumphed, but she had to
live for them, and this she did clumsily, dangerously, and to the defeat
of her purpose.

In the chapel of the Tower she had a requiem Mass sung for her brother,
the boy who had wept when his Council obliged him to wink at idolatry.
She sent out preachers to Paul's Cross, who were heard at first
riotously, even to the throwing of knives, and afterwards left alone, so
that the Lord Mayor was ordered to make 'ancients of the companies resort
to the sermons, lest the preachers be discouraged.'

The Queen was conscious perhaps of having gone towards her goal too
abruptly, and the proclamation which followed these riots bade, with good
sense, the people leave 'these new found devilish terms of papist or
heretic and such like, and apply their whole care, study and travail to
live in the fear of God.' She was minded, she said, herself to observe
the forms of the old religion, which, as God and the world knew, she had
from infancy practised, and would be glad if her subjects would come,
quietly and charitably, to the same mind. But she would not compel them,
'unto such time as further order, by common consent, should be taken.'
The Londoners were not appeased, and the younger sort went into the
streets smelling out those churches where the Latin Mass was being said,
and making the kind of mocking trouble for which they were notorious,
until an order appeared bidding householders keep their children and
apprentices in order and awe. Children and apprentices could easily be
dealt with; so could open traitors to the Crown and Faith. The recusants
in her own household, however, gave Mary some trouble.

Elizabeth, her sister, and Anne of Cleves, only by contract her father's
wife, held out against her. Anne, too ugly and too obscure to have caught
the English imagination, was not a dangerous example; she had, besides,
been brought up in the Lutheran faith. But Elizabeth was always near her,
a focus for discontent now that Jane Grey was safe, and the next heir.
The Queen sent for her to tell her that she must conform, or else they
might not remain together.

Mary was most earnestly a Catholic, and determined for their souls' sake
to bring her sister and her people to the only faith that could save
them; but she was also a woman, and it may be supposed that she found
this interview not altogether without savour. She had been servant to
Elizabeth once; the Duke of Norfolk's men had put her by force into the
litter that carried her to Hatfield to that Humiliation; she had seen the
badges torn from her liveries on the day that Elizabeth was carried with
trumpeters to Westminster. She gave her orders, therefore, not without a
kind of triumph, demanding obedience, but doubting it. Her own submission
had been made under threat of death, after many years of persecution,
with an accompanying consciousness of sin; she had damned herself
knowingly to save the people of England alive. The authority of her
father, his Council, and the Emperor had been required to make her yield,
and she expected, knowing something of her family's temper, the same
conduct from Elizabeth.

She was deceived. Resistance was not prolonged more than a week.
Elizabeth was never, save occasionally for political or patriotic
purposes, fiercely Protestant, and even at twenty had a mind balanced too
finely to be fanatical. She asked that instruction in the Faith might be
given, and eight days later Mass was said in her household by a chaplain
of the old order. This easy conformity was suspect. The Queen sent again
for Elizabeth, and asked very seriously if her submission proceeded from
conviction or from fear. From conviction, Elizabeth answered, and would
so declare in public; 'but as she spoke she trembled.' Mary believed, and
approved her sister's resolution with gifts; a brooch of the history of
the Old Testament, a brooch of the history of Pyramus and Thisbe, a
square tablet of gold, and--a strange present from Katherine's daughter
to Anne's--'a book of gold with the King's face, and her grace's
mother's.' There is an item in the list of Mary's jewels made a few
months before, another gift to a girl of the Reformed Faith, and of her
own blood: 'a lace for the neck of goldsmith's work, with small pearls
32,' noted in her own hand as 'given to my cousin Jane Graye.'

That young Protestant was stubborn. A prisoner whose name is unknown, but
who was presumably a Protestant too, dined on Tuesday the 29th of August,
in Partridge the warder's house with the Lady Jane, 'she sitting at the
board's end,' as became one who was grand-daughter to a queen, and using
her privilege to bid the men put on their caps. She spoke of Mary gently,
saying that she knew her for a merciful princess, and had prayed God she
might continue so. After this, she asked who had preached at Paul's the
Sunday before. She was told; the name must have had a smack of the old
Faith, for her next question was: 'I pray you, have they mass in London?'
'Yes, forsooth,' her fellow prisoner answered, 'in some places.' Lady
Jane found it strange, but not so strange as the sudden conversion of her
father-in-law. (He had received the sacrament publicly in the chapel of
the Tower eight days before.) 'Who would have thought,' said his son's
wife, 'that he would have so done?' In hope of pardon, the others
thought. She was indignant.

'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 against the queen in person as
general, and after his taking so hated and evil spoke of, even by the
commons? Who was to 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 and no
friend of mine die so.'

In this sort of talk the dinner passed away. When it ended, the prisoner
thanked her ladyship for accepting his company.

'She thanked me likewise, and said, I was welcome.' She thanked the
warder Partridge too, for bringing the unknown gentleman; his answer was
humble to his prisoner-guest. 'Madam, we were somewhat bold, not knowing
that your ladyship dined below until we found your ladyship there.'

A few weeks in the Tower had not quenched Lady Jane's pride; a few days
had been enough for her father-in-law. He wrote to Arundel, lately his
companion in Queen Jane's Council, now in Queen Mary's favour, whom he
should have despised as a time-server, begging his intercession:

'O, 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...O, that her mercy were
such as she would consider how little profit my dead and dismembered body
can bring her...Spare not, I pray, your bended knees for me in this
distress. O, good my lord, remember how sweet life is, and how bitter the
contrary. Spare not your speech and pains, for God, I hope, hath not shut
out all hopes of comfort from me in that gracious, princely, and
womanlike heart.' The letter ends with a prayer for patience to endure,
and a heart to forgive the whole world, and is signed:

'Once your fellow and loving companion, but now worthy of no name but
wretchedness and misery. J. D.'

He knew, and the letter itself in its abandonment shows, that he had no
hope of mercy; a man 'so hated and evil spoken of, even by the commons,'
so long a scorner of religion, and at last a traitor, he could put
forward no grounds for mercy except Queen Jane's warranty, stamped with
the Great Seal of England. The Council answered that the seal had been
usurped, and bore no authority with it. Northumberland then, some spark
of nobility lighting in him, pleaded for his children, and especially his
son's wife, Jane, saying that she had not sought the Crown, but 'by
enticement and force' had been made to accept it. The Council heard that
in silence.

As he came back from his examination through the streets to the Tower,
guarded, a woman shook a bloody handkerchief at him. The blood was that
of Somerset, dead two years, whom he had brought to the block, as the
people supposed; the woman, like many others, had dipped her scrap of
linen in the Protector's blood, and treasured it as the relic of a good
man unjustly condemned. Now she shook it in the Duke's face for an omen,
and cried out that at last murder was to be revenged.

Next day he was brought to the scaffold, and 'putting off his gown of
swan coloured damask, leaned upon the east rail, making his own funeral
oration to the people.' The speech concerned itself solely with religion.
At last he perceived that the faith England had held thirty years before
was the only true one. The reformers were serpents, and their preachers,
trumpets of sedition, must be expelled if the country were to have peace.
For himself he now confessed himself a believer, a sinner, and
recommended himself to their prayers and the mercy of God.

Now would have seemed the time, if it were to be done at all, for the
execution of Jane Grey, soon after the collapse of her rebellion, while
feeling still ran high in the City. The Emperor's people urged this on
Mary as the only course. She would not consider it.

She had known the girl at court, had been her hostess at New Hall; and
though on that occasion Jane had made a pert and blasphemous comment on
the Eucharist, there had been something more than acquaintance between
them, as the gift of a necklace shows, and they were kin, not only in
blood, but in learning. Success with Elizabeth had given Mary some
expectation of prevailing even here, despite a certain religious
doggedness in Ascham's pupil. She sent divines to argue with the
prisoner, whose unwilling treason saw itself half condoned when the Queen
set her father honourably free. (It appeared to the Council that Suffolk
was anything but a dangerous person, whose crime and whose punishment lay
in having, long ago, married a queen's daughter; a silly harmless man.)
Mary treated him friendly, gave Lady Jane a little more liberty, though
she still was kept from her husband; then became busy with plans for the
coronation.

Money was needed, and she went to the City in procession to ask for it,
halting at the various displays made by the companies and others in her
honour. There was one show topped with an angel clothed in green, who by
a device, 'to the marvelling of many ignorant persons,' seemed to lift
his trumpet and blow. There were children in women's dress, 'a very
pretty pageant made very gorgeously,' who gave the Queen, after certain
orations and salutations, a purse of a thousand pounds in gold. At Paul's
the scholars sang; and a man with a little flag in his hand mounted the
steeple and stood on one leg on the very weathercock, 'which was thought
a matter impossible.' At the east end of the church was a kind of altar,
'and there she stood long, for it was made of rosemary, with all her arms
and a crown in the midst.' Strange moment in a pageant: the Queen halting
to look long on the herb of remembrance surrounding all her arms; France,
England, Spain.

The Queen had her money with goodwill from the Londoners, who dearly
loved a show, and had for many years seen nothing but sober coats and
gowns about the streets. Next day she went on foot to Westminster to be
crowned, in a dress of blue velvet lined with ermine, with a circlet on
her head, and endured five hours of ceremony before she came out of
church again, dressed now in red, with a naked sword borne before her,
holding her sceptre and in the other hand a ball of gold, 'which she
twirled and turned in her hand as she came homeward.' She was Queen, so
far as all the old ceremonies could make her so; supreme in England over
her subjects' lives and consciences. She was equipped with more entire
power than any woman had ever held in that country before. She was loved,
acknowledged, and owed responsibility only to God. She wasted no time.

The first measure put before her first Parliament, after a Mass of the
Holy Ghost had been sung, was a Bill which in one condemnation repealed
every one of the Acts concerning religion that had been passed during the
reign of her father and brother; one clause dealt with the old matter of
divorce, and it was this that stuck in the throat of the Commons.
Katherine's wrongs had been forgotten by all except her daughter; the
Pope, whose judgment had declared the divorce unlawful, was by this time
the bugbear of all true Englishmen. While the Commons understood very
well that Queen Mary's legitimacy was her sole claim upon their loyalty,
they would have preferred to take it for granted, and respect the _fait
accompli_ of her succession without going into the question of whether
or no she had a right to succeed. The Pope's decree, lawful in one
matter, must logically be accepted in others; and there were many members
of both Houses who would have been the poorer for a re-confiscation of
Church property. There was trouble, especially in the Commons, and much
argument, with no prospect of the Bill passing. Mary's fixed idea had led
her almost at once into conflict.

The power was hers, and on her mother's side she had no understanding of
compromise, by which most English virtue Elizabeth was later to rule. But
she had advisers who knew its value. Parliament was prorogued for three
days, and when the Commons met again two new drafts were submitted to
them. In the first no mention whatever was made of the Pope; it required
only the admission that Henry VIII and his first wife had lived in lawful
matrimony. Compromise scored its usual success. There were no
dissentients.

The second Bill begged the whole question of Church property, and dealt
chiefly with the Book of Common Prayer, called 'a new thing, imagined by
a few of singular opinions.' These few were strongly represented in the
Commons, and again there was argument. But since the Queen had been
content to pass over the matter of restoring stolen property, they agreed
to meet her half-way, and after two days' debate religion was
re-established in the form it had known at Henry's death; that is, the
use of Latin was restored in the churches, with all the sacraments, and
all the splendours. On St. Katherine's Day, feast of the Queen's mother's
patron, 'the light in Paul's steeple went about the steeple that night,
and the singing men of Paul's choir with the children singing anthems, as
of old had been accustomed.'

Mary had done much in little time. She had without bloodshed quieted
rebellion, freed religion, and defended her name; but she was, from her
long retirement and a certain turn of mind not wholly English, unaware of
how greatly the temper of the people had changed since her father first
began to turn their faith upside down. In these first two months she
succeeded in putting back the clock; and for the rest of her reign was in
that position expressed by the French proverb, of one seeking midday at
two in the afternoon.



III


ALASTOR. Are dreams so heavy, then?
CHARON. They load my boat--load it, did I say?
          They have sunk it before now.


As soon as Mary was perceived to be fairly settled in power the intrigues
began, conducted by the ambassadors of the Empire and of France. There
were minor aspirants, the Infant of Portugal, the King of Denmark, and
one or two less sounding European princes; but though they put in
tentative claims which the Council duly considered, the Emperor's word
carried weight with his cousin, and his nominee was his son. France had,
at the moment, no marriageable royalty to set up against the Prince of
Spain, but the chance of gaining control of English policy was not to be
abandoned for that. The French ambassador, de Noailles was a man of
astuteness, and he had, in the English temper, an ally more powerful than
relationship by blood.

The insularity of this rich, mysterious, and troubled kingdom, its
self-sufficiency and hatred of foreigners, by whatever treaties bound,
had been noted. He could, following its more recent history, see very
clearly that this people cared little enough for the descent of their
kings, and had no objection to an admixture of commoner's blood, so long
as it was English, with the royal. The Tudors themselves had no very
obvious right to sit where they did; their claim was an affair on the
distaff side, all seemingly tenuous to the representative of a country
where the Salic law prevailed. English speech and an old name were enough
for most Englishmen's loyalty. The ambassador, when he understood this,
began to look about him for some commoner who might be made to serve as
chestnut-snatcher, and fixed his attention on the Earl of Devon, Edward
Courtenay.

He was ten years younger than the Queen. His father had been beheaded in
Henry VIII's later years for persistence in the old Faith, and the boy,
arrested at the same time, had spent nearly half his life in the Tower.
Gardiner, the new Chancellor, himself a prisoner, had known him there,
and first brought his person and his misfortunes to Mary's notice. She
was kind to the handsome young man, pitying him. She restored the estates
forfeited by attainder; she made him an earl; there were rumours that she
had given him her father's great diamond, valued at sixteen thousand
crowns. He was the only Englishman who by his own birth--he had a little
of the blood royal--the Queen's evident liking, and his immense
popularity with the common people, was fitted for the office of consort.
Reginald Pole was considered seriously by the Council, who thought him,
by reason of his age and nearer connection with the throne, a more
suitable match. But besides being in minor orders, he was something of a
Pope's man, that is to say, only once removed from the Emperor's sphere
of influence, and he had lived out of England too long; the people had
never heard of him. A foreign-bred priest had very little chance against
the Englishness of Courtenay, and de Noailles knew it, if the Council
did not.

Mary was aware of the pressure which urged Courtenay upon her as a
candidate for the throne. She loved his mother; she had been generous to
him. Had the young man himself displayed ordinary prudence, dignity, and
common sense she might, to the great content of all England, have married
him. But the Tower proved to have been a bad school. He was riotous,
extravagant, loose in all ways. His mother and de Noailles worked vainly
to give him some show of self-discipline. The Queen watched, then
declared in public that it was not to her honour to marry a subject; in
private, that she would not tie herself to a man so unprincipled. The
French _parti_ seemed lost, and the Emperor's ambassador, Renard,
took the field.

He had spoken to her before her accession on this matter; now, with her
way and the Emperor's wishes clear, she listened to him, and seemed
easily persuaded. Renard had expected difficulties. He was aware, as she
was not, of the feeling in England against foreigners; and he could
foresee something of the trouble to come, which, though it might set
England by the ears, would not be to his master's disadvantage. He wrote,
half contemptuously, half affectionately, of her to the Cardinal de
Granvelle:

'I know this queen; so good, so easy, without experience of life or of
statecraft; a novice in everything. I will tell you honestly my opinion,
that unless God guards her she will always be cheated and misled either
by the French or her own subjects; and at last taken off by poison or
some other means.'

Renard had the advantage of the Frenchman, not only in being the
Emperor's man, but in having a choice of husbands to offer. The Emperor's
brother Ferdinand and his nephew Maximilian were both available if Philip
of Spain failed. He pressed for Philip, of the three; and Mary, grateful
to Charles V for twenty years of sympathy and protection, was glad in
this way to pay him her debt. Still, she had grave doubts. Philip was
young, he had a kingdom of his own to look after; there would inevitably
be trouble with the French if the Low Countries, part of his appanage,
were thus joined to England; and for her own part, she told the
ambassador, she had no wish to marry at all. She had never known what it
was to desire any man.

To the making of her final decision must have gone other considerations
than those of policy. Her Chancellor was wholly opposed to any such
marriage; she must by this time, being half a Tudor, have known that the
commoners were grumbling; the Councillors made it clear that they wanted
an English consort, Courtenay or another. Against these she set her old
respect for the Emperor, and the weight of her two fixed ideas: Spain,
and the Church to which Spain was faithful. A Catholic succession was
necessary, and no other alliance would certainly ensure it. Her people's
souls were laid upon her; the Spanish marriage meant the Catholic Mass.
There is no need to suppose that she was anything but honest when she
told Renard that before the throne was hers she had no thought of a
husband. The decision was a hard one, made not without tears, as the
ambassador knew. She received him at night in a room wherein was an
altar, with the Blessed Sacrament exposed on it, and told him that since
this matter had been raised she had had no sleep, and come to no
decision. But she had asked help of God all that day, and would ask it
again; 'kneeling on both knees she recited the Veni Creator Spiritus,
there being in the room only myself and Mistress Clarence, who did the
same.' The prayer ended, she rose, and said to Renard quietly and briefly
that she had considered his proposal; she begged the Emperor would be a
father to her; then, being assured that it was the will of God, she gave
her word before the altar to marry the Prince of Spain, 'and to love him
perfectly.'

Renard's message to the Emperor was triumphant. His victory had for the
moment to be kept secret, but there were spies about the court, even
about the Queen's person, and it was not long before de Noailles knew of
the Queen's decision. The Frenchman in haste informed his master, then
set to work by the wise use of rumour to terrify the English and rouse
them. Stories of the rapaciousness of the Spaniards went about the City
of London. Where they came from nobody asked; how much truth was in them
nobody knew. The Tower and the Cinque Ports were to be handed over to
Philip's infantry, he was to suppress Parliament, and instal the
Inquisition in its place. De Noailles' activities find laconic comment in
the chronicles of the time: 'In the beginning of November was the first
notice among the people touching the marriage of the Queen to the King of
Spain.'

All this propaganda had its effect. 'Your Majesty knows,' Renard had
written to the Emperor, 'that the English are of a turbulent temper, and
like their own way in everything. They love change and novelty, either
because of their insular position, or because of their habitual contact
with the sea, or because their morals are corrupt.' They did like
novelty, but not such novelties as those that the French ambassador's
rumours promised them soon; and they were turbulent only when their dear
insularity was threatened, as it seemed to be by this too-powerful
alliance with too close a neighbour. The Commons were all of one mind,
and told it plainly to Mary. She was as plain with their deputation.

'For that you desire to see us married, we thank you. To dictate what
consort we shall choose, goes beyond your province. Sovereigns in these
matters suit their own tastes, considering also the good of their
peoples.'

She dismissed them. Fear and uncertainty among the people took an ugly
turn; there were riots in the churches. Mary, her mind made up as to the
marriage, and perhaps with some notion of showing them the folly of
combating a power now established, chose this moment to hold the trial of
Lady Jane.

There is a brief description of Lady Jane's dress, as she walked between
men-at-arms from the Tower to Guild Hall, her two gentlewomen following:
'A black gown of cloth turned down; the cap lined with fese (face)
velvet, and edged about with the same, in a French hood, all black, with
a black habillement'--here this term has the sense of border--'a black
velvet book hanging before her, and another book in her hand open.' She
pleaded guilty; so did the Dudleys and Cranmer, arraigned with her.
Sentence of death was passed, as was inevitable, and the procession made
its way back to the Tower. In spite of the guard of four hundred
halberdiers, it might have been thought that the noisy London Protestants
would acclaim, if they did not try to rescue her. She was a shadowy
figure to them, however, and no contemporary report has much to say of
the day's doings:

'Item, this year the 14th day of November the bishop of Canterbury Thomas
Cranmer and Lady Jane that would a been queen and three of the Dudleys
condemned at the Guildhall for high treason.'

'The 13 of November Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilford
Dudley esquire, and Lady Jane his wife, Ambrose Dudley and Henry Dudley,
esquires, were arraigned at the Guild Hall of London of high treason
against the Queen, and were there condemned and had judgment to die.'

The account of Lady Jane's condemnation takes up no more space than this,
after which the Grey Friars Chronicle and Charles Wriothesley pass on
then to other things, such as the penitential riding of a priest, 'Sir
Tho. Southwood, alias parson Chekin' about the City in a cart 'for
selling his wife, which he said he had married.' Not that the chronicles
were afraid to comment on the marriage with Spain and the breaking up of
Latin ceremonies; but when in August Jane had been proclaimed, 'few or
none said God save her,' the Londoners knew nothing of her character or
her person. 'Shall I tell you,' asks Erasmus in his Colloquies, 'a sure
way to be renowned without envy? Do some noble deed and die young.' Lady
Jane had not yet set down in full her claim to renown.

She wrote to Mary from the Tower about this time a letter which shows
something of her quality. It has directness, simplicity, and pride,
Mary's own attributes in writing, and does, besides, show most clearly
where responsibility for the late rebellion lay, which was not on the
Lady Jane's shoulders. She begins with an appeal for mercy. 'I can still
on many grounds conceive hope of your infinite clemency, it being known
that the error imputed to me has not been altogether caused by myself.
Because although my fault may be great, and I confess it to be so,
nevertheless I am charged and esteemed guilty more than I have deserved.'
She had been staying with her own mother, she said, when news came that
the King could not live. The Duke of Northumberland told her of it, and
said that she must hold herself ready to go to the Tower, on which
account there was a dispute. 'The Duchess of Northumberland was angry
with me, and with the duchess my mother, saying that if she had resolved
to keep me in the house she should have kept her son, my husband, near
her, to whom she thought I would certainly have gone, and she been free
from the charge of me.' Lady Jane had two days' respite at Chelsea before
an order came from the Council; Lady Sidney brought it, 'who told me with
extraordinary seriousness that it was necessary for me to go with her,
which I did.' At Syon House she found five lords, 'who with unwonted
caresses and pleasantness, did me such reverence as was not at all
suitable to my state, kneeling down before me on the ground, and in many
other ways making semblance of honouring me,' which behaviour made me
blush with infinite confusion.' The King's will was told her; she heard
it 'with infinite grief of mind.' 'How I was beside myself, stupefied and
troubled, I will leave it to those lords who were present to testify, who
saw me, overcome by sudden and unexpected grief, fall on the ground,
weeping very bitterly.' But they had their way with her, and she went to
the Tower, where without being asked the Lord Treasurer brought her the
crown, to try whether it became her well or no, and said that another
should be made for her husband; but this she would not have. 'I sent for
the earls of Arundel and Pembroke, and said to them, that if the crown
belonged to me I should be content to make my husband a duke, but would
never consent to make him King. Which resolution of mine gave his
mother...great anger and disdain, so that she being very angry with me,
and greatly displeased, persuaded her son not to sleep with me any longer
as he was wont to do.' She knew nothing, she said, of the Council's
deliberations; but she was sure that poison had been given her, both in
Northumberland's house and the Tower, 'as I have the best and most
certain testimony, besides that since that time all my hair has fallen
off.' The letter ends without any further appeal for mercy.

Mary must have been touched by it. She had known herself what it was to
dread poison; she too had been puzzled and troubled by weathercock
loyalties; and she had endured the browbeating of a Council, with the
spite of a woman set by marriage in authority over her. The facts of the
case she certainly knew, and though it was necessary to let the girl come
to trial, no preparations for enforcing the penalty were made on Tower
Hill. Lady Jane went back to an imprisonment by no means rigorous, with
liberty to walk where she chose in the Queen's garden. She was, in fact,
held as hostage for the good behaviour of her family and friends. A
little quiet, a year's docility on the part of these would have been
enough to set her free. Mary's marriage with Philip was, by the end of
December, settled; by the December following she might have a child.
There was no need to fear a second usurpation, at any rate not from that
quarter, and despite pressure from the Emperor's people, 'she could not
be induced to consent that Jane of Suffolk should die.' The focus of
suspicion shifted to Elizabeth.

She was at Hatfield, enjoying no more real liberty than the Lady Jane.
Various activities centred about her. She was the reformer's hope, the
bulwark against Spain, the next in succession, and moreover had
astonishing personal charm--'ung esprit plain d'incantation.' There was
talk even among the Queen's advisers of appeasing the people by marrying
her to Courtenay, for whom she had no small liking, despite his
character, 'proud, poor, obstinate, inexperienced and vindictive in the
extreme.' Of this plan de Noailles wrote despairingly to his master:

'It rests with the lord Courtenay to marry her, and go with her into his
west country, where they might raise powers, and make a bid together for
the crown. But by bad luck the fellow is a poltroon; he will attempt
nothing. It might be done, if he had the heart for it.'

Instead, he left Elizabeth alone at Hatfield while he remained at court,
dancing to whatever tune his apprehensions called. A nice irony sent him,
the English people's chosen consort, 'last sprig of the White Rose,' to
greet on behalf of the Queen Charles V's envoys, coming to make formal
proposal for her hand. There were no rejoicings in the streets as these
came through London from Tower wharf; their harbingers had been pelted
with snowballs the day before by those apprentices whom a previous decree
appointed to be kept by their masters in order and awe, 'so hateful was
the sight of their coming in to them.' It was bitter cold weather, and
coals were scarce in London even at tenpence a sack. Trade had been
hampered by the troubles, food was scanty; yet the ambassadors 'had great
presents given them of victuals by the Mayor,' and reported themselves
very well satisfied with their treatment, which was better than they
expected, 'at any rate from the nobility.' The citizens, however, saw
these lords as coming to bid for their Queen, intriguers who would take
money out of the country, and bring soldiers in. They were sullen. The
Queen's ordinance concerning the use of Latin in churches was neglected
in most parishes from fear of the people.

But when the terms of the marriage were announced in the presence chamber
at Westminster, they seemed not so very formidable to English liberties.
The Queen was to have 30,000 ducats a year for her jointure; her son, if
she had one, should inherit, as well as England, Burgundy and the Low
Countries; furthermore, a matter very surprising to the assembled lords,
Gardiner told them that 'we were much bounded to thank God that so noble,
worthy and famous a prince would vouchsafe so to humble himself, as in
this marriage to take upon him rather as a subject than otherwise; and
that the queen should rule all things as she doth now; and that there
should be of the council no Spaniard, neither should have the custody of
any ports or castles; neither bear rule or office in the queen's house,
or elsewhere in all England.'

It was a generous arrangement. Gardiner had laboured hard for every
clause of it, putting his own prejudices aside; he had no liking for the
match. England was safeguarded, could lose neither dignity nor money by
the treaty, and stood to gain, if the Queen were fruitful, two other
kingdoms. It was more than the most obstinate Englishman had any right to
expect, but still it was distasteful. 'These news, although before they
were not unknown to many, and very much unliked, yet being now in this
wise pronounced, were not only credited, but also heavily taken of sundry
men, yea, and thereat almost each man was abashed, looking daily for
worse matters to grow shortly after.'

'The Lord Mayor was sent for to court, with his sheriffs and forty of the
best commoners of the City, to hear in person, as was due to his
authority, the Queen's decision. He had done what he could to atone, by
gifts and personal deference to the envoys, for the snowballing and
scowling faces in his streets, but the Queen was not placated, and
resentment showed through Gardiner's speech, made in her name. 'The Lord
Chancellor declared to them the Queen's pleasure, which was that she
intended to marry with the King of Spain, which should be for the great
preferment of the realm. And that they like obedient subjects to accept
her Grace's pleasure, and to be content and quiet themselves. And further
that God's religion, which she used and had set forth new of late might
be so observed and kept within the City that they might be a spectacle to
all the realm, which they had yet very slackly set forth, or else if they
will not be diligent to do and observe her laws and commandments they
should run in her high indignation and displeasure.'

The proclamation that followed was no more tactful:

'Her highness, considering the lightness and evil disposition of divers
low and seditious persons, who, seeking always novelties, and being
seldom contented with their present state, might peradventure at this
time by their naughty and disordered behaviour, attempt to stir discord,'
ordered that all strangers who might come with the Prince were to have
'courtesy, friendly and gentle entertainment, without either by outward
deeds, taunting words, or unseemly countenance' jeopardising the goodwill
that should exist between peoples so newly and happily brought together.

But as a nation cannot be made virtuous by Act of Parliament, neither can
it be made tractable. The Spaniards were coming, the Spaniards were
strangers; Mary wrote to Renard a note in haste: 'Sir: I forgot to tell
you one thing to-night. The Chancellor, speaking of a match overseas,
said that they might make many promises, but would keep them or not as
they chose, once the marriage was signed and sealed.' 'Six days later,
news came that Sir Peter Carew and others were up in Devonshire,
resisting of the King of Spain's coming.' This was on January 20th; a
week later London heard a more disquieting story, that Sir Thomas Wyat
had set up his standard in Maidstone.

Rebellion exploding in the south and west; this was known for certain,
besides rumours of Sir James Crofts having, gone to Wales, Mary's own
principality once, and faithful to her in trouble, to raise men there
against her. All these rebels had the marriage of the Queen in their
mouths, and French help in their hopes. The Princess Elizabeth was
turning to de Noailles as, long ago, her sister had turned to Chapuys for
sympathy; French emissaries were seen at her house; she had, provided
site kept out of danger, and played her favourite role of Mistress
Facing-both-ways, a good chance of the throne. Had success depended only
on Elizabeth's self-control, it would have been sure; unhappily there was
Courtenay to be considered, privy to all the plans, afraid for his life
and his new dignities. He should have gone into the west to lead his own
people; instead he stood about the court like a ship's figurehead planted
in a garden, valiantly gesturing, but functionless. An interview with the
Chancellor alarmed him; there were hints of his forgotten duty to the
Queen, warnings to beware of the French. Courtenay had no fancy to risk
another fourteen years in the Tower, still less his head. He stumbled out
some sort of confession, which if it gave no names offered facts enough,
and the outlines of the plotters' campaign.

Wyat, Carew, and Crofts had linked themselves to wait the actual coming
of the Prince of Spain in the spring, when, with better weather--'it
being now cold and wet, and not the usual English season for
commotion'--and the impetus of an actual Spanish landing upon the
imaginations of the people, together the attempt would be made.
Courtenay's folly broke this decision. The leaders, finding their names
and intentions known, struck at once, too soon, and separately. Carew
escaped to France, Crofts was taken in his bed before ever he got to
Wales. There remained Wyat, with his fifteen thousand Kentish men
gathered near Maidstone to offer quarrel to the Strangers.

His proclamation kept clear of religion and legitimacy, two subjects on
which English people had recently done enough thinking; it was a monument
of loyalty. He was bluff, he convinced. Men came up to him in the
market-place of Maidstone, 'which before had hated him, and he them,' to
ask if it were true that his quarrel was not against the Queen?

'"No," quod Wyat, "we mind nothing less than any wise to touch her Grace,
but to serve her and honour her, according to our duties."'

The enquirers were not only silenced, but moved to enthusiasm. One that
was rich, or reported so, came to him with an offer and an indiscretion:

'"Sir, they say I love my potage well. I will sell all my spoons, and all
the plate in my house, rather than your purpose shall quail, and sup my
potage with my mouth. I trust," quod he, "you will restore the right
religion again."'

'"Whist," quod Wyat, "you may not so much as name religion, for that will
withdraw from us the hearts of many. You must only make your quarrel for
over running by Strangers. And yet to thee be it said in counsel as to my
friend, we mind only the restitution of God's word. But no words!"'

He set the example. There was no mention in any of his speeches of the
Mass. His letter to the sheriff of Kent spoke vaguely of perils
threatening the body of the commonwealth; his proclamation to the commons
of the shire insisted that the Spaniards were already landed, and the
foremost company arrived at Rochester, marching to London 'in companies
of ten, four, and six, with harness, harquebusses and morions, and with
matches I lighted.' His army increased daily, weapons were found for
them, some said by favour of the Venetian envoy; and on the morning of
January 26th London's gates began to be guarded by volunteers in armour.

At Rochester, where Wyat arrived next day, there were no Spaniards
countermarching, and no trace of their occupation, but the Duke of
Norfolk with a herald was there, and six or some say five hundred
white-coated Londoners behind him. The herald, who after some dispute
and rudeness got silence and a hearing, read out that all rebels who
would desist from their purpose should be pardoned. Amid shouting, the
pardon was refused; 'they had done nothing whereof they should need any
pardon.' Only one of the rebel leaders, Sir George Harper, went over to
the Duke, who received him kindly, as an old acquaintance. Norfolk, 'an
ancient and worthy captain, and yet by long imprisonment diswonted from
the knowledge of our malicious world and the iniquity of our time,' was
too trusting. The submission was feigned, and it is more than likely
that Sir George had brought with him money to spend in the Queen's camp;
for next day, while the Duke was directing his guns upon the town of
Rochester, held strongly by Wyat, the leader of the Whitecoats, one
Brett, addressed his Londoners:

'Masters, we go about to fight against our native countrymen of England,
and our friends, in a quarrel unrightful and partly wicked, for they,
considering the great and manifold miseries which are like to fall upon
us if we shall be under the rule of the proud Spaniards or Strangers, are
here assembled to make resistance of the coming in of him or his
favourers; and for that they know right well that if we should be under
their subjection they would, as slaves and villains, spoil us of our
goods and lands, ravish our wives before our faces, and deflower our
daughters in our presence, have taken upon them now...this their
enterprise, against which I think no English heart ought to say, much
less by fighting to withstand them.'

This, the quintessence and attar of all war speeches, produced its
invariable effect. The Whitecoats turned their firearms upon their own
camp--'a Jew would not have done the like, having received his hire to
serve'; the Duke, that guileless gentleman, retreated with such of his
followers as remained, and came back, well whipped and sans seven brass
guns, to London. 'Ye should have seen some of the guard come home, their
coats turned, all ruined, without arrows, or string in their bow, or
sword, in very strange wise; which discomforture, like as it was a
heart-sore, and very displeasing to the queen and council, even so was it
almost as less joyous to the Londoners.' Sir George Harper rejoined his
leader to receive thanks and praises, and the unknown supporter who had
given his spoons was told that now he should eat his pottage with silver.
'Who had seen the embracing, clipping, and congratulation used at this
meeting from traitor to traitor might justly wonder thereat. Shortly
after they had well clawed one another, they went together like
themselves into Rochester.'

London, at sight of its beaten and sorry company returned, took fright.
Lawyers pleaded at Westminster with armour under their robes, the Queen's
Mass was sung by an armoured priest, the Lord Mayor set about raising
five hundred foot-soldiers to be equipped at the cost of the City. Wyat
was rumoured to be near, coming up along Thames bank towards Blackheath
and Greenwich. Guns were laid at each one of the City gates, where a
watch was kept day and night. This was a threat very different from the
blustering of Northumberland.

Mary saw her whole policy threatened. Victory for Wyat meant the end of
Catholicism in England, that she knew, and the end of the treasured
alliance with Spain. The little red-haired woman left her prayers, and
ordered her horse. At the Guildhall, to aldermen awkwardly carrying their
unaccustomed weapons, she made a speech under the great cloth of estate
which rings like tempered steel; she had a voice like a man, that could
be heard at a great distance:

'I am come to you in mine own person to tell you that which already you
see and know; that is, how traitorously and rebelliously a number of
Kentishmen have assembled themselves against us and you. Their pretence
(as they said at the first) was for a marriage determined for us, to the
which, and to all the articles thereof, ye have been made privy. But
since, we have caused certain of our privy council to go again unto them
and to demand the cause of this their rebellion; and it appeared then
unto our said council, that the matter of the marriage seemed to be but a
Spanish cloak to cover their pretended purpose against our religion; for
that they arrogantly and traitorously demanded to have the governance of
our person, the keeping of the Tower, and the placing of our councillors.
Now, loving subjects, what I am ye right well know. I am your queen, to
whom at my coronation, when I was wedded to the realm and laws of the
same (the spousal ring whereof I have on my finger, which never hitherto
was, nor hereafter shall be left off) you promised your allegiance and
obedience unto me. And that I am the right and true inheritor of the
crown of this realm of England, I take all Christendom to witness...I say
to you on the word of a prince, I cannot tell how naturally the mother
loveth the child, for I was never the mother of any, but certainly if a
prince and governor may as naturally and earnestly love her subjects as
the mother doth love the child, then assure yourselves that I, being your
lady and mistress, do as earnestly and tenderly love and favour you...As
concerning the marriage...I am not so bent to my will, neither so precise
nor affectionate that either for mine own pleasure I could choose where I
lust...For God I thank him, to whom be the praise therefore, I have
hitherto lived a virgin, and doubt nothing but with God's grace I am able
so to live still...And now, good subjects, pluck up your hearts, and like
true men stand fast against these rebels, both our enemies and yours, and
fear them not, for I assure you I fear them nothing at all.'

Mary spoke bluntly, as she wrote; her words had no Popish tang to them,
in spite of the reference to religion. It was the kind of talk to which
the subjects of the Tudors responded and were accustomed. (Elizabeth, who
spoke in parables with foreign ambassadors, but forthright and frank to
her people, had the trick of it too.) Perhaps the greatest tribute to the
Queen's speech were those cries heard among the shouts of loyalty to her
person, of 'God save the Prince of Spain.' It turned many hearts to her.
For the moment she was all her father's daughter.

The City took heart and stood to, not wasting time and lives on sorties,
but waiting for Wyat to come. London was his magnet; the Queen was there,
and those councillors he had promised to change. (The ambassadors, except
Renard, were already gone.) He had lost more than half of his fifteen
thousand men by desertion, but his purpose still held, and the smaller
army was well led, and lacked neither weapons nor food. His soldiers were
provisioned at their own charges for nine days; which, said he, should be
long enough, 'finding half the friends there as we think to have. Our hap
shall be very hard if we be not at London shortly after we stir; and
being once in London, and having the Tower in our hands, I trust you
think we shall not lack money long after.'

Wyat reached Southwark on the 3rd of February, and set up two cannon
against London Bridge. All boats, by order of the Earl of Pembroke, had
been withdrawn to the Westminster side of the stream; the bridges were
defended strongly; shot from the White Tower and the Water-Gate harassed
the Kentish men, and the population of Southwark. 'Sir Nicholas Poynings,
as it is said, being an assistant at the Tower, was with the queen to
know whether they should shoot off at the Kentishmen, and so bet down the
houses upon their heads. "Nay," said the queen, "that were pity, for many
poor men and householders are like to be undone there and killed."' It
was not guns but the swift river that saved London from immediate attack,
which held off for two days, the threat causing utter confusion on the
Queen's side of the stream. Then should ye have seen taking in wares off
the stalls in a most hasty manner; there was running up and down in every
place to weapons and harness; aged men were astonished, many women wept
for fear; children and maids ran into their houses, shutting the doors
for fear...so terrible and fearful at the first was Wyat and his armies'
coming to the most part of the citizens.'

Still the rebels could not get across. Wyat himself broke through the
wall of a house adjoining the gate at London Bridge foot, and got by way
of the leads into the lodge of the gate, 'where he found the porter in a
slumber, and his wife with others waking, watching a coal. "Whisht!" quod
Wyat, "as you love your lives, sit you still! You shall have no hurt!"
Glad were they of that warranty, pardy! What should they do? people
better accustomed with the tankard of beer to pass forth the night than
acquainted with target and spear.' Wyat got, with a few followers, on to
the Bridge itself, but the drawbridge was up in the middle, and guarded
by the Lord Mayor in person, with cannon; no use to attempt to contrive
any passage there. He returned, 'saying to his mates, "This place is too
hot for us."'

But Wyat was a man of resource. The people of Southwark, whom he had
treated well--'the inhabitants said there was never men behaved
themselves so honestly as his company did there'--were afraid of cannon
balls from the Tower; these had not done much harm hitherto, but there
was apprehension lest with practice the gunners might aim better, 'to the
utter desolation of this borough.' Wyat, a wise captain, would not risk
the enmity of friends for the sake of shaking a threat over London which
could never, owing to the strength of the defence in that quarter, come
to performance. He told them to be patient a little, that he would soon
ease them; and making out of this check a plan altogether different and
more formidable, turned his men, and marched up the river to Kingston.
The bridge there had been broken, but a barge was lying across the water,
and some of his men could swim. They fetched it across; and working from
the barge, his engineers 'trimmed the bridge with ladders, planks and
beams, the same tied together with ropes,' so quickly and with such skill
that by ten at night the army and guns were able to cross with safety. By
nine next morning, Ash Wednesday, he was mustering his force in Hyde
Park.

The Londoners had been 'much joyous' the day of his departure. Now the
terror was on them again, and with reason. Their river and cannon no
longer defended them. Drums went through London at four in the morning,
warning all volunteers to arm and meet at Charing Cross. The Tower
expected the Queen, but she would not leave Whitehall; 'she sent word
that she would tarry there to see the uttermost. Many thought she would
have been in the field in person.'

But she remained in her palace, praying, while ladies wailed round her,
wringing their hands: 'Alack, alack, some great mischief is toward. We
shall all be destroyed this night. What a sight is this, to see the
queen's bedchamber full of armed men! The like was never seen or heard
before!' There was throughout the palace such a running and crying of
ladies and gentlewomen, shutting of doors, and such a shrieking and noise
as it was wonderful to hear.'

Wyat's object was to capture her. As soon as his force was set in motion
he split it, Knyvett going down towards Westminster, while he kept more
northerly, along the wall of the Manor of St. James'. The Queen's main
army was drawn up at Charing Cross waiting for him. He abandoned the plan
of coming at Whitehall from two sides and turned a little out of his way
to ride through the City, hoping there perhaps to gather sympathisers or
to create such a commotion that companies of the Queen's army would be
sent after him, thus breaking up that force into defeatable units. The
tail of his detachment was cut off by Lord Pembroke's raiding horsemen;
the rest, some five hundred men with their leader, thrust on into the
silent City.

There men in armour stood ranked on either side of Fleet Street as for a
procession; they neither attacked nor joined him, they were unwilling to
commit themselves; and Wyat's progress, as it was reported to the Lord
Mayor by a scout, had much the look of a triumph. 'They stood as men half
out of their lives, and many hollow hearts rejoiced in London.' Meanwhile
the Queen's people were closing the streets behind him, and there was
fighting near Westminster.

Wyat's generalship was of the kind that can deal with an enemy that
fights, but not with one that runs. He had promised his Kentish-men that
they should ride through London, and they rode, but with none of their
objects gained; an unbroken army at their backs, the citizens silent, and
the Queen safe. He had been, by the inaction of his enemies, drawn into a
trap, and he knew it, though the City did not. 'Whereupon grew great
admiration amongst them that knew not their doings in the field; how for
policy, and to avoid much manslaughter, Wyat was suffered purposely to
pass along. Insomuch divers timorous and cold-hearted soldiers came to
the Queen, crying "All is lost! Away! Away! A barge! A barge!"'

Mary was better informed; she asked only what Lord Pembroke was doing. He
was in the field, they told her; which meant, she knew, that he was
cutting in two by a charge of horse the little army that had gone into
the City. '"Well, then," quod her Grace, "fall to prayer! and I warrant
you we shall hear better news anon!"' Skirmishers outside sent a shower
of arrows through the windows into the room where she stood. There were
cries of treason. Lord Pembroke's attack had been wholly successful, but
in the mêlée he had cut down some men of the Queen's party, and their
survivors came running hack towards Whitehall, shouting that the Earl was
gone over to Wyat. The Queen, being told of it, answered that she would
trust her Captain, Christ, and went to her prayers again.

Wyat, riding towards Ludgate, knew nothing of all this. He was cut off
from Knyvett. The apathy of the citizens, the fighting at his back, and
the silent unfamiliar streets opening before him, were all so many omens
of failure. His own best qualities as a leader, courage and
impetuousness, had lost him his chance, and he knew as he came to
Ludgate, shut and barred with cannon, that now the only hope for life was
to get out of London and across the Channel. Since the first day of the
rising he had worn a coat quilted with angels under his armour, and had
discussed with his friends how best to get away 'when England should be
no place to rest in.'

There was still a chance if he could get out of the cage, but Ludgate
with its ordnance was too formidable for a troop without artillery to
break through. Too late, he tried a ruse; 'some cried, Queen Mary hath
granted our request, and given us pardon. Others said, the Queen hath
pardoned us.' Lord William Howard, in command, called down to Wyat,
knocking on the door with his sword, 'Avaunt, traitor! thou shalt not
come in here.' 'I have kept touch,' answered Wyat strangely, meaning
perhaps that he had done all he could, and rode back, with his sword
drawn but reversed, holding it hilt upwards, towards the main part of his
force. At Whitehall some of Lord Pembroke's horsemen tackled him, and
there was brief sharp fighting, into whose midst came Norroy King of Arms
in his coat of office, sent by the Queen.

'Sir, it were best by my counsel to yield. You see this clay is gone
against you, and in resisting ye can get no good, but be the death of all
these your soldiers, to your great peril of soul. Perchance ye may find
the queen merciful, and the rather if ye stint so great a bloodshed as is
like here to be.'

Wyat had no great reverence for heralds; he had refused to let one speak
at Rochester, though he had 'the Arms of England on his back.' He
answered now, throwing clown his broken sword: 'Well, if I shall needs
yield, I will yield me to a gentleman.' Sir Maurice Berkeley told Wyat to
mount behind him, and by five in the afternoon, at dusk, he was brought
by water to the Tower. There the Lieutenant caught him by the collar and
shook him, threatening him with his dagger as one that had betrayed the
Queen by making 'a most traitorous stir, yielding her battle to her
marvellous trouble and fright.' Wyat, though before when the same
accusation was made he had turned upon his accuser with an angry
denial--'I am no traitor, and it is not the part of an honest man to call
me so'--endured the insult without a word; 'but holding his arms under
his side, and looking grievously, with a grim look, upon the said
Lieutenant, said, "It is no mystery now."' He was richly dressed in a
coat of mail with sleeves, having a velvet cassock over it, laced with
yellow, booted and spurred, and with 'a fair hat of velvet' in which was
pinned a paper with his name written large. Whoever should take him had
been offered by proclamation £100 in money, and he, hearing of it, had
gone in this way out to fight.

Forty persons altogether were killed in London, so far as could be
learned according to the Spanish ambassadors, only two of the Queen's men
were killed, and three wounded, 'which has the look of a miracle.' 'But
there was many sore hurt; and some think there was many slain in houses.'

Prisoners were taken, so many that the gaols were filled, and the
overflow had to be housed in churches.

Judgment was not long delayed. On the 10th of February, two days later,
the Lord Mayor tried and condemned forty-two rebellious persons; at
Westminster, thirty-two were tried. Wyat was not among them. There were
many counts against him, and it was found impossible to deal with so wide
a matter in so short a time. The Emperor wrote to Renard: 'In God's name,
let her not deceive herself with the delusion of clemency.' A terrible
sermon was preached before the Queen in her chapel by Gardiner on a text
from the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where the Apostle speaks of
forsaking unbelievers: 'And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what
part hath he that believeth with an infidel?'

'Fifthly and lastly, he asked a boon of the queen's highness...for the
purpose she would now be merciful to the body of the commonwealth and
conservation thereof, which could not be unless the rotten members were
cut off and consumed. And thus he ended soon after; whereby all the
audience did gather there should shortly follow sharp and cruel
execution.'

Mary, with this sermon and the Emperor's exhortation in her ears, and the
example of what previous clemency had brought on her people in the way of
fear and tumult, went to deliberate with the Council, and confirm her.
self in resolution. When she freed Northumberland's supporters, Renard
had written to Ins master: 'Sire, the queen at any rate is excusable; she
found matters in such a condition when she came to the throne that she
cannot possibly set everything straight, or punish all who have been
guilty one way or another; otherwise she would be left without any
vassals at all.' The Council, at that time newly come together, and new
to her character, had not proved itself tractable: Mary had had to fight
for her prerogative of mercy. She anticipated, and found, no such
difficulty in obtaining sanction to punish. It was good policy as the
times went; apart from that 'she foresaw great inconvenience, and that it
would be difficult to re-establish religion; but her conscience pricked
and goaded her so that she greatly wished she could find means to do it.'
Now the means suggested themselves, and she took them open-eyed, with
what distress of mind it is not easy to conjecture. She had fought and
prayed and kept herself on the throne so that England might, be brought
back to God, mortgaged to God, with herself and her issue for hostages.
She was beginning at lengths to understand that her brother's reign had
lasted long enough to wound Catholicism almost to death; she perceived
that Wyat and his fifteen thousand were not isolated zealots, but the
more courageous representatives of a great party of English opinion; and
she prepared to be ruthless, as the Inquisition in her mother's country
was ruthless, employing every cruel argument upon the body to save the
priceless soul so as by fire.

Wyat's death was easily determined; he was a traitor to the Queen's two
dearest wishes, the marriage and the Mass. His lieutenants, sharers of
his opinion, rightly should suffer with him, and the treacherous captain
of the Whitecoats, Brett. The problem that she could not resolve was one
nearer home.

Lady Jane and her husband had been held in prison since August. They were
innocent and loyal, but all kinds of disloyalties clung about them. The
Queen believed that her young cousin Jane, a good child, though stubborn
in religious matters owing to her upbringing by reformers, would never
make any further attempt at the Crown. She had showed her trust by
releasing Suffolk, Jane's father, after three days' imprisonment,
supposing him to be a good easy man corrupted by the ambitions of one
stronger than himself. He had accepted her favours gratefully, and lived
quietly withdrawn all the autumn in his house at Sheen. There had been
protestations of loyalty, which she, in whom the sense of gratitude was
so strong, accepted without question. When news came that trouble was
brewing in Kent, Mary sent a messenger to Suffolk requiring him to attend
her at court, who found him with his two brothers preparing to set out.
'"Marry," quoth he, "I was coming to her Grace: Ye may see, I am booted
and spurred, ready to ride, and I will but break my fast and go."' He
gave the messenger money and drink, then set off, but not for London. He
rode into Leicestershire with Lords Thomas and John, sounding Wyat's cry
through the Midlands: 'Lo, the strangers!' Lord Huntingdon went after
them, and defeated what soldiers they had got together; the Duke and his
brothers fled, 'in serving men's coats,' and were taken at Coventry. By
the loth of February he, with Lord John Grey, was in the Tower.

His daughter and her husband had been condemned in November; recording
the verdict at the Guildhall the Spanish ambassador wrote: 'But Jane will
not die.' The Queen still would not sign the death-warrant. She
hesitated, signed, withdrew, and sent her own confessor to reason with
the prisoner. Dr. Feckenham put Lady Jane through a catechism, with no
success. She was stubborn on points of doctrine; there were only two
sacraments the bread of communion was not Christ's flesh: the Bible was a
Christian's only guide. To this last Feckenham agreed, but would not
allow that every man should interpret it to his own wish and meaning; who
but the Church had such authority? She answered shrewdly: 'The faith of
the Church must be tried by God's word, and not God's word by the
Church.' She spoke openly and frankly, with gentleness and courage.
'After this Master Feckenham took his leave, saying, that he was sorry
for her. "Troth it is," quoth she, "that we shall never meet, unless God
turn your heart; for I am sure, unless you repent and turn to God, you
are in evil case; and I pray to God, in the bowels of his mercy, to send
you his holy spirit. For he hath given you his great gift of utterance,
if it please him to open the eyes of your heart to his truth."'

Feckenham's eloquence had spent itself; he went back to the Queen, to
whom the news of Suffolk's capture had that day been brought. Lady Jane
knew nothing of her father's treachery and failure; she wrote to him,
thinking him free, and herself on the eve of death, a letter in which
reproach sounds without bitterness:

FATHER, although it bath pleased God to hasten my death by you, by whom
my life should rather have been lengthened, vet I can so patiently take
it, that I yield God more hearty thanks for shortening my woeful clays,
than if all the world had been given into my possession, with life
lengthened at my own will...And yet, though I must needs acknowledge that
being constrained, and as you know well enough, continually essayed; yet
in taking upon me, I seemed to consent, and therein grievously offended
the queen and her laws, yet do I assuredly trust that this my offence to
God is so much the less, in that being in so royal estate as I was, my
enforced honour never mingled with mine innocent heart.'

Her father had the letter as they brought him into the Tower, two days
before she died.

Her scaffold was built up against the White Tower, and she walked to it,
on the 12th of February, in the black gown and hood she had worn at her
arraignment, with, as then, a book in her hands. She prayed as she
walked, her two women weeping behind her, 'her countenance nothing
abashed, neither her eyes anything moisted with tears.' On the scaffold
she spoke to the people, washing her hands of all guilt in the matter of
rebellion, but confessing that she had not served God as she ought, and
asking their prayers while she still lived. 'Then, kneeling down, she
turned to Feckenham, saying, "Shall I say this psalm?" And he said "Yea."
Then she said the psalm of _Miserere mei Deus_ in English, in most
devout manner to the end. Then she stood up, and gave her maiden,
mistress Tilney, her gloves and handkercher, and her book to Master
Bridges, the lieutenant's brother; forthwith she untied her gown. The
hangman went to help her therewith; then she desired him to let her
alone, turning towards her two gentlewomen, who helped her off
therewith...giving her a fair handkercher to knit about her eyes.

'Then the hangman kneeled down, and asked her forgiveness, whom she
forgave willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the straw; which
doing, she saw the block. Then she said, "I pray you, dispatch me
quickly." Then she kneeled down, saying, "Will you take it off before I
lay me down?" and the hangman answered her, "No, madam." She tied the
kercher about her eyes; then feeling for the block, said, "What shall I
do? Where is it?" One of the standers by guiding her thereto, she laid
her head down upon the block and stretched forth her body and said:
"Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit." And so she ended.'

Mary had reigned for six months: by now she understood something of her
people. She had refused at first to believe, her advisers when they
insisted that treachery unpunished spelt, to the English mind, not mercy
but fear. The Council insisted upon force, to which the ambassadors would
have added, after the Spanish fashion, bribery. 'Your Highness must
know,' wrote Egmont to the Prince of Spain, 'that the Emperor has not
given me a sou for distribution here; yet with the English, more than
with any other people in the world, money has power.' The Queen had no
money, except that which had been raised in the City as a personal gift
to her; she was reduced to begging from her cousin, two hundred thousand
crowns, which she would return very shortly, and with what interest might
seem good to him. The Spanish envoys, to whom she wished to give a gold
ring apiece, refused on the grounds that the terms of their service
forbade it; but in their report they confessed that it was because they
knew she could not afford to make gifts. Disturbances up and down the
whole country had shaken confidence, and killed trade. There was want
everywhere. The Queen could not buy peace; she was compelled to impose
it.

On Tuesday, the day after Lady Jane and her husband died, at every gate
in London a gallows was set up, besides two pair in Southwark, two pair
in Cheapside and Fleet Street, and three or four at Charing Cross; on
Wednesday, these served their purpose. On Saturday a proclamation
banished all foreigners, merchants, freemen, and ambassadors' servants
only excepted. A week later the Duke of Suffolk, 'a man...more easy
indeed to be led than was thought expedient, of stomach nevertheless
stout and hardy,' died on Tower Hill. The chiefs of Wyat's party were
sent by barge to Kent for execution and example. On Tower Green the
scaffold was left standing, and Courtenay, back in the lodging he had
known as a boy, spent an uneasy fortnight without news. Three weeks
later, on Palm Sunday, Elizabeth herself was brought to the Tower by
barge from Westminster through the rain, and standing, 'the water over
her shoe,' swore ignorance of all plots past and to come. She had reason
to cry out at the sight of the soldiers: 'What, are all these harnessed
men here for me?' The chamberlain answered: 'No, madam,' but locked the
doors on her very straitly.' She was in danger, and knew it.

It was Wyat who defended her with the last words he spoke in his life.
'Whereas it is said and whistled abroad that I shall accuse my lady
Elizabeth's grace and the lord Courtenay; it is not so, good people, for
I assure you neither they nor any other now yonder in hold and durance
was privy of my rising or commotion before I began. And this is most
true.'

The Emperor's men still were not appeased. Nothing was too small to take
their attention. Mary, remembering her duty to the Emperor--she signed
herself to him, 'your loving sister, cousin, daughter, and ally for
ever'--tried to content them. Boys playing Queen against Wyat in a meadow
were whipped, and the fellow that acted the Prince of Spain punished more
strictly. A cat dressed in vestments with a paper wafer in its paws, that
was found hung up in Cheapside, was taken down, and a reward of £6, 8s.
4d. immediately offered for the apprehension of the blasphemer. A tailor,
'for shaving a dog in despite of priesthood,' did public penance. In
these small matters she was complaisant, but no pressure would make Mary
sign the warrant for her sister's death. Renard wrote angrily to his
master:

'Madam Elizabeth goes to-day to the Tower, pregnant they say, for she is
a light woman as her mother was. With her dead, and Courtenay, there
would be none left in this Kingdom to dispute the crown or trouble the
Queen.' But since the Queen would not give way in this matter, lie urged
that the Prince should come in person as soon as might be, and try what
effect his personal influence might have. He had noted the ready English
acceptance of a _fait accompli_, and insisted to the Queen that talk
of the marriage was harmful, without the fact; she, always blunt in
policy as in speech, could not see why. 'I told her that in my opinion,
subject to her correction, she had better for the moment make no further
mention of it. She would not conceal her intentions, she said, but was
determined, with God's help, to bring it to pass.' And she added that if
she might not have the Prince, then she would take no other husband;
rather would she give up her crown, and her state, and her life.'

She had divined in Philip, from Renard's talk of him, something of the
strong deliberate faith that filled her; the same determination, which no
agony of mind or physical risk would shake, to drag souls against their
will out of hell. She was near to the supreme power; she was established
and feared, but she had no money, and no single countryman of her own who
would go with her all the way back to Rome. She received the Prince's
picture gladly, and waited for him with a lifting spirit, but a quailing
body. She had a physical disability which made her not apt for marriage.
Her mother's betrayal, her father's ranging among women, the cynical
bargaining which had made restless her own youth, allowed no happy
expectations. 'Truth is,' wrote Gomez de Silva to the Emperor's
secretary, 'this is no marriage of the flesh; she has undertaken it fur
the health of her Kingdom.'

Her kingdom, subdued, but stubbornly mistrustful, protested no more, and
in the beginning of June all the gallows in London were taken down.



IV


GABRIEL. Whither now?
PETRONIUS. To my closet.
GABRIEL. What to do there?
PETRONIUS. Why, I am asked for a marriage song, but
            I think I will rather make an epitaph.


Philip delayed. He had hoped at first that his father would marry again,
and take the irksome duty off his shoulders. Charles was short with him,
and he at once submitted: 'As your majesty feels so strongly on this
question, you know I am so obedient a son that I can have no other will
than yours.' But still he delayed, and found various pretexts for putting
off the English venture: the money for the Queen's jointure was not yet
minted, he had a mind to go into the Low Countries first, he must travel
strongly escorted--the French were reported to be lying in wait for him
in the Channel--and the ships were not ready. Charles, well aware of the
danger of delay, wrote to him sharply:

'SON: I send by this courier your marriage contract, which I have signed,
and which is now for you to approve...Since the Queen is so constant in
good-will to us, and so bent on the marriage, speaking of it in public
and private very obligingly, I have decided to send word to Count Egmont
not to quit that Kingdom until the treaty is concluded.'

To Mary he wrote at once, so as to leave the Prince no loophole, a letter
of congratulation.

'I could have wished that the gout would grant me a truce, so that I
might write to you with my own hand to thank you most affectionately for
your acceptance of the proposal made to you by my ambassadors on behalf
of my son.'

Instructions to the Prince urged tact in his new dominion; he was to be
sparing of words and lavish of money; he was to be civil to the
unaccountable English, and try to disarm them by paying them all proper
attention. As for the escort on which he insisted, no doubt, said the
Emperor, that would be necessary; but as soon as he was safe in England,
the fleet must set sail. There must be no cause given for jealousy or
fear of Spain. 'Let no single one of your infantry men set foot on shore,
much less any captain or officer; all trouble must be avoided.'

The Prince learned his lesson, and set sail with a minimum of display;
three thousand persons of his own household, six thousand sailors to man
the ships, and a thousand horses and mules. In the hold of his flagship
was stowed bullion to the amount of three million ducats, twenty
cartloads of gold and silver, a good prize for French marauders. But the
Spanish fleet was too imposing, there was no attack in the Channel, and
on the 20th of July Philip came into Southampton Water. Englishmen in his
own liveries greeted him; a white hackney, with a saddlecloth of crimson
velvet embroidered with gold and jewels, was waiting. He received the
Garter from Lord Arundel, and wore 'the everyday badge of this, with many
stones, and a St. George in the middle, instead of his Golden Fleece.'

Saturday he spent in Southampton, receiving courtesies, conferring
honours, and, with the Marquis de las Navas at his elbow for interpreter,
speaking with the English gentlemen who had come to do him honour. On
Sunday he went to Mass on foot. On. Monday, with a company of a thousand
courtiers, guarded by three hundred mounted archers of the Queen's own
guard, he set out for Winchester where she was waiting, looking, as one
of his ministers noted, very well on horseback, so that the English were
astonished. There was one contretemps; he did not take off his cap to a
bishop; but having been told of this, he put it right, and never
afterwards offended. At Winchester the Bishop and clergy met him, and
after a _Te Deum_ in the Cathedral accompanied him to his lodging,
the Dean's house. In the evening he with certain of his household went by
torchlight 'through gardens and an orchard,' to kiss the Queen's hand.

'She looked very well,' wrote a courtier, 'but somewhat older than we had
been told.' She always dressed very splendidly, and on this day, for all
her frailness, she was superb. 'Black velvet her dress was, with much
gold embroidery, silver, and pearls. On her head she wore a hood
embroidered in gold, and many fine rings on her hands. Her stomacher was
of diamonds, and her girdle too.' She went to the door to greet the
Prince, and they kissed, as was the English custom, before they went
together to the dais. There they sat talking for more than an hour, she
in French, he in Spanish, the English courtiers and her ladies watching;
afterwards Mary beckoned them up, introducing each by name; 'many
gentlemen, and the ladies many, but these latter ancient and ill-favoured
mostly.' At last the Prince stood up to go, and asked the Queen how he
should bid her people goodnight. She told him, smiling, the English
words: 'Good-night, my lords all,' which he spoke very clearly as he went
through the chamber to his own lodging.

The English, lords and commoners alike, were disarmed by the looks and
affability of the stranger. He was fair-headed and bearded, like a
Fleming; well made, his face princely and gait straight and upright as he
loseth no inch of his height '; a good horseman, and by repute a famous
jouster. With all this, he drank beer for breakfast, and walked about
freely, without ceremony, so that the people might look at him. If he
were seen too often at his prayers, the time was not so far distant when
an English king heard his three Masses a day, and they bore him no grudge
for it. His envoy's men had had a poor welcome in London; the Prince
himself found, even by English accounts, something like enthusiasm at
Winchester.

On Wednesday, July 25th, the day of Spain's patron, St. James, the Prince
with his nobles went at ten in the morning to the Cathedral. He was in
white, wearing besides a short gold cloak in the French fashion, the
Queen's gift; a gold sword, very rich; and a cap of black velvet with
white plumes. The Queen came half an hour later, following her heralds,
and 'walking, as the custom here is, between two bachelors, that when the
marriage is over give place to two married men.' Her dress was of white
damask, embroidered with gold and pearls, in the same pattern as the
Prince's cloak; her headdress was black, her stockings red, her shoes of
black velvet. On her breast she wore a great ruby.

The Prince was proclaimed by the regent Figueroa King of Naples, his
father's wedding gift. Their confessions were heard. The Lord Chamberlain
showed the contract of marriage, which had 'a great seal, and contained
by estimation twelve leaves.' The banns were called, no person objecting,
and the ceremony proceeded in English and Latin. The Queen was given away
in the name of her realm by Lords Derby, Bedford, and Pembroke, and for
ring had a round hoop of gold without any stone, which was her desire,
for she said she would be married as maidens were in the old time, and so
she was.'

Mass followed the marriage. This over, the heralds proclaimed their
Majesties' titles: King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem
and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith; Princes of Spain and Sicily;
Archdukes of Austria; Dukes of Milan, Burgundy and Brabant; Counts of
Hapsburg, Flanders, and the Tyrol. 'Which proclamation ended, the
trumpets blew, and other noises played.'

They dined together in the Bishop's palace, the Queen always keeping to
the right hand of the King. The feast was after the English rather than
the Spanish fashion, wasteful and gorgeous, with gold and silver plate,
loud music, and all the service performed by gentlemen. One of these,
Edward Underhill, a hot-gospeller whom Mary had taken back into her
service, recorded in a diary his own experience as a server on this very
great clay:

'The second course at the marrying of a King is given to the hearers, I
mean the meat, but not the dishes, for they were of gold. It was my
chance to carry a great pasty of a red deer in a great charger, very
delicately baked, which for the weight thereof divers refused; the which
pasty I sent unto London to my wife and her brother, who cheered
therewith many of their friends.'

By six the tremendous meal was over, and the company moved into a larger
room, where there was to be dancing. Here came a slight hitch in the
ceremonial, for the King and Queen should have led off together; but the
King knew no English and the Queen no Spanish dances, and so a compromise
was reached whereby they both danced an Allemand. Of this performance the
malicious Underhill records:

'I will not take upon myself to write of the dancings of the Spaniards,
that day; who were greatly out of countenance, specially King Philip's
dancing, when they did see my lord Bray, Mr. Carew and others so far
exceed them, but will leave it to the learned, as it behoved' him to be
that shall write a story of so great a triumph.'

Both English and Spaniards that were there agree that for splendour the
scene had never been matched; it was 'a wonder to see'; to describe it
would be 'but a phantasie, and loss of paper and ink'; for magnificence
and colour 'it should seem to him that never see such, to be another
world.'

At nine the King and Queen withdrew to their own apartments, bishops
going before them to bless the marriage bed with all ceremony; and by ten
the palace was quiet.

Next day came a clash of English and Spanish courtesies; the King's
nobles, accustomed to offer congratulations to their sovereigns in bed,
were put off by the Queen's scandalised ladies with the reproach that
such a thing was 'not honest.' No Englishwoman, they said, permitted
herself to be seen by strangers in such a case, the very morning after
her marriage. This gave offence; the Queen, learning of the refusal, sent
two countesses of her own household to fetch the Duchess of Alba to visit
her. Now it was the turn of the Spaniards to be scandalised. Mary, in her
unceremonious fashion, rose as the Duchess entered the room and walked to
meet her; meeting, there was almost a struggle, the Queen refusing her
hands, which the Duchess had to kiss by force, and offering her cheek
instead, an unseemly honour. The matter of seating was long disputed, the
Duchess protesting that she would sit on the floor rather than share the
Queen's velvet bench. Two chairs of different height were sent for at
last, of which the Duchess, protesting still, took the lower; and such
time as remained after the claims of civility had been satisfied was
employed in conversation.

The stay at Winchester was short, ten days only. The Queen was impatient
to show her troublesome Londoners their handsome and friendly King.
Whether the Londoners were of her mind or not, they were glad of the
chance to make a display, and set about building street scenes of a
grandeur excelling even those that had been shown at her state entry the
year before. On August 17th, 'being advertised that all triumphs and such
pageants as were devised in London against their coming thither were
finished and ended,' they came from Richmond by water and landed on the
Southwark side of Thames. Of the rebel invasion no trace remained; they
passed through the Chancellor's house, where in February Wyat's soldiers
had waded knee deep in papers, burning his books, to London Bridge, now
hung with garlands. The guns at the Tower, which Mary had last heard
firing in earnest, let off a peal, and the Lord Mayor, who then had held
the bridge in armour, now came forward robed, carrying a silver mace for
the Queen to touch: the City's homage. Across the bridge itself leaned
two giants, holding up a shield with Latin verses, declaring that the
citizens'

Mind, voice, study, power, and will,
Is only set to love thee, Philip, still.

The procession went forward from one pageant to another. The Nine
Worthies at Gracechurch Street were succeeded by a device made by foreign
merchants, where a king on horseback was shown 'all armed very
gorgeously,' again displaying verses in Latin. The Four Noble Philips at
Cornhill 'liked the King's highness and the queen wondrous well'; but
best of all was the show at the west end of Cheapside, displaying their
genealogy and descent from Edward III of England, which was contrived on
the plan of a Jesse Tree; an old man lying on his side, with an oak
growing out of him, in whose branches did sit fair young children,'
representing all his descendants, with Philip and Mary glorified in
effigy on the topmost hough. At Paul's a scholar dressed in gold gave the
King a book; 'where also a fellow came slipping upon a cord, as an arrow
out of a bow, from Paul's steeple to the ground, and lighted with his
head forward on a great sort of feather beds.' There was an oration, more
poems, and again the running and rejoicing of a great number of people as
were there calling and crying "God save your graces," was an evident
token of testimony and witness of their faithful and unfeigned hearts to
the queen's highness and the King.'

They slept at Whitehall, where presents were waiting; a pair of regals
from the Queen of Poland, and from the Princess of Portugal gowns and
headdresses after the Spanish fashion. Concerning these, Gomez wrote to
the Emperor's secretary:

'The Queen is delighted, and diverts herself endlessly with them. She
should never put them off, to my mind; our dresses hide her thinness and
age better than the fashions of this country.' And of the King's
behaviour in London: 'He is well, the rheumatism which has troubled him a
little of late seems to be passing. He is good to the Queen, making
allowance for her coldness; she lacks wholly all sensibility of the
flesh. He makes her happy, however, and being together the other day it
was observed that he spoke love-talk with her, which she answered in the
same manner.'

Perez, a secretary, wrote:

'The people of this Kingdom have shown themselves kinder to us than you
or I could have imagined; the King's treatment of them, his care and
liberality, would soften a stone. The majority is of our way of thinking,
and it is my opinion that between this new Parliament and the coming of
the Legate, which is most eagerly looked for, we may at last see the
triumph of God's justice and his holy faith.'

The Queen's plan was near to fruition. Her marriage was achieved,
Englishmen had a prince to obey at last, the rebels all were dead; and in
the 'Tower, a surer weapon than guns, was the great treasure Philip had
brought out of Spain, three hundred thousand ducats. The ambassadors,
shrewd men, but apt to judge after their own lights, had told her that
her people were to be bought, and she believed it; she had seen, in her
father's time, men sell themselves for a hundred acres. 'With this money
under her hand she had no apprehensions concerning her next move, the
summoning of Pole, her cousin, the Pope's Legate. London still grumbled,
and mocked the priests occasionally, but London was not the whole realm,
it was not even irrevocably the capital of the realm. She held over the
merchants' heads the threat of shifting the Court and Parliament to other
cities while negotiations with the Pope went on.

He, aided by political experience of some hundreds of predecessors in
office, most of whom had come into conflict with the troublesome island
in their time, now understood that the English resistance was a matter
not only of pride, but of cupidity. If it were made a condition of his
renewed supremacy that the Church lands should be restored, his Holiness
knew very well that Mary stood to lose her throne. The Queen gone, there
was nobody of opinion strong enough to bring back the Catholic faith, and
England would become, like Germany, a battleground, with texts for
banners. He made the necessary concession. The Legate was empowered to
make legal transfer of all lands and goods forcibly taken twenty years
before, the owners _de facto_ becoming the owners _de jure_.
With this brief in his pocket there was no longer any reason for delay.
Pole sailed from Antwerp.

On the 18th of November he landed at Gravesend, and went direct to
Whitehall. The King went to the landing stage to meet him; the Queen
waited in the palace, under her cloth of estate, and received his
blessing joyfully, as from her cousin, and the Pope's envoy, and a man
notable for his learning and good life. On St. Andrew's Day the Legate,
sitting at the right hand of the Queen in the great chamber at
Westminster, addressed the Lords and Commons:

'I have somewhat to say touching myself; and to give most humble and
hearty thanks to the King and Queen's majesties, and after them to you
all, which of a man exiled and banished from this commonwealth, have
restored me to a member f the same; and of a man having no place, neither
here nor elsewhere within this realm, have admitted me in place where to
speak and be heard.'

He spoke of the ancient learning of Britain, the fervour of dead princes,
and of that unity which was the chief need of all Christian nations.
'Look upon our nigh neighbours of Germany, who by swerving from this
unity are miserably afflicted with diversity of sects.' He spoke of
intolerance, making no personal application, but the hearers knew that
his mother, Edward IV's granddaughter, had died for her faith, and that
he had been driven into exile. 'For those that live under the Turk may
live freely after their conscience, and so was it not lawful here.' Then
he came to the chief head of his mission; reconcilement, through the
labours and prayers of the State's two princes, with Rome, a consummation
which he gladly saw to be near at hand, 'and most glad of all that the
occasion thereof should come by me, being an Englishman born, which is,
as it were, to call home ourselves.' But neither he, nor the King, nor
the Queen, could compel it, and he urged the Parliament, like true
Christians and provident men, for the health of their souls and bodies to
ponder what should be clone in so weighty a cause.

Parliament pondered the Pope's fair offer no longer than a few hours. The
new House of Commons was a house of Catholics, and the Lords, secure in
their tenure of filched lands, saw nothing much to object to in taking
off a cap to the crucifix now and then. They considered these things,
together with the Queen's power, her money, and the backing of Spain, and
returned to the presence chamber where the King, Queen, and Legate
waited. There and then, 'sitting all on their knees,' they presented a
petition, declaring their sorrow for past errors, and requiring the King
and Queen, 'as persons undefiled in the offence of this body,' to
intercede for their pardon, 'that we may, as children repentant, be
received into the bosom and unity of Christ's Church. So as this thy
noble realm, with all the members thereof, may in unity and perfect
obedience to the See Apostolic, and Popes for the time being, serve God
and your majesties to the furtherance and advancement of his honour and
glory.'

On the 28th of November High Mass was sung in Paul's before the Lord
Mayor and aldermen, wearing their scarlet gowns and cloaks, ten bishops,
and a very great crowd of people. At sermon time one of the prebendaries
read out from the pulpit a letter from the Council, ordering that _Te
Deum_ should be sting in every London parish for the Queen. The choir
followed up his words with a burst of singing, the anthem _Ne timeas,
Maria_--the angel's salutation. Mary was with child, and had felt it
stir in her womb at the moment of the Cardinal's blessing. She was
thirty-eight years old, Philip ten years younger.

The Catholic succession was sure; son or daughter, her child was heir to
great territories by which English pride, still sore from the loss of
France, might find compensation. The headship of the Church, which had so
heavily weighed her conscience down, was put off at last, and with her
people's consent. She had feared herself to be incapable of bearing
children, not only by reason of her age, but of a disability which had
gone with her all her life; now her doctors and women assured her that
she was quick. She had been afraid of Philip's youth, and had heard talcs
of his behaviour in the Low Countries; he had been temperate and careful
of English feeling, even to the point of offending his own household by
keeping English gentlemen always about him. He was gentle with her,
'respectful as though he were not her spouse but her son.' Charles'
secretary wrote that the Emperor was glad of the King's popularity, but
most of all that he is seen and known to be attentive to the queen; also
that he goes about freely among the people, for which lie deserves much
praise.'

In April the Queen went to Hampton Court to wait for her child, and there
for the first time there was no free access to her, 'which seemed strange
to Englishmen,' accustomed to go in and out of the royal houses arid
watch their rulers at dinner or prayers. Mary felt a failing of her
energy and determined to conserve it. She gave audience no more, attended
meetings of the Council and received ambassadors rarely. Her whole
strength was set to the slow making of the child, as before she had
concentrated it for the keeping of her throne, and the clearing of her
soul. She knew that God's mercy would not fail her; her doctors were
hopeful; Hampton Court was full of women come from all over the country
to welcome the child. Reason and faith assured her that the future was
safe. But as if some instinct deeper than reason were insisting on the
truth, she sent for her next heir, Elizabeth.

The Princess had been freed from the Tower at Philip's request. No
evidence had been brought against her; the only accusations came from
malicious talk of the Emperor's people. But the Queen was no longer sure
of her loyalty, and she went from the Tower into confinement at Woodstock
as strict, though not as ominous; she did not attend the marriage at
Winchester; her servants were not of her own choosing; letters were
scrutinised. It was two years since she had seen Mary, and when hue
summons came to attend her at Hampton Court, 'bringing rich dresses,' the
Princess had some hope of future kindnesses and favour.

But her reception was unpromising. The Queen did not at once send for
her, and her apartments, next to the King's, were guarded as before. It
was a fortnight before the Chancellor with three others of the Council
came to visit her; by proxy of these gentlemen the sisters argued.

In this dispute the trend of the two minds shows clearly. Elizabeth,
looking forward constantly, refused to compromise herself; the Queen, a
woman of plain statements, vainly demanded yes or no. There was much
going and coming of lords, but nothing categorical could he had from
Elizabeth, and at last once more the keys were turned. A week passed.

One night at ten o'clock came a summons to the Queen's presence; guards
bearing torches, and the Mistress of the Robes in person, escorted the
Princess through the garden to Mary's lodging, and up the stairs to her
bedroom.

Here Elizabeth knelt, while Mary spoke harshly in her loud masculine
voice:

'You will not confess your offence, but stand stoutly in your truth. I
pray God it may so fall out.'

'If it doth not,' Elizabeth answered, kneeling, but not humbly, 'I
request neither favour nor pardon at your Majesty's hands.'

'Well, you still persevere in your truth. Belike you will not confess but
that you have been wrongfully punished.'

'I must not say so, if it please your Majesty, to you.'

'Why, then, belike you will to others.'

'No, if it please your Majesty. I have borne the burden, and must bear
it. I humbly beseech your Majesty to have a good opinion of me, and to
think me to be your true subject, not only from the beginning hitherto,
but for ever, as long as life lasteth.'

The Queen made brief answer, 'very few comfortable words in English: but
what she said in Spanish, God knoweth'; perhaps she rebuked herself for
her lack of trust in God.

The ambassadors were writing home full reports of her daily increasing
bulk, the swelling of her breasts, all the signs of pregnancy advancing;
a cradle had been ordered, clothes were making, and toys were already
arriving as gifts to her child. Prayers were daily offered in the
churches for her safe delivery. Parliament begged Philip to take upon
himself the government of the kingdom during the minority of her
Majesty's issue, 'if it should happen to the queen otherwise than well.'
All England was expectant. Happy in these expectations, Mary, 'foreseeing
the great dangers which by God's ordinance remain to all women in their
travail of children,' began to give consideration to her will.

The existing document dates from the time of the second cruel deception
practised upon her by her sick body; it was made with 'the consent,
agreement, and good contentment of my most dear lord and husband,' and
provided first for almsgiving at her death; next: 'I will that the body
of the virtuous lady and my most clear and well-beloved mother of happy
memory, Queen Katherine, which lyeth now buried at Peterborough, shall
within as short time as conveniently it may after my burial be removed,
brought, and laid nigh the place of my sepulture.' There were to be
prayers for her own soul, her mother's, and the King's, 'when God should
call him to his mercy out of this transitory life.' Her father's and
brother's debts were still unsettled. She wished that these, and the
money she had borrowed in her lifetime, should be paid. Such Church lands
as had come to her through her father were to be restored at the
discretion of the Legate, 'requiring my said cousin and most reverend
father in God, as he hath begun a good work in this realm, so he will do
as much as he may, by God's grace, to finish the same.' Legacies were
left to 'my poor servants that be ordinary, and have most need,' and to
found hospitals for poor soldiers. Lastly, the imperial Crown of England
and Ireland, and her title to France, 'to the heirs, issue, and fruit of
my body, according to the laws of this realm '; with these all jewels,
ships, munitions of war, and artillery. To Philip she left the love and
duty of her subjects, 'as a legacy the which I trust he shall enjoy,' and
besides these the jewels that had been his marriage gifts to her.
Elizabeth was nowhere mentioned. The will ended with an exhortation to
her executors--Philip, Pole, and half a dozen lords of the Council:

'And I charge my said Executors, as they will answer before God at the
dreadful day of Judgment, and as they will avoid such comminations,
threatenings, and the severe justice of God pronounced and executed
against such as are breakers and violators of wills, and testaments, that
they to the uttermost of their powers and wits, shall see this my present
Testament and last will performed and executed, for the which I trust God
shall reward them, and the world commend them.'

Her disorder, some manifestation of her old guest, amenorrhea, swelled
her and subsided. 'Queen Mary, by the running of water behind her skin,
or as others will, by a distemper which the physicians call mola, was
declared to be with child.' Her doctors declared it; she believed it for
long, until proofs to the contrary could not be denied. When the true
state of her body was at last understood, she added a codicil to her
will. Since God had not thought it good to send her issue, she left the
Crown to her successor according to the law--she would not name
Elizabeth; and 'my most Dear Lord and Husband shall have no government,
order, and rule within this Realm.'

When this codicil came to be read, the flame of Catholicism, which she
had given her body and breath to keep alive, was sinking fast.
Independence had been an English characteristic long enough, and the
Reformation, splitting God's Word as a prism splits light, into a hundred
colours of belief, because it freed the spirit from authority was
welcomed. The ceremonial of the Mass, rich with fifteen centuries of
tradition, could not find faith enough among Englishmen to make of it
anything more than mummery. Mary, seeing the altars restored, holding the
Golden Rose, the Pope's gift to sovereigns who defend the aith, was
deceived in her people's submission. She had brought them to a religion
they mistrusted, by a marriage which they detested; made a stranger their
king, and a foreign bishop their arbiter of conscience. They knelt, but
to the Crown and not the wafer.

'But now '--it is Cranmer speaking--'the omnipotent governor of all
things so turned the wheel of her own spinning against her, that her high
buildings of such joys and felicities came all to a Castle comedown, her
hopes being confounded, her purposes disappointed, and she now brought to
desolation.' His anger against her, which is representative of the
people's feeling in the last year of her life, came from two main causes.
She saw her kingdom, except at rare moments, with the eyes of Spain; and
her policy, linking England with Europe by marriage and faith, seemed to
cheat the islanders of their insularity.

Elizabeth, 'our peaceable Salome,' knowledgeable in the thoughts of the
common people, all English, without any tincture of foreign loyalty, made
no such mistake.

The will was disregarded. Queen Katherine still lay at Peterborough, the
alms were not given, the hospitals not founded, and the Masses not sung.
Only the unseen legacies, written between the lines of the document for
those who had eyes to see, were paid in full. Queen Mary died in October
1558 on her great bed hung with the embroidered arms of England and
Spain. Six weeks later, an order went out for the reading of the daily
service in English in all London parishes. Six months more, and the
supremacy of the Church was vested again in the English Crown.
Commissioners were sent out through the realm for the establishing of
true religion. Down came the altars.

Thirty years later the Invincible Armada set sail for the English coast.



BOOKS CONSULTED

Arber. _An English Garner_, volumes 4 and 8.
Armstrong. _The Emperor Charles V._
_Burleigh Papers._
Chronicles: _Queen Jane and Queen Mary._
            Wriothesley.
            Holinshead.
            _Grey Friars of London._
_Coleccion de documentos ineditos_, volumes 1 and 3.
Crammer. _Reign of Queen Mary._
Fox. _Acts and Monuments._
Howard. _Lady Jane Grey._
_Inventory of Goods of the Princess Dowager._
Machyn. _Diary._
Madden. _Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary._
_State Papers._ Spanish, French, and Venetian despatches.
Stone. _Mary I._



THE END


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