1555 TO 1558.
Elizabeth applies herself to classical literature.--Its neglected
state.--Progress of English poetry.--Account of Sackville and his
works.--Plan of his Mirror for Magistrates.--Extracts.--Notice of the
contributors to this collection.--Its popularity and literary
merits.--Entertainment given to Elizabeth by sir Thomas Pope.--Dudley
Ashton's attempt.--Elizabeth acknowledged innocent of his designs.--Her
letter to the queen.--She returns to London--quits it in some disgrace
after again refusing the duke of Savoy.--Violence of Philip respecting
this match.--Mary protects her sister.--Festivities at Hatfield,
Enfield, and Richmond.--King of Sweden's addresses to Elizabeth
rejected.--Letter of sir T. Pope respecting her dislike of
marriage.--Proceedings of the ecclesiastical commission.--Cruel
treatment of sir John Cheke.--General decay of national
prosperity.--Loss of Calais.--Death of Mary.
Notwithstanding the late fortunate change in her situation, Elizabeth
must have entertained an anxious sense of its remaining difficulties, if
not dangers; and the prudent circumspection of her character again, as
in the latter years of her brother, dictated the expediency of shrouding
herself in all the obscurity compatible with her rank and expectations.
To literature, the never failing resource of its votaries, she turned
again for solace and occupation; and claiming the assistance which
Ascham was proud and happy to afford her, she resumed the diligent
perusal of the Greek and Latin classics.
The concerns of the college of which sir Thomas Pope was the founder
likewise engaged a portion of her thoughts; and this gentleman, in a
letter to a friend, mentions that the lady Elizabeth, whom he served,
and who was "not only gracious but right learned," often asked him of
the course which he had devised for his scholars.
Classical literature was now daily declining from the eminence on which
the two preceding sovereigns had labored to place it. The destruction of
monastic institutions, and the dispersion of libraries, with the
impoverishment of public schools and colleges through the rapacity of
Edward's courtiers, had inflicted far deeper injury on the cause of
learning than the studious example of the young monarch and his chosen
companions was able to compensate. The persecuting spirit of Mary, by
driving into exile or suspending from the exercise of their functions
the able and enlightened professors of the protestant doctrine, had
robbed the church and the universities of their brightest luminaries;
and it was not under the auspices of her fierce and ignorant bigotry
that the cultivators of the elegant and humanizing arts would seek
encouragement or protection. Gardiner indeed, where particular
prejudices did not interfere, was inclined to favor the learned; and
Ascham owed to him the place of Latin secretary. Cardinal Pole also,
himself a scholar, was desirous to support, as much as present
circumstances would permit, his ancient character of a patron of
scholars, and he earnestly pleaded with sir Thomas Pope to provide for
the teaching of Greek as well as Latin in his college; but sir Thomas
persisted in his opinion that a Latin professorship was sufficient,
considering the general decay of erudition in the country, which had
caused an almost total cessation of the study of the Greek language.
It was in the department of English poetry alone that any perceptible
advance was effected or prepared during this deplorable aera; and it was
to the vigorous genius of one man, whose vivid personifications of
abstract beings were then quite unrivalled, and have since been rarely
excelled in our language, and whose clear, copious, and forcible style
of poetic narrative interested all readers, and inspired a whole school
of writers who worked upon his model, that this advance is chiefly to be
attributed. This benefactor to our literature was Thomas Sackville, son
of sir Richard Sackville, an eminent member of queen Mary's council, and
second-cousin to the lady Elizabeth by his paternal grandmother, who was
a Boleyn. The time of his birth is doubtful, some placing it in 1536,
others as early as 1527. He studied first at Oxford and afterwards at
Cambridge, distinguishing himself at both universities by the vivacity
of his parts and the excellence of his compositions both in verse and
prose. According to the custom of that age, which required that an
English gentleman should acquaint himself intimately with the laws of
his country before he took a seat amongst her legislators, he next
entered himself of the Inner Temple, and about the last year of Mary's
reign he served in parliament. But at this early period of life poetry
had more charms for Sackville than law or politics; and following the
bent of his genius, he first produced "Gorboduc," confessedly the
earliest specimen of regular tragedy in our language; but which will be
noticed with more propriety when we reach the period of its
representation before queen Elizabeth. He then, about the year 1557 as
is supposed, laid the plan of an extensive work to be called "A Mirror
for Magistrates;" of which the design is thus unfolded in a highly
poetical "Induction."
The poet wandering forth on a winter's evening, and taking occasion from
the various objects which "told the cruel season," to muse on the
melancholy changes of human affairs, and especially on the reverses
incident to greatness, suddenly encounters a "piteous wight," clad all
in black, who was weeping, sighing, and wringing her hands, in such
lamentable guise, that
"----never man did see
A wight but half so woe-begone as she."
Struck with grief and horror at the view, he earnestly requires her to
"unwrap" her woes, and inform him who and whence she is, since her
anguish, if not relieved, must soon put an end to her life. She answers,
"Sorrow am I, in endless torments pained
Among the furies in th' infernal lake:"
from these dismal regions she is come, she says, to bemoan the luckless
lot of those
"Whom Fortune in this maze of misery,
Of wretched chance most woful Mirrors chose:"
and she ends by inviting him to accompany her in her return:
"Come, come, quoth she, and see what I shall show,
Come hear the plaining and the bitter bale
Of worthy men by Fortune's overthrow:
Come thou and see them ruing all in row.
They were but shades that erst in mind thou rolled,
Come, come with me, thine eyes shall then behold."
He accepts the invitation, having first done homage to Sorrow as to a
goddess, since she had been able to read his thought. The scenery and
personages are now chiefly copied from the sixth book of the AEneid; but
with the addition of many highly picturesque and original touches.
The companions enter, hand in hand, a gloomy wood, through which Sorrow
only could have found the way.
"But lo, while thus amid the desert dark
We passed on with steps and pace unmeet,
A rumbling roar, confused with howl and bark
Of dogs, shook all the ground beneath our feet,
And struck the din within our ears so deep,
As half distraught unto the ground I fell;
Besought return, and not to visit hell."
His guide however encourages him, and they proceed by the "lothly lake"
Avernus,
"In dreadful fear amid the dreadful place."
"And first within the porch and jaws of hell
Sat deep Remorse of Conscience, all besprent
With tears; and to herself oft would she tell
Her wretchedness, and cursing never stent
To sob and sigh: but ever thus lament
With thoughtful care, as she that all in vain
Should wear and waste continually in pain.
Her eyes, unsteadfast rolling here and there,
Whirled on each place as place that vengeance brought,
So was her mind continually in fear,
Tossed and tormented with tedious thought
Of those detested crimes that she had wrought:
With dreadful cheer and looks thrown to the sky,
Longing for death, and yet she could not die.
Next saw we Dread, all trembling how he shook
With foot uncertain proffered here and there,
Benumbed of speech, and with a ghastly look
Searched every place, all pale and dead with fear,
His cap borne up with staring of his hair." &c.
All the other allegorical personages named, and only named, by Virgil,
as well as a few additional ones, are pourtrayed in succession, and with
the same strength and fullness of delineation; but with the exception of
War, who appears in the attributes of Mars, they are represented simply
as _examples_ of Old age, Malady, &c., not as the _agents_ by whom these
evils are inflicted upon others. Cerberus and Charon occur in their
appropriate offices, but the monstrous forms Gorgon, Chimaera, &c., are
judiciously suppressed; and the poet is speedily conducted to the banks
of that "main broad flood"
"Which parts the gladsome fields from place of woe."
"With Sorrow for my guide, as there I stood,
A troop of men the most in arms bedight,
In tumult clustered 'bout both sides the flood:
'Mongst whom, who were ordained t' eternal night,
Or who to blissful peace and sweet delight,
I wot not well, it seemed that they were all
Such as by death's untimely stroke did fall."
Sorrow acquaints him that these are all illustrious examples of the
reverses which he was lately deploring, who will themselves relate to
him their misfortunes; and that he must afterwards
"Recount the same to Kesar, king and peer."
The first whom he sees advancing towards him from the throng of ghosts
is Henry duke of Buckingham, put to death under Richard III.: and his
"Legend," or story, is unfortunately the only one which its author ever
found leisure to complete; the favor of his illustrious kinswoman on her
accession causing him to sink the poet in the courtier, the ambassador,
and finally the minister of state. But he had already done enough to
earn himself a lasting name amongst the improvers of poetry in England.
In tragedy he gave the first regular model; in personification he
advanced far beyond all his predecessors, and furnished a prototype to
that master of allegory, Spenser. A greater than Spenser has also been
indebted to him; as will be evident, I think, to all who compare the
description of the figures on the shield of war in his Induction, and
especially those of them which relate to the siege of Troy, with the
exquisitely rich and vivid description of a picture on that subject in
Shakespeare's early poem on Tarquin and Lucretia.
The legend of the duke of Buckingham is composed in a style rich, free
and forcible; the examples brought from ancient history, of the
suspicion and inward wretchedness to which tyrants have ever been a
prey, and afterwards, of the instability of popular favor, might in this
age be accounted tedious and pedantic; they are however pertinent, well
recited, and doubtless possessed the charm of novelty with respect to
the majority of contemporary readers. The curses which the unhappy duke
pours forth against the dependent who had betrayed him, may almost
compare, in the energy and inventiveness of malice, with those of
Shakespeare's queen Margaret; but they lose their effect by being thrown
into the form of monologue and ascribed to a departed spirit, whose
agonies of grief and rage in reciting his own death have something in
them bordering on the burlesque.
The mind of Sackville was deeply fraught, as we have seen, with classic
stores; and at a time when England possessed as yet no complete
translation of Virgil, he might justly regard it as a considerable
service to the cause of national taste to transplant into our vernacular
poetry some scattered flowers from his rich garden of poetic sweets.
Thus he has embellished his legend with an imitation or rather
paraphrase of the celebrated description of night in the fourth book of
the AEneid. The lines well merit transcription.
"Midnight was come, when ev'ry vital thing
With sweet sound sleep their weary limbs did rest;
The beasts were still, the little birds that sing
Now sweetly slept besides their mother's breast,
The old and all were shrowded in their nest;
The waters calm, the cruel seas did cease;
The woods, the fields, and all things held their peace.
The golden stars were whirled amid their race,
And on the earth did laugh with twinkling light,
When each thing nestled in his resting place
Forgat day's pain with pleasure of the night:
The hare had not the greedy hounds in sight;
The fearful deer had not the dogs in doubt,
The partridge dreamt not of the falcon's foot.
The ugly bear now minded not the stake,
Nor how the cruel mastives do him tear;
The stag lay still unroused from the brake;
The foamy boar feared not the hunter's spear:
All things were still in desert, bush and breer.
With quiet heart now from their travails ceast
Soundly they slept in midst of all their rest."
The allusion to bear-bating in the concluding stanza may offend the
delicacy of a modern reader; but let it be remembered that in the days
of Mary, and even of Elizabeth, this amusement was accounted "sport for
ladies."
The "Mirror for Magistrates" was not lost to the world by the desertion
of Sackville from the service of the muses; for a similar or rather
perhaps the same design was entertained, and soon after carried into
execution, by other and able though certainly inferior hands.
During the reign of Mary,--but whether before or after the composition
of Sackville's Induction does not appear,--a certain printer, having
communicated to several "worshipful and honorable persons" his
intention of republishing Lydgate's translation in verse of Boccacio's
"Fall of Princes," was by them advised to procure a continuation of the
work, chiefly in English examples; and he applied in consequence to
Baldwyne, an ecclesiastic and graduate of Oxford. Baldwyne declined to
embark alone in so vast a design, and one, as he thought, so little
likely to prove profitable; but seven other contemporary poets, of whom
George Ferrers has already been mentioned as one, having promised their
assistance, he consented to assume the editorship of the work. The
general frame agreed upon by these associates was that employed in the
original work of Boccacio, who feigned, that a party of friends being
assembled, it was determined that each of them should contribute to the
pleasure of the company by personating some illustrious and unfortunate
character, and relating his adventures in the first person. A
contrivance so tame and meagre compared with the descent to the regions
of the dead sketched with so much spirit by Sackville, that it must have
preceded, in all probability, their knowledge at least of his
performance. The first part of the work, almost entirely by Baldwyne,
was written, and partly printed, in Mary's time, but its publication was
prevented by the interference of the lord-chancellor,--a trait of the
mean and cowardly jealousy of the administration, which speaks volumes.
In the first year of Elizabeth lord Stafford, an enlightened patron of
letters, procured a licence for its appearance. A second part soon
followed, in which Sackville's Induction and Legend were inserted. The
success of this collection was prodigious; edition after edition was
given to the public under the inspection of different poetical revisers,
by each of whom copious additions were made to the original work. Its
favor and reputation continued during all the reign of Elizabeth, and
far into that of James; for Mr. Warton tells us that in Chapman's
"May-day," printed in 1611, "a gentleman of the most elegant taste for
reading and highly accomplished in the current books of the times, is
called 'one that has read Marcus Aurelius, Gesta Romanorum, and the
Mirror of Magistrates.'[28]"
[Note 28: History of English Poetry, vol. iii.]
The greater part of the contributors to this work were lawyers; an order
of men who, in most ages and nations, have accounted it a part of
professional duty to stand in opposition to popular seditions on one
hand, and to the violent and illegal exertion of arbitrary power on the
other. Accordingly, many of the legends are made to exemplify the evils
of both these excesses; and though, in more places than one, the
unlawfulness, on any provocation, of lifting a hand against "the Lord's
anointed" is in strong terms asserted, the deposition of tyrants is
often recorded with applause; and no mercy is shown to the corrupt judge
or minister who wrests law and justice in compliance with the wicked
will of his prince.
The newly published chronicles of the wars of York and Lancaster by
Hall, a writer who made some approach to the character of a genuine
historian, furnished facts to the first composers of the Mirror; the
later ones might draw also from Holinshed and Stow. There is some
probability that the idea of forming plays on English history was
suggested to Shakespeare by the earlier of these legends; and it is
certain that his plays, in their turn, furnished some of their brightest
ornaments of sentiment and diction to the legends added by later
editors.
To a modern reader, the greater part of these once admired pieces will
appear trite, prosaic, and tedious; but an uncultivated age--like the
children and the common people of all ages--is most attracted and
impressed by that mode of narration which leaves the least to be
supplied by the imagination of the hearer or reader; and when this
collection of history in verse is compared, not with the finished labors
of a Hume or a Robertson, but with the prolix and vulgar narratives of
the chroniclers, the admiration and delight with which it was received
will no longer surprise.
One circumstance more respecting a work so important by the quantity of
historical knowledge which it diffused among the mass of readers, and
the influence which it exerted over the public mind during half a
century, deserves to be here adverted to. Baldwyne and his
fellow-laborers began their series from the Norman conquest, and the
same starting-point had been judiciously chosen by Sackville; but the
fabulous history of Geffrey of Monmouth still found such powerful
advocates in national vanity, ignorance and credulity, that succeeding
editors found it convenient to embellish their work with moral examples
drawn from his fictitious series of British kings before the invasion of
the Romans. Accordingly they have brought forward a long line of
worthies, beginning with king Albanact, son of Brute the Trojan, and
ending with Cadwallader the last king of the Britons, scarcely one of
whom, excepting the renowned prince Arthur, is known even by name to the
present race of students in English history; though amongst poetical
readers, the immortal verse of Spenser preserves some recollection that
such characters once were fabled. In return for this superfluity, our
Saxon line of kings is passed over with very little notice, only three
legends, and those of very obscure personages, being interposed between
Cadwallader and king Harold. The descent of the royal race of Britain
from the Trojans was at this period more than an article of poetical
faith; it was maintained, or rather taken for granted, by the gravest
and most learned writers. One Kelston, who dedicated a versified
chronicle of the Brutes to Edward VI., went further still, and traced up
the pedigree of his majesty through two-and-thirty generations, to
Osiris king of Egypt. Troynovant, the name said to have been given to
London by Brute its founder, was frequently employed in verse. A song
addressed to Elizabeth entitles her the "beauteous queen of second
Troy;" and in describing the pageants which celebrated her entrance into
the provincial capitals which she visited in her progresses, it will
frequently be necessary to introduce to the reader personages of the
ancient race of this fabled conqueror of our island, who claimed for
his direct ancestor,--but whether in the third or fourth degree authors
differ,--no less a hero than the pious AEneas himself.
But to return to the personal circumstances of Elizabeth.
The public and splendid celebration of the festivals of the church was
the least reprehensible of the measures employed by Mary for restoring
the ascendancy of her religion over the minds of her subjects. She had
been profuse in her donations of sacred vestments and ornaments to the
churches and the monasteries, of which she had restored several; and
these gaudy trappings of a ceremonial worship were exhibited, rather
indeed to the scandal than the edification of a dejected people, in
frequent processions conducted with the utmost solemnity and
magnificence. Court entertainments always accompanied these devotional
ceremonies, and Elizabeth seems by assisting at the latter to have
purchased admission to the former. The Christmas festivities in which
she shared have already been described in the words of a contemporary
chronicler; and from the same source we derive the following account of
the "antique pageantries" with which another season of rejoicing was
celebrated for her recreation, by the munificence of the indulgent
superintendent of her conduct and affairs. "In Shrove-tide 1556, sir
Thomas Pope made for the lady Elizabeth, all at his own costs, a great
and rich masking in the great hall at Hatfield, where the pageants were
marvellously furnished. There were there twelve minstrels anticly
disguised; with forty six or more gentlemen and ladies, many of them
knights or nobles, and ladies of honor, apparelled in crimson sattin,
embroidered upon with wreaths of gold, and garnished with borders of
hanging pearl. And the devise of a castle of cloth of gold, set with
pomegranates about the battlements, with shields of knights hanging
therefrom; and six knights in rich harness tourneyed. At night the
cupboard in the hall was of twelve stages mainly furnished with garnish
of gold and silver vessul, and a banquet of seventy dishes, and after a
voidee of spices and suttleties with thirty six spice-plates; all at the
charges of sir Thomas Pope. And the next day the play of Holophernes.
But the queen percase misliked these folleries as by her letters to sir
Thomas it did appear; and so their disguisings ceased[29]."
[Note 29: See Nichols's "Progresses," vol. i. p. 19.]
A circumstance soon afterwards occurred calculated to recall past
dangers to the mind of the princess, and perhaps to disturb her with
apprehensions of their recurrence.
Dudley Ashton, formerly a partisan of Wyat, had escaped into France,
after the defeat and capture of his leader, whence he was still plotting
the overthrow of Mary's government. By the connivance or assistance of
that court, now on the brink of war with England, he was at length
enabled to send over one Cleberry, a condemned person, whom he
instructed to counterfeit the earl of Devonshire, and endeavour to raise
the country in his cause. Letters and proclamations were at the same
time dispersed by Ashton, in which the name of Elizabeth was employed
without scruple. The party had even the slanderous audacity to pretend,
that between Courtney and the heiress of the crown the closest of all
intimacies, if not an actual marriage, subsisted; and the matter went so
far that at Ipswich, one of the strong holds of protestantism, Cleberry
proclaimed the earl of Devonshire and the princess, king and queen. But
the times were past when any advantage could be taken of this
circumstance against Elizabeth, whose perfect innocence was well known
to the government; and the council immediately wrote in handsome terms
to sir Thomas Pope, directing him to acquaint her, in whatever manner he
should judge best, with the abominable falsehoods circulated respecting
her. A few days after, the queen herself wrote also to her sister in
terms fitted to assure her of perfect safety. The princess replied, says
Strype, "in a well penned letter," "utterly detesting and disclaiming
all concern in the enterprise, and declaiming against the actors in it."
Of the epistle thus commended, a single paragraph will probably be
esteemed a sufficient specimen.... "And among earthly things I chiefly
wish this one; that there were as good surgeons for making anatomies of
hearts, that might show my thoughts to your majesty, as there are expert
physicians of the bodies, able to express the inward griefs of their
maladies to the patient. For then I doubt not, but know well, that
whatsoever others should suggest by malice, yet your majesty should be
sure by knowledge; so that the more such misty clouds offuscate the
clear light of my truth, the more my tried thoughts should glister to
the dimming of their hidden malice." &c. It must be confessed that this
erudite princess had not perfectly succeeded in transplanting into her
own language the epistolary graces of her favorite Cicero;--but to how
many much superior classical scholars might a similar remark be applied!
The frustration of Mary's hope of becoming a mother, her subsequent ill
state of health, and the resolute refusal of the parliament to permit
the coronation of her husband, who had quitted England in disgust to
attend his affairs on the continent, conferred, in spite of all the
efforts of the catholic party, a daily augmenting importance on
Elizabeth. When therefore in November 1556 she had come in state to
Somerset Place, her town-residence, to take up her abode for the winter,
a kind of court was immediately formed around her; and she might hope to
be richly indemnified for any late anxieties or privations, by the
brilliant festivities, the respectful observances, and the still more
welcome flatteries, of which she found herself the distinguished
object:--But disappointment awaited her.
She had been invited to court for the purpose of receiving a second and
more solemn offer of the hand of the duke of Savoy, whose suit was
enforced by the king her brother-in-law with the whole weight of his
influence or authority. This alliance had been the subject of earnest
correspondence between Philip and the English council; the Imperial
ambassadors were waiting in England for her answer; and the
disappointment of the high-raised hopes of the royal party, by her
reiteration of a decided negative, was followed by her quitting London
in a kind of disgrace early in the month of December.
But Philip would not suffer the business to end here. Indignant at the
resistance opposed by the princess to his measures, he seems to have
urged the queen to interfere in a manner authoritative enough to compel
obedience; but, by a remarkable exchange of characters, Mary now
appeared as the protectress of her sister from the violence of Philip.
In a letter still preserved, she tells him, that unless the consent of
parliament were first obtained, she fears that the accomplishment of the
marriage would fail to procure for him the advantages which he expected;
but that, however this might be, her conscience would not allow her to
press the matter further. That the friar Alphonso, Philip's confessor,
whom he had sent to argue the point with her, had entirely failed of
convincing her; that in fact she could not comprehend the drift of his
arguments. Philip, it is manifest, must already have made use of very
harsh language towards the queen respecting her conduct in this affair,
for she deprecates his further displeasure in very abject terms; but yet
persists in her resolution with laudable firmness. Her husband was so
far, however, from yielding with a good grace a point on which he had
certainly no right to dictate either to Mary or to her sister, that soon
afterwards he sent into England the duchesses of Parma and Lorrain for
the purpose of conducting the princess into Flanders:--but this step was
ill-judged. His coldness and neglect had by this time nearly
extinguished the fond passion of the queen, who is said to have torn his
picture in a fit of rage, on report of some disrespectful language which
he had used concerning her since his departure for the continent.
Resentment and jealousy now divided her gloomy soul; and Philip's
behaviour, on which she had doubtless her spies, caused her to regard
the duchess of Lorrain as the usurper of his heart. The extraordinary
circumstances of pomp and parade with which this lady, notwithstanding
the smallness of her revenues, now appeared in England, confirmed and
aggravated her most painful suspicions; and so far from favoring the
suit urged by such an ambassadress, Mary became more than ever
determined on thwarting it. She would not permit the duchesses to pay
the princess a single visit at Hatfield; and her reception gave them so
little encouragement to persevere, that they speedily returned to report
their failure to him who sent them.
These circumstances seem to have produced a cordiality of feeling and
frequency of intercourse between the sisters which had never before
existed. In February 1557 the princess arrived with a great retinue at
Somerset Place, and went thence to wait upon the queen at Whitehall; and
when the spring was somewhat further advanced, her majesty honored her
by returning the visit at Hatfield. The royal guest was, of course, to
be entertained with every species of courtly and elegant delight; and
accordingly, on the morning after her arrival, she and the princess,
after attending mass, went to witness a grand exhibition of
_bear-bating_, "with which their highnesses were right well content." In
the evening the chamber was adorned with a sumptuous suit of tapestry,
called, but from what circumstance does not appear, "the hangings of
Antioch." After supper a play was represented by the choristers of St.
Paul's, then the most applauded actors in London; and after it was over,
one of the children accompanied with his voice the performance of the
princess on the virginals.
Sir Thomas Pope could now without offence gratify his lady with another
show, devised by him in that spirit of romantic magnificence equally
agreeable to the taste of the age and the temper of Elizabeth herself.
She was invited to repair to Enfield Chase to take the amusement of
hunting the hart. Twelve ladies in white satin attended her on their
"ambling palfreys," and twenty yeomen clad in green. At the entrance of
the forest she was met by fifty archers in scarlet boots and yellow
caps, armed with gilded bows, one of whom presented to her a
silver-headed arrow winged with peacock's feathers. The splendid show
concluded, according to the established laws of the chase, by the
offering of the knife to the princess, as first lady on the field; and
her _taking 'say_ of the buck with her own fair and royal hand.
During the summer of the same year the queen was pleased to invite her
sister to an entertainment at Richmond, of which we have received some
rather interesting particulars. The princess was brought from Somerset
Place in the queen's barge, which was richly hung with garlands of
artificial flowers and covered with a canopy of green sarcenet, wrought
with branches of eglantine in embroidery and powdered with blossoms of
gold. In the barge she was accompanied by sir Thomas Pope and four
ladies of her chamber. Six boats attended filled with her retinue,
habited in russet damask and blue embroidered satin, tasseled and
spangled with silver; their bonnets cloth of silver with green feathers.
The queen received her in a sumptuous pavilion in the labyrinth of the
gardens. This pavilion, which was of cloth of gold and purple velvet,
was made in the form of a castle, probably in allusion to the kingdom of
Castile; its sides were divided in compartments, which bore alternately
the fleur de lis in silver, and the pomegranate, the bearing of Granada,
in gold. A sumptuous banquet was here served up to the royal ladies, in
which there was introduced a pomegranate-tree in confectionary work,
bearing the arms of Spain:--so offensively glaring was the preference
given by Mary to the country of her husband and of her maternal ancestry
over that of which she was a native and in her own right queen! There
was no masking or dancing, but a great number of minstrels performed.
The princess returned to Somerset Place the same evening, and the next
day to Hatfield.
The addresses of a new suitor soon after furnished Elizabeth with an
occasion of gratifying the queen by fresh demonstrations of respect and
duty. The king of Sweden was earnestly desirous of obtaining for Eric
his eldest son the hand of a lady whose reversionary prospects, added to
her merit and accomplishments, rendered her without dispute the first
match in Europe. He had denied his son's request to be permitted to
visit her in person, fearing that those violences of temper and
eccentricities of conduct of which this ill-fated prince had already
given strong indications, might injure his cause in the judgement of so
discerning a princess. The business was therefore to be transacted
through the Swedish ambassador; but he was directed by his sovereign to
make his application by a message to Elizabeth herself, in which the
queen and council were not for the present to participate. The princess
took hold of this circumstance as a convenient pretext for rejecting a
proposal which she felt no disposition to encourage; and she declared
that she could never listen to any overtures of this nature which had
not first received the sanction of her majesty. The ambassador pleaded
in answer, that as a gentleman his master had judged it becoming that
his first application should be made to herself; but that should he be
so happy as to obtain her concurrence, he would then, as a king, make
his demand in form to the queen her sister. The princess replied, that
if it were to depend on herself, a single life would ever be her choice;
and she finally dismissed the suit with a negative.
On receiving some hint of this transaction, Mary sent for sir Thomas
Pope, and having learned from him all the particulars, she directed him
to express to her sister her high approbation of her proper and dutiful
conduct on this occasion; and also to make himself acquainted with her
sentiments on the subject of matrimony in general. He soon after
transmitted to her majesty all the information she could desire, in the
following letter:
"First after I had declared to her grace how well the queen's majesty
liked of her prudent and honorable answer made to the same messenger; I
then opened unto her grace the effects of the said messenger's credence;
which after her grace had heard, I said, the queen's highness had sent
me to her grace, not only to declare the same, but also to understand
how her grace liked the said motion. Whereunto, after a little pause
taken, her grace answered in form following: 'Master Pope, I require
you, after my most humble commendations to the queen's majesty, to
render unto the same like thanks that it pleased her highness, of her
goodness, to conceive so well of my answer made to the same messenger;
and herewithal, of her princely consideration, with such speed to
command you by your letters to signify the same unto me: who before
remained wonderfully perplexed, fearing that her majesty might mistake
the same: for which her goodness, I acknowledge myself bound to honor,
serve, love, and obey her highness during my life. Requiring you also to
say unto her majesty, that in the king my brother's time there was
offered me a very honorable marriage, or two; and ambassadors sent to
treat with me touching the same; whereupon I made my humble suit unto
his highness, as some of honor yet living can be testimonies, that it
would like the same to give me leave, with his grace's favor, to remain
in that estate I was, which of all others best liked me, or pleased me.
And, in good faith, I pray you say unto her highness, I am even at this
present of the same mind, and so intend to continue, with her majesty's
favor: and assuring her highness I so well like this estate, as I
persuade myself there is not any kind of life comparable unto it. And as
concerning my liking the said motion made by the said messenger, I
beseech you say unto her majesty, that to my remembrance I never heard
of his master before this time; and that I so well like both the message
and the messenger, as I shall most humbly pray God upon my knees, that
from henceforth I never hear of the one nor the other: assure you that
if he should eftsoons repair unto me, I would forbear to speak to him.
And were there nothing else to move me to mislike the motion, other than
that his master would attempt the same without making the queen's
majesty privy thereunto, it were cause sufficient.'
"And when her grace had thus ended, I was so bold as of myself to say
unto her grace, her pardon first required, that I thought few or none
would believe but that her grace could be right well contented to marry;
so that there were some honorable marriage offered her by the queen's
highness, or by her majesty's assent. Whereunto her grace answered,
'What I shall do hereafter I know not; but I assure you, upon my truth
and fidelity, and as God be merciful unto me, I am not at this time
otherwise minded than I have declared unto you; no, though I were
offered the greatest prince in all Europe.' And yet percase, the queen's
majesty may conceive this rather to proceed of a maidenly
shamefacedness, than upon any such certain determination[30]."
[Note 30: The hint of "some honorable marriage" in the above letter,
has been supposed to refer to the duke of Savoy; but if the date
inscribed upon the copy which is found among the Harleian MSS. be
correct (April 26th 1558), this could not well be; since the queen,
early in the preceding year, had declined to interfere further in his
behalf.]
This letter appears to have been the last transaction which occurred
between Mary and Elizabeth: from it, and from the whole of the notices
relative to the situation of the latter thrown together in the preceding
pages, it may be collected, that during the three last years of her
sister's reign,--the period, namely, of her residence at Hatfield,--she
had few privations, and no personal hardships to endure: but for
individuals whom she esteemed, for principles to which her conscience
secretly inclined, for her country which she truly loved, her
apprehensions must have been continually excited, and too often
justified by events the most cruel and disastrous.
The reestablishment, by solemn acts of the legislature, of the Romish
ritual and the papal authority, though attended with the entire
prohibition of all protestant worship, was not sufficient for the
bigotry of Mary. Aware that the new doctrines still found harbour in the
bosoms of her subjects, she sought to drag them by her violence from
this last asylum; for to her, as to all tyrants, it appeared both
desirable and possible to subject the liberty of thinking to the
regulation and control of human laws.
By virtue of her authority as head of the English church,--a title
which the murmurs of her parliament had compelled her against her
conscience to resume after laying it aside for some time,--she issued an
ecclesiastical commission, which wanted nothing of the Spanish
inquisition but the name. The commissioners were empowered to call
before them the leading men in every parish of the kingdom, and to
compel them to bind themselves by oath to give information against such
of their neighbours as, by abstaining from attendance at church or other
symptoms of disaffection to the present order of things, afforded room
to doubt the soundness of their belief. Articles of faith were then
offered to the suspected persons for their signature, and on their
simple refusal they were handed over to the civil power, and fire and
faggot awaited them. By this barbarous species of punishment, about two
hundred and eighty persons are stated to have perished during the reign
of Mary; but, to the disgrace of the learned, the rich, and the noble,
these martyrs, with the exception of a few distinguished ecclesiastics,
were almost all from the middling or lower, some from the very lowest
classes of society.
Amongst these glorious sufferers, therefore, the princess could have few
personal friends to regret; but in the much larger number of the
disgraced, the suspected, the imprisoned, the fugitive, she saw the
greater part of the public characters, whether statesmen or divines, on
whose support and attachment she had learned to place reliance.
The extraordinary cruelties exercised upon sir John Cheke, who whilst he
held the post of preceptor to her brother had also assisted in her own
education, must have been viewed by Elizabeth with strong emotion of
indignation and grief.
It has been already mentioned, that after his release from imprisonment
incurred in the cause of lady Jane Grey,--a release, by the way, which
was purchased by the sacrifice of his landed property and all his
appointments,--this learned and estimable person obtained permission to
travel for a limited period. This was regarded as a special favor; for
it was one of Mary's earliest acts of tyranny to prohibit the escape of
her destined victims, and it was only by joining themselves to the
foreign congregations of the reformed, who had license to depart the
kingdom, or by eluding with much hazard the vigilance of the officers by
whom the seaports were watched, that any of her protestant subjects had
been enabled to secure liberty of conscience in a voluntary exile. It is
a little remarkable that Rome should have been Cheke's first city of
pilgrimage; but classical associations in this instance overcame the
force of protestant antipathies. He took the opportunity however of
visiting Basil in his way, where an English congregation was
established, and where he had the pleasure of introducing himself to
several learned characters, once perhaps the chosen associates of
Erasmus.
In the beginning of 1556 he had reached Strasburgh, for it was thence
that he addressed a letter to his dear friend and brother-in-law sir
William Cecil, who appears to have made some compliances with the times
which alarmed and grieved him. It is in a strain of the most
affectionate earnestness that he entreats him to hold fast his faith,
and "to take heed how he did in the least warp or strain his conscience
by any compliance for his worldly security." But such exhortations,
however salutary in themselves, did not come with the best grace from
those who had found in flight a refuge from the terrors of that
persecution which was raging in all its fierceness before the eyes of
such of their unfortunate brethren as had found themselves necessitated
to abide the fiery trial. A remark by no means foreign to the case
before us! Sir John Cheke's leave of absence seems now to have expired;
and it was probably with the design of making interest for its renewal
that he privately repaired, soon after the date of his letter, to
Brussels, on a visit to his two learned friends, lord Paget and sir John
Mason, then residing in that city as Mary's ambassadors. These men were
recent converts, or more likely conformists, to the court religion; and
Paget's furious councils against Elizabeth have been already mentioned.
It is to be hoped that they did not add to the guilt of self-interested
compliances in matters of faith the blacker crime of a barbarous act of
perfidy against a former associate and brother-protestant who had
scarcely ceased to be their guest;--but certain it is, that on some
secret intimation of his having entered his territories, king Philip
issued special orders for the seizure of Cheke. On his return, between
Brussels and Antwerp, the unhappy man, with sir Peter Carew his
companion, was apprehended by a provost-marshal, bound hand and foot,
thrown into a cart, and so conveyed on board a vessel sailing for
England. He is said to have been brought to the Tower muffled, according
to an odious practice of Spanish despotism introduced into the country
during the reign of Mary. Under the terror of such a surprise the awful
alternative "Comply or burn" was laid before him. Human frailty under
these trying circumstances prevailed; and in an evil hour this champion
of light and learning was tempted to subscribe his false assent to the
doctrine of the real presence and the whole list of Romish articles.
This was but the beginning of humiliations: he was now required to
pronounce two ample recantations, one before the queen in person, the
other before cardinal Pole, who also imposed upon him various acts of
penance. Even this did not immediately procure his liberation from
prison; and while he was obliged in public to applaud the mercy of his
enemies in terms of the most abject submission, he bewailed in private,
with abundance of bitter tears, their cruelty, and still more his own
criminal compliance. The savage zealots knew not how to set bounds to
their triumph over a man whom learning and acknowledged talents and
honorable employments had rendered so considerable.
Even when at length he was set free, and flattered himself that he had
drained to the dregs his cup of bitterness, he discovered that the
masterpiece of barbarity, the refinement of insult, was yet in store. He
was required, as evidence of the sincerity of his conversion and a token
of his complete restoration to royal favor, to take his seat on the
bench by the side of the savage Bonner, and assist at the condemnation
of his brother-protestants. The unhappy man did not refuse,--so
thoroughly was his spirit subdued within him,--but it broke his heart;
and retiring at last to the house of an old and learned friend, whose
door was opened to him in Christian charity, he there ended within a few
months, his miserable life, a prey to shame, remorse and melancholy. A
sadder tale the annals of persecution do not furnish, or one more
humbling to the pride and confidence of human virtue. Many have failed
under lighter trials; few have expiated a failure by sufferings so
severe. How often must this victim of a wounded spirit have dwelt with
envy, amid his slower torments, on the brief agonies and lasting crown
of a courageous martyrdom!
It is happily not possible for a kingdom to flourish under the crushing
weight of such a tyranny as that of Mary. The retreat of the foreign
protestants had robbed the country of hundreds of industrious and
skilful artificers; the arbitrary exactions of the queen impoverished
and discouraged the trading classes, against whom they principally
operated; tumults and insurrections were frequent, and afforded a
pretext for the introduction of Spanish troops; the treasury was
exhausted in efforts for maintaining the power of the sovereign,
restoring the church to opulence and splendor, and re-edifying the
fallen monasteries. To add to these evils, a foreign marriage rendered
both the queen and country subservient to the interested or ambitious
projects of the Spanish sovereign. For his sake a needless war was
declared against France, which, after draining entirely an already
failing treasury, ended in the loss of Calais, the last remaining trophy
of the victories by which the Edwards and the Henrys had humbled in the
dust the pride and power of France.
This last stroke completed the dejection of the nation; and Mary
herself, who was by no means destitute of sensibility where the honor of
her crown was concerned, sunk into an incurable melancholy. "When I
die," said she to her attendants who sought to discover the cause of her
despondency, "Calais will be found at my heart."
The unfeeling desertion of her husband, the consciousness of having
incurred the hatred of her subjects, the unprosperous state of her
affairs, and the well founded apprehension that her successor would once
more overthrow the whole edifice of papal power which she had labored
with such indefatigable ardor to restore, may each be supposed to have
infused its own drop of bitterness into the soul of this unhappy
princess. The long and severe mortifications of her youth, while they
soured her temper, had also undermined her constitution, and contributed
to bring upon her a premature old age; dropsical symptoms began to
appear, and after a lingering illness of nearly half a year she sunk
into the grave on the 17th day of November 1558, in the forty-fourth
year of her age.