1553 AND 1554.
Mary affects attachment to Elizabeth.--Short duration of her
kindness.--Earl of Devonshire liberated from the Tower.--His
character.--He rejects the love of Mary--shows partiality to
Elizabeth.--Anger of Mary.--Elizabeth retires from court.--Queen's
proposed marriage unpopular.--Character of sir T. Wyat.--His
rebellion.--Earl of Devonshire remanded to the Tower.--Elizabeth
summoned to court--is detained by illness.--Wyat taken--is said to
accuse Elizabeth.--She is brought prisoner to the court--examined by the
council--dismissed--brought again to court--re-examined--committed to
the Tower.--Particulars of her behaviour.--Influence of Mary's
government on various eminent characters.--Reinstatement of the duke of
Norfolk in honor and office.--His retirement and death.--Liberation from
the Tower of Tonstal.--His character and after fortunes.--Of Gardiner
and Bonner.--Their views and characters.--Of the duchess of Somerset and
the marchioness of Exeter.--Imprisonment of the Dudleys--of several
protestant bishops--of judge Hales.--His sufferings and
death.--Characters and fortunes of sir John Cheke, sir Anthony Cook, Dr.
Cox, and other protestant exiles.
The conduct of Elizabeth during the late alarming crisis, earned for her
from Mary, during the first days of her reign, some demonstration of
sisterly affection. She caused her to bear her company in her public
entry into London; kindly detained her for a time near her own person;
and seemed to have consigned for ever to an equitable oblivion all the
mortifications and heartburnings of which the child of Anne Boleyn had
been the innocent occasion to her in times past, and under circumstances
which could never more return.
In the splendid procession which attended her majesty from the Tower to
Whitehall previously to her coronation on October 1st 1553, the royal
chariot, sumptuously covered with cloth of tissue and drawn by six
horses with trappings of the same material, was immediately followed by
another, likewise drawn by six horses and covered with cloth of silver,
in which sat the princess Elizabeth and the lady Anne of Cleves, who
took place in this ceremony as the adopted sister of Henry VIII.
But notwithstanding these fair appearances, the rancorous feelings of
Mary's heart with respect to her sister were only repressed or
disguised, not eradicated; and it was not long before a new subject of
jealousy caused them to revive in all their pristine energy.
Amongst the state prisoners committed to the Tower by Henry VIII., whose
liberation his executors had resisted during the whole reign of Edward,
but whom it was Mary's first act of royalty to release and reinstate in
their offices or honors, was Edward Courtney, son of the unfortunate
marquis of Exeter. From the age of fourteen to that of six-and-twenty,
this victim of tyranny had been doomed to expiate in a captivity which
threatened to be perpetual, the involuntary offence of inheriting
through an attainted father the blood of the fourth Edward. To the
surprise and admiration of the court, he now issued forth a comely and
accomplished gentleman; deeply versed in the literature of the age;
skilled in music, and still more so in the art of painting, which had
formed the chief solace of his long seclusion; and graced with that
polished elegance of manners, the result, in most who possess it, of
early intercourse with the world and an assiduous imitation of the best
examples, but to a few of her favorites the free gift of nature herself.
To all his prepossessing qualities was superadded that deep romantic
kind of interest with which sufferings, long, unmerited, and
extraordinary, never fail to invest a youthful sufferer.
What wonder that Courtney speedily became the favorite of the
nation!--what wonder that even the severe bosom of Mary herself was
touched with tenderness! With the eager zeal of the sentiment just
awakened in her heart, she hastened to restore to her too amiable
kinsman the title of earl of Devonshire, long hereditary in the
illustrious house of Courtney, to which she added the whole of those
patrimonial estates which the forfeiture of his father had vested in the
crown. She went further; she lent a propitious ear to the whispered
suggestion of her people, still secretly partial to the house of York,
that an English prince of the blood was most worthy to share the throne
of an English queen. It is even affirmed that hints were designedly
thrown out to the young man himself of the impression which he had made
upon her heart. But Courtney generously disdained, as it appears, to
barter his affections for a crown. The youth, the talents, the graces
of Elizabeth had inspired him with a preference which he was either
unwilling or unable to conceal; Mary was left to vent her disappointment
in resentment against the ill-fated object of her preference, and in
every demonstration of a malignant jealousy towards her innocent and
unprotected rival.
By the first act of a parliament summoned immediately after the
coronation, Mary's birth had been pronounced legitimate, the marriage of
her father and mother valid, and their divorce null and void. A stigma
was thus unavoidably cast on the offspring of Henry's second marriage;
and no sooner had Elizabeth incurred the displeasure of her sister, than
she was made to feel how far the consequences of this new declaration of
the legislature might be made to extend. Notwithstanding the unrevoked
succession act which rendered her next heir to the crown, she was
forbidden to take place of the countess of Lenox, or the duchess of
Suffolk, in the presence-chamber, and her friends were discountenanced
or affronted obviously on her account. Her merit, her accomplishments,
her insinuating manners, which attracted to her the admiration and
attendance of the young nobility, and the favor of the nation, were so
many crimes in the eyes of a sovereign who already began to feel her own
unpopularity; and Elizabeth, who was not of a spirit to endure public
and unmerited slights with tameness, found it at once the most dignified
and the safest course, to seek, before the end of the year, the peaceful
retirement of her house of Ashridge in Buckinghamshire. It was however
made a condition of the leave of absence from court which she was
obliged to solicit, that she should take with her sir Thomas Pope and
sir John Gage, who were placed about her as inspectors and
superintendants of her conduct, under the name of officers of her
household.
The marriage of Mary to Philip of Spain was now openly talked of. It was
generally and justly unpopular: the protestant party, whom the measures
of the queen had already filled with apprehensions, saw, in her desire
of connecting herself yet more closely with the most bigoted royal
family of Europe, a confirmation of their worst forebodings; and the
tyranny of the Tudors had not yet so entirely crushed the spirit of
Englishmen as to render them tamely acquiescent in the prospect of their
country's becoming a province to Spain, subject to the sway of that
detested people whose rapacity, and violence, and unexampled cruelty,
had filled both hemispheres with groans and execrations.
The house of commons petitioned the queen against marrying a foreign
prince: she replied by dissolving them in anger; and all hope of putting
a stop to the connexion by legal means being thus precluded, measures of
a more dangerous character began to be resorted to.
Sir Thomas Wyat of Allingham Castle in Kent, son of the poet, wit, and
courtier of that name, had hitherto been distinguished by a zealous
loyalty; and he is said to have been also a catholic. Though allied in
blood to the Dudleys, not only had he refused to Northumberland his
concurrence in the nomination of Jane Grey, but, without waiting a
moment to see which party would prevail, he had proclaimed queen Mary in
the market-place at Maidstone, for which instance of attachment he had
received her thanks[20]. But Wyat had been employed during several years
of his life in embassies to Spain; and the intimate acquaintance which
he had thus acquired of the principles and practices of its court,
filled him with such horror of their introduction into his native
country, that, preferring patriotism to loyalty where their claims
appeared incompatible, he incited his neighbours and friends to
insurrection.
[Note 20: See Carte's History of England.]
In the same cause sir Peter Carew, and sir Gawen his uncle, endeavoured
to raise the West, but with small success; and the attempts made by the
duke of Suffolk, lately pardoned and liberated, to arm his tenantry and
retainers in Warwickshire and Leicestershire, proved still more futile.
Notwithstanding however this want of co-operation, Wyat's rebellion wore
for some time a very formidable appearance. The London trained-bands
sent out to oppose him, went over to him in a body under Bret, their
captain; the guards, almost the only regular troops in the kingdom, were
chiefly protestants, and therefore little trusted by the queen; and it
was known that the inhabitants of the metropolis, for which he was in
full march, were in their hearts inclined to his cause.
It was pretty well ascertained that the earl of Devonshire had received
an invitation to join the western insurgents; and though he appeared to
have rejected the proposal, he was arbitrarily remanded to his ancient
abode in the Tower.
Elizabeth was naturally regarded under all these circumstances of alarm
with extreme jealousy and suspicion. It was well known that her present
compliance with the religion of the court was merely prudential; that
she was the only hope of the protestant party, a party equally
formidable by zeal and by numbers, and which it was resolved to crush;
it was more than suspected, that though Wyat himself still professed an
inviolable fidelity to the person of the reigning sovereign, and
strenuously declared the Spanish match to be the sole grievance against
which he had taken arms, many of his partisans had been led by their
religious zeal to entertain the further view of dethroning the queen, in
favor of her sister, whom they desired to marry to the earl of
Devonshire. It was not proved that the princess herself had given any
encouragement to these designs; but sir James Croft, an adherent of
Wyat's, had lately visited Ashridge, and held conferences with some of
her attendants; and it had since been rumored that she was projecting a
removal to her manor of Donnington castle in Berkshire, on the south
side of the Thames, where nothing but a day's march through an open
country would be interposed between her residence and the station of the
Kentish rebels.
Policy seemed now to dictate the precaution of securing her person; and
the queen addressed to her accordingly the following letter.
* * * * *
"Right dear and entirely beloved sister,
"We greet you well: And whereas certain evil-disposed persons, minding
more the satisfaction of their own malicious and seditious minds than
their duty of allegiance towards us, have of late foully spread divers
lewd and untrue rumours; and by that means and other devilish practises
do travail to induce our good and loving subjects to an unnatural
rebellion against God, us, and the tranquillity of our realm: We,
tendering the surety of your person, which might chance to be in some
peril if any sudden tumult should arise where you now be, or about
Donnington, whither, as we understand, you are minded shortly to remove,
do therefore think expedient you should put yourself in good readiness,
with all convenient speed, to make your repair hither to us. Which we
pray you fail not to do: Assuring you, that as you may most safely
remain here, so shall you be most heartily welcome to us. And of your
mind herein we pray you to return answer by this messenger.
"Given under our signet at our manor of St. James's the 26th of January
in the 1st year of our reign.
"Your loving sister,
"MARY, the queen."
* * * * *
This summons found Elizabeth confined to her bed by sickness; and her
officers sent a formal statement of the fact to the privy-council,
praying that the delay of her appearance at court might not, under such
circumstances, be misconstrued either with respect to her or to
themselves. Monsieur de Noailles, the French ambassador, in some papers
of his, calls this "a favorable illness" to Elizabeth, "since," adds
he, "it seems likely to save Mary from the crime of putting her sister
to death by violence." And true it is, that by detaining her in the
country till the insurrection was effectually suppressed, it preserved
her from any sudden act of cruelty which the violence of the alarm might
have prompted: but other and perhaps greater dangers still awaited her.
A few days after the date of the foregoing letter, Wyat entered
Westminster, but with a force very inadequate to his undertaking: he was
repulsed in an attack on the palace; and afterwards, finding the gates
of London closed against him and seeing his followers slain, taken, or
flying in all directions, he voluntarily surrendered himself to one of
the queen's officers and was conveyed to the Tower. It was immediately
given out, that he had made a full discovery of his accomplices, and
named amongst them the princess and the earl of Devonshire; and on this
pretext, for it was probably no more, three gentlemen were sent,
attended by a troop horse, with peremptory orders to bring Elizabeth
back with them to London.
They reached her abode at ten o'clock at night, and bursting into her
sick chamber, in spite of the remonstrances of her ladies, abruptly
informed her of their errand. Affrighted at the summons, she declared
however her entire willingness to wait upon the queen her sister, to
whom she warmly protested her loyal attachment; but she appealed to
their own observation for the reality of her sickness, and her utter
inability to quit her chamber. The gentlemen pleaded, on the other
side, the urgency of their commission, and said that they had brought
the queen's litter for her conveyance. Two physicians were then called
in, who gave it as their opinion that she might be removed without
danger to her life; and on the morrow her journey commenced.
The departure of Elizabeth from Ashridge was attended by the tears and
passionate lamentations of her afflicted household, who naturally
anticipated from such beginnings the worst that could befal her. So
extreme was her sickness, aggravated doubtless by terror and dejection,
that even these stern conductors found themselves obliged to allow her
no less than four nights' rest in a journey of only twenty-nine miles.
Between Highgate and London her spirits were cheered by the appearance
of a number of gentlemen who rode out to meet her, as a public testimony
of their sympathy and attachment; and as she proceeded, the general
feeling was further manifested by crowds of people lining the waysides,
who flocked anxiously about her litter, weeping and bewailing her aloud.
A manuscript chronicle of the time describes her passage on this
occasion through Smithfield and Fleet-street, in a litter open on both
sides, with a hundred "velvet coats" after her, and a hundred others "in
coats of fine red guarded with velvet;" and with this train she passed
through the queen's garden to the court.
This open countenancing of the princess by a formidable party in the
capital itself, seems to have disconcerted the plans of Mary and her
advisers; and they contented themselves for the present with detaining
her in a kind of honorable custody at Whitehall. Here she underwent a
strict examination by the privy-council respecting Wyat's insurrection,
and the rising in the West under Carew; but she steadfastly protested
her innocence and ignorance of all such designs; and nothing coming out
against her, in about a fortnight she was dismissed, and suffered to
return to her own house. Her troubles, however, were as yet only
beginning. Sir William St. Low, one of her officers, was apprehended as
an adherent of Wyat's; and this leader himself, who had been respited
for the purpose of working on his love of life, and leading him to
betray his confederates, was still reported to accuse the princess. An
idle story was officiously circulated, of his having conveyed to her in
a bracelet the whole scheme of his plot; and on March 15th she was again
taken into custody and brought to Hampton-court.
Soon after her arrival, it was finally announced to her by a deputation
of the council, not without strong expressions of concern from several
of the members, that her majesty had determined on her committal to the
Tower till the matter could be further investigated. Bishop Gardiner,
now a principal counsellor, and two others, came soon after, and,
dismissing the princess's attendants, supplied their place with some of
the queen's, and set a guard round the palace for that night. The next
day, the earl of Sussex and another lord were sent to announce to her
that a barge was in readiness for her immediate conveyance to the Tower.
She entreated first to be permitted to write to the queen; and the earl
of Sussex assenting, in spite of the angry opposition of his companion,
whose name is concealed by the tenderness of his contemporaries, and
undertaking to be himself the bearer of her letter, she took the
opportunity to repeat her protestations of innocence and loyalty,
concluding, with an extraordinary vehemence of asseveration, in these
words: "As for that traitor Wyat, he might peradventure write me a
letter; but on my faith I never received any from him. And as for the
copy of my letter to the French king, I pray God confound me eternally,
if ever I sent him word, message, token, or letter, by any means." With
respect to the last clause of this disavowal, it may be fit to observe,
that there is indeed no proof that Elizabeth ever returned any answer to
the letters or messages of the French king; but that it seems a
well-authenticated fact, that during some period of her adversity Henry
II. made her the offer of an asylum in France. The circumstance of the
dauphin's being betrothed to the queen of Scots, who claimed to precede
Elizabeth in the order of succession, renders the motive of this
invitation somewhat suspicious; at all events, it was one which she was
never tempted to accept.
Her letter did not obtain for the princess what she sought,--an
interview with her sister; and the next day, being Palm Sunday, strict
orders were issued for all people to attend the churches and carry their
palms; and in the mean time she was privately removed to the Tower,
attended by the earl of Sussex and the other lord, three of her own
ladies, three of the queen's, and some of her officers. Several
characteristic traits of her behaviour have been preserved. On reaching
her melancholy place of destination, she long refused to land at
Traitor's gate; and when the uncourteous nobleman declared "that she
should not choose," offering her however, at the same time, his cloak to
protect her from the rain, she retained enough of her high spirit to put
it from her "with a good dash." As she set her foot on the ill-omened
stairs, she said, "Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as
ever landed at these stairs; and before thee, O God! I speak it, having
no other friends but thee alone."
On seeing a number of warders and other attendants drawn out in order,
she asked, "What meaneth this?" Some one answered that it was customary
on receiving a prisoner. "If it be," said she, "I beseech you that for
my cause they may be dismissed." Immediately the poor men kneeled down
and prayed God to preserve her; for which action they all lost their
places the next day.
Going a little further, she sat down on a stone to rest herself; and the
lieutenant urging her to rise and come in out of the cold and wet, she
answered, "Better sitting here than in a worse place, for God knoweth
whither you bring me." On hearing these words her gentleman-usher wept,
for which she reproved him; telling him he ought rather to be her
comforter, especially since she knew her own truth to be such, that no
man should have cause to weep for her. Then rising, she entered the
prison, and its gloomy doors were locked and bolted on her. Shocked and
dismayed, but still resisting the weakness of unavailing lamentation,
she called for her book, and devoutly prayed that she might build her
house upon the rock.
Meanwhile her conductors retired to concert measures for keeping her
securely; and her firm friend, the earl of Sussex, did not neglect the
occasion of reminding all whom it might concern, that the king their
master's daughter was to be treated in no other manner than they might
be able to justify, whatever should happen hereafter; and that they were
to take heed to do nothing but what their commission would bear out. To
this the others cordially assented; and having performed their office,
the two lords departed.
Having now conducted the heroine of the protestant party to the dismal
abode which she was destined for a time to occupy, it will be proper to
revert to the period of Mary's accession.
Little more than eight months had yet elapsed from the death of Edward;
but this short interval had sufficed to change the whole face of the
English court; to alter the most important relations of the country with
foreign states; and to restore in great measure the ancient religion,
which it had been the grand object of the former reign finally and
totally to overthrow. It is the business of the historian to record the
series of public measures by which this calamitous revolution was
accomplished: the humbler but not uninteresting task, of tracing its
effects on the fortunes of eminent individuals, belongs to the compiler
of memoirs, and forms an appropriate accompaniment to the relation of
the perils, sufferings and obloquy, through which the heiress of the
English crown passed on safely to the accomplishment of her high
destinies.
The liberation of the state-prisoners confined in the Tower,--an act of
grace usual on the accession of a prince,--was one which the causes of
detention of the greater part of them rendered it peculiarly gratifying
to Mary to perform. The enemies of Henry's or of Edward's government she
regarded with reason as her friends and partisans, and the adherents,
open or concealed, of that church establishment which was to be forced
back on the reluctant consciences of the nation.
The most illustrious of the captives was that aged duke of Norfolk whom
the tyrant Henry had condemned to die without a crime, and who had been
suffered to languish in confinement during the whole reign of Edward;
chiefly, it is probable, because the forfeiture of his vast estates
afforded a welcome supply to the exhausted treasury of the young king;
though the extensive influence of this nobleman, and the attachment for
the old religion which he was believed to cherish, had served as
plausible pretexts for his detention. His high birth, his hereditary
authority, his religious predilections, were so many titles of merit in
the eyes of the new queen, who was also desirous of profiting by his
abilities and long experience in all affairs civil and military. Without
waiting for the concurrence of parliament, she declared by her own
authority his attainder irregular and null, restored to him such of his
lands as remained vested in the crown, and proceeded to reinstate him in
offices and honors. On August 10th he took his seat at the
council-board of the eighth English monarch whose reign he had survived
to witness; on the same day he was solemnly reinvested with the garter,
of which he had been deprived on his attainder; and a few days after, he
sat as lord-high-steward on the trial of that very duke of
Northumberland to whom, not long before, his friends and adherents had
been unsuccessful suitors for his own liberation.
There is extant a remarkable order of council, dated August 27th of this
year, "for a letter to be written to the countess of Surry to send up to
Mountjoy Place in London her youngest son, and the rest of her children,
by the earl of Surry, where they shall be received by the duke of
Norfolk their grandfather[21]." It may be conjectured that these young
people were thus authoritatively consigned to the guardianship of the
duke, for the purpose of correcting the protestant predilections in
which they had been educated; and the circumstance seems also to
indicate, what indeed might be well imagined, that little harmony or
intercourse subsisted between this nobleman and a daughter-in-law whom
he had formerly sought to deprive of her husband in order to form for
him a new and more advantageous connexion.
[Note 21: See Burleigh Papers by Haynes.]
The eldest son of the earl of Surry, now in the seventeenth year of his
age, was honored with the title of his father; and he began his
distinguished though unfortunate career by performing, as deputy to the
duke of Norfolk, the office of earl-marshal at the queen's coronation.
On the first alarm of Wyat's rebellion, the veteran duke was summoned to
march out against him; but his measures, which otherwise promised
success, were completely foiled by the desertion of the London bands to
the insurgents; and the last military expedition of his life was
destined to conclude with a hasty and ignominious flight. He soon after
withdrew entirely from the fatigues of public life, and after all the
vicissitudes of court and camp, palace and prison, with which the lapse
of eighty eventful years had rendered him acquainted, calmly breathed
his last at his own castle of Framlingham in September 1554.
Three deprived bishops were released from the Tower, and restored with
honor to their sees. These were, Tonstal of Durham, Gardiner of
Winchester, and Bonner of London. Tonstal, many of whose younger years
had been spent in diplomatic missions, was distinguished in Europe by
his erudition, which had gained him the friendship and correspondence of
Erasmus; he was also mild, charitable, and of unblemished morals.
Attached by principle to the faith of his forefathers, but loth either
to incur personal hazard, or to sacrifice the almost princely emoluments
of the see of Durham, he had contented himself with regularly opposing
in the house of lords all the ecclesiastical innovations of Edward's
reign, and as regularly giving them his concurrence when once
established. It was not, therefore, professedly on a religious account
that he had suffered deprivation and imprisonment, but on an obscure
charge of having participated in some traitorous or rebellious design: a
charge brought against him, in the opinion of most, falsely, and
through the corrupt procurement of Northumberland, to whose project of
erecting the bishopric of Durham into a county palatine for himself, the
deprivation of Tonstal, and the abolition of the see by act of
parliament, were indispensable preliminaries. This meek and amiable
prelate returned to the exercise of his high functions, without a wish
of revenging on the protestants, in their adversity, the painful acts of
disingenuousness which their late ascendency had forced upon him. During
the whole of Mary's reign, no person is recorded to have suffered for
religion within the limits of his diocess. The mercy which he had shown,
he afterwards most deservedly experienced. Refusing, on the accession of
Elizabeth, to preserve his mitre by a repetition of compliances of which
so many recent examples of conscientious suffering in men of both
persuasions must have rendered him ashamed, he suffered a second
deprivation; but his person was only committed to the honorable custody
of archbishop Parker. By this learned and munificent prelate the
acquirements and virtues of Tonstal were duly appretiated and esteemed.
He found at Lambeth a retirement suited to his age, his tastes, his
favorite pursuits; by the arguments of his friendly host he was brought
to renounce several of the grosser corruptions of popery; and dying in
the year 1560, an honorable monument was erected by the primate to his
memory.
With views and sentiments how opposite did Gardiner and Bonner resume
the crosier! A deep-rooted conviction of the truth and vital importance
of the religious opinions which he defends, supplies to the persecutor
the only apology of which his foolish and atrocious barbarity admits;
and to men naturally mild and candid, we feel a consolation in allowing
it in all its force;--but by no particle of such indulgence should
Bonner or Gardiner be permitted to benefit. It would be credulity, not
candor, to yield to either of these bad men the character of sincere,
though over zealous, religionists. True it is that they had subjected
themselves to the loss of their bishoprics, and to a severe
imprisonment, by a refusal to give in their renunciation of certain
doctrines of the Romish church; but they had previously gone much
further in compliance than conscience would allow to any real catholic;
and they appear to have stopped short in this career only because they
perceived in the council such a determination to strip them, under one
pretext or another, of all their preferments, as manifestly rendered
further compliance useless. Both of them had policy enough to restrain
them, under such circumstances, from degrading their characters
gratuitously, and depriving themselves of the merit of having suffered
for a faith which might soon become again predominant. They received
their due reward in the favor of Mary, who recognised them with joy as
the fit instruments of all her bloody and tyrannical designs, to which
Gardiner supplied the crafty and contriving head, Bonner the vigorous
and unsparing arm.
The proud wife of the protector Somerset,--who had been imprisoned, but
never brought to trial, as an accomplice in her husband's plots,--was
now dismissed to a safe insignificance. The marchioness of Exeter,
against whom, in Henry's reign, an attainder had passed too iniquitous
for even him to carry into effect, was also rescued from her long
captivity, and indemnified for the loss of her property by some valuable
grants from the new confiscations of the Dudleys and their adherents.
The only state prisoner to whom the door was not opened on this occasion
was Geffrey Pole, that base betrayer of his brother and his friends by
whose evidence lord Montacute and the marquis of Exeter had been brought
to an untimely end. It is some satisfaction to know, that the
commutation of death for perpetual imprisonment was all the favor which
this wretch obtained from Henry; that neither Edward nor Mary broke his
bonds; and that, as far as appears, his punishment ended only with his
miserable existence.
Not long, however, were these dismal abodes suffered to remain
unpeopled. The failure of the criminal enterprise of Northumberland
first filled the Tower with the associates, or victims, of his guilt.
Nearly the whole of the Dudley family were its tenants for a longer or
shorter time; and it was another remarkable coincidence of their
destinies, which Elizabeth in the after days of her power and glory
might have pleasure in recalling to her favorite Leicester, that during
the whole of her captivity in this fortress he also was included in the
number of its melancholy inmates.
The places of Tonstal, Gardiner, and Bonner, were soon after supplied by
the more zealous of Edward's bishops, Holgate, Coverdale, Ridley, and
Hooper; and it was not long before the vehement Latimer and even the
cautious Cranmer were added to their suffering brethren.
The queen made no difficulty of pardoning and receiving into favor those
noblemen and others, members of the privy-council, whom a base dread of
the resentment of Northumberland had driven into compliance with his
measures in favor of Jane Grey; wisely considering, perhaps, that the
men who had submitted to be the instruments of his violent and illegal
proceedings, would feel little hesitation in lending their concurrence
to hers also. On this principle, the marquis of Winchester and the earls
of Arundel and Pembroke were employed and distinguished; the last of
these experienced courtiers making expiation for his past errors, by
causing his son, lord Herbert, to divorce the lady Catherine Grey, to
whom it had so lately suited his political views to unite him.
Sir James Hales on the contrary, that conscientious and upright judge,
who alone, of all the privy-counsellors and crown-lawyers, had persisted
in refusing his signature to the act by which Mary was disinherited of
the crown, found himself unrewarded and even discountenanced. The queen
well knew, what probably the judge was not inclined to deny, that it was
attachment, not to her person, but to the constitution of his country,
which had prompted his resistance to that violation of the legal order
of succession; and had it even been otherwise, she would have regarded
all her obligations to him as effectually cancelled by his zealous
adherence to the church establishment of the preceding reign. For
daring to urge upon the grand juries whom he addressed in his circuit,
the execution of some of Edward's laws in matter of religion, yet
unrepealed, judge Hales was soon after thrown into prison. He endured
with constancy the sufferings of a long and rigorous confinement,
aggravated by the threats and ill-treatment of a cruel jailor. At length
some persons in authority were sent to propound to him terms of release.
It is suspected that they extorted from him some concessions on the
point of religion; for immediately after their departure, retiring to
his cell, in a fit of despair he stabbed himself with his knife in
different parts of the body, and was only withheld by the sudden
entrance of his servant from inflicting a mortal wound. Bishop Gardiner
had the barbarity to insult over the agony or distraction of a noble
spirit overthrown by persecution; he even converted his solitary act
into a general reflection against protestantism, which he called "the
doctrine of desperation." Some time after, Hales obtained his
enlargement on payment of an arbitrary fine of six thousand pounds. But
he did not with his liberty recover his peace of mind; and after
struggling for a few months with an unconquerable melancholy, he sought
and found its final cure in the waters of a pond in his garden.
No blood except of principals, was shed by Mary on account of the
proclamation of Jane Grey; but she visited with lower degrees of
punishment, secretly proportioned to the zeal which they had displayed
in the reformation of religion, several of the more eminent partisans
of this "meek usurper." The three tutors of king Edward, sir Anthony
Cook, sir John Cheke and Dr. Cox, were sufficiently implicated in this
affair to warrant their imprisonment for some time on suspicion; and all
were eager, on their release, to shelter themselves from the approaching
storm by flight.
Cheke, after confiscation of his estate, obtained permission to travel
for a given time on the continent. Strasburgh was selected by Cook for
his place of exile. The wise moderation of character by which this
excellent person was distinguished, seems to have preserved him from
taking any part in the angry contentions of protestant with protestant,
exile with exile, by which the refugees of Strasburgh and Frankfort
scandalized their brethren and afforded matter of triumph to the church
of Rome. On the accession of Elizabeth he returned with alacrity to
re-occupy and embellish the modest mansion of his forefathers, and
"through the loopholes of retreat" to view with honest exultation the
high career of public fortune run by his two illustrious sons-in-law,
Nicholas Bacon and William Cecil.
The enlightened views of society taken by sir Anthony led him to extend
to his daughters the noblest privileges of the other sex, those which
concern the early and systematic acquisition of solid knowledge. Through
his admirable instructions their minds were stored with learning,
strengthened with principles, and formed to habits of reasoning and
observation, which rendered them the worthy partners of great statesmen,
who knew and felt their value. The fame, too, of these distinguished
females has reflected back additional lustre on the character of a
father, who was wont to say to them in the noble confidence of
unblemished integrity, "My life is your portion, my example your
inheritance."
Dr. Cox was quite another manner of man. Repairing first to Strasburgh,
where the English exiles had formed themselves into a congregation using
the liturgy of the church of England, he went thence to Frankfort,
another city of refuge to his countrymen at this period; where the
intolerance of his zeal against such as more inclined to the form of
worship instituted by the Genevan reformer, embarked him in a violent
quarrel with John Knox, against whom, on pretext of his having libelled
the emperor, he found means to kindle the resentment of the magistrates,
who compelled him to quit the city. After this disgraceful victory over
a brother reformer smarting under the same scourge of persecution with
himself, he returned to Strasburgh, where he more laudably employed
himself in establishing a kind of English university.
His zeal for the church of England, his sufferings in the cause, and his
services to learning, obtained for him from Elizabeth the bishopric of
Ely; but neither party enjoyed from this appointment all the
satisfaction which might have been anticipated. The courage, perhaps the
self opinion, of Dr. Cox, engaged him on several occasions in opposition
to the measures of the queen; and his narrow and persecuting spirit
involved him in perpetual disputes and animosities, which rendered the
close of a long life turbulent and unhappy, and took from his learning
and gray hairs their due reverence. The rapacity of the courtiers, who
obtained grant after grant of the lands belonging to his bishopric, was
another fruitful source to him of vexation; and he had actually tendered
the resignation of his see on very humiliating terms, when death came to
his relief in the year 1581, the eighty-second of his age.
If in this and a few other instances, the polemical zeal natural to men
who had sacrificed their worldly all for the sake of religion, was
observed to degenerate among the refugees into personal quarrels
disgraceful to themselves and injurious to their noble cause, it ought
on the other hand to be observed, that some of the firmest and most
affectionate friendships of the age were formed amongst these companions
in adversity; and that by many who attained under Elizabeth the highest
preferments and distinctions, the title of fellow-exile never ceased to
be regarded as the most sacred and endearing bond of brotherhood.
Other opportunities will arise of commemorating some of the more eminent
of the clergy who renounced their country during the persecutions of
Mary; but respecting the laity, it may here be remarked, that with the
exception of Catherine duchess-dowager of Suffolk, not a single person
of quality was found in this list of conscientious sufferers; though one
peer, probably the earl of Bedford, underwent imprisonment on a
religious account at home. Of the higher gentry, however, there were
considerable numbers who either went and established themselves in the
protestant cities of Germany, or passed away the time in travelling.
Sir Francis Knowles, whose lady was niece to Anne Boleyn, took the
former part, residing with his eldest son at Frankfort; Walsingham
adopted the latter. With the views of a future minister of state, he
visited in succession the principal courts of Europe, where he employed
his diligence and sagacity in laying the foundations of that intimate
knowledge of their policy and resources by which he afterwards rendered
his services so important to his queen and country.