setting both free to contract and consummate other marriages without
objection or delay. The queen had placidly given her consent. Handsome
settlements were made on her in the shape of estates for her maintenance
producing nearly three thousand a year. In August of the same year the
King married, without delay of circumstance, Catherine, daughter of Lord
Edmond Howard. Brief, indeed, was her reign. In November, 1541, she was
charged with unfaithfulness to her marriage vows. The king was
overwhelmed. Some dreadful spirit pursued his married life, tainting it
with infamy.
Two gentlemen confessed their guilty connection with the queen. They
were hanged at Tyburn, and the queen and Lady Rochford, who had been
her confidential companion, suffered within the Tower. Once more the
king ventured into marriage. Catherine, widow of Lord Latimer, his last
choice, was selected, not in the interest of politics or religion, but
by his own personal judgment; and this time he found the peace which he
desired.
The great event of 1542 was the signal victory of the English over a
Scottish army of ten thousand men at Solway Moss. King James of Scotland
had undertaken, at the instigation of the pope and of the King of France
to attack the English as heretics. The Scottish clergy were ready to
proclaim a pilgrimage of grace. But the English borderers, though only
shepherds and agriculturists, as soon as they mounted their horses, were
instantly the finest light cavalry in Europe. They so disastrously
defeated the Scots that all the latter either perished in the morass by
the Solway, or were captured.
Henry died on January 28, 1547. He was attended in his last moments by
Cranmer, having sent specially for the archbishop.
The king did not leave the world without expressing his views on the
future with elaborate explicitness. He spent the day before his death in
conversation with Lord Hertford and Sir William Paget on the condition
of the country. By separate and earnest messages he commended Prince
Edward to the care both of Charles V. and of Francis I. The earl, on the
morning of Henry's death, hastened off to bring up the prince, who was
in Hertfordshire with the Princess Elizabeth, and in the afternoon of
Monday, the 31st, he arrived at the Tower with Edward. The Council was
already in session, and Hertford was appointed protector during the
minority of Edward. Thus, the reforming Protestant party was in full
power. Cranmer set the willing example, and the other prelates
consented, or were compelled to imitate him, in an acknowledgment that
all jurisdiction, ecclesiastical as well as secular, within the realm,
only emanated from the sovereign. On February it was ordered in council
that Hertford should be Duke of Somerset, and that his brother, Sir
Thomas Seymour, should be Lord Seymour of Sudleye; Lord Parr was to be
Marquis of Northampton; Lord Wriothesley, the chancellor, Earl of
Southampton; and Viscount Lisle was to be Earl of Warwick. The Duke of
Somerset was the young king's uncle, and the real power was at once in
his hands. But if he was ambitious, it was only--as he persuaded
himself--to do good.
_Edward's Guardian_
Under his rule the spirit of iconoclasm spread fast, and the reformation
proceeded to completion. Churches were cleared of images, and crucifixes
were melted into coin. Somerset gave the popular movement the formal
sanction of the Government. Injunctions were issued for the general
purification of the churches. The Book of Homilies was issued as a guide
to doctrine, care was taken that copies of the Bible were accessible in
the parish churches, and translations of Erasmus's "Paraphrase of the
New Testament" were provided as a commentary.
Somerset was a brave general as well as a great statesman. He invaded
Scotland during the first year of his protectorate, on account of the
refusal of the Scottish government to ratify the contract entered into
with Henry VIII., by which it was agreed that Mary Queen of Scots should
marry Edward. At the memorable battle of Pinkie, on September 10, 1547,
the Scots were completely beaten. But Somerset was hastily summoned
southward. His brother, Lord Seymour, had been caballing against him,
and was arrested, tried, and beheaded on Tower Hill, on March 20, 1549.
But the fall of the protector himself was not long delayed, for under
his administration of three years his policy gradually excited wide
discontent. In various parts of the country insurrections had to be
suppressed. The French king had taken away the young Scottish queen, the
king's majesty's espouse, by which marriage the realms of England and
Scotland should have been united in perpetual peace. Money had been
wasted on the royal household. The alliance with Charles V. had been
trifled away. The princely name and princely splendour which Somerset
affected, the vast fortune which he amassed amidst the ruin of the
national finances, and the palace--now known as Somerset House,
London--which was rising before the eyes of the world amidst the
national defeats and misfortunes, combined to embitter the irritation
with which the council regarded him.
His great rival, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, by constant insinuations
both in and out of parliament, excited the national feeling against him
to such a degree that at length the young king was constrained to sign
his deposition. He seems to have entertained no strong attachment to his
uncle. On December I, 1551, he was tried before the lords for high
treason and condemned. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on January 22,
1582. The English public, often wildly wrong on general questions, are
good judges, for the most part, of personal character; and so
passionately was Somerset loved, that those who were nearest the
scaffold started forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood. Before
this event, Dudley, by whose cruel treachery the tragedy had been
brought about, had been created Duke of Northumberland. The great aim of
this nobleman was to secure the succession to the throne for his own
family. With this purpose in view he married his son, Lord Guildford
Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duchess of Suffolk, to whom,
by the will of Henry VIII., the crown would pass, in default of issue by
Edward, Mary, or Elizabeth.
In April, 1553, Edward, who had been removed to Greenwich in consequence
of illness, grew rapidly worse. By the end of the month he was spitting
blood, and the country was felt to be on the eve of a new reign. The
accession of Mary, who was personally popular, was looked forward to by
the people as a matter of course. Northumberland now worked on the mind
of the feeble and dying king, and succeeded in persuading him to declare
both his sisters incapable of succeeding to the crown, as being
illegitimate. The king died on July 6. The last male child of the Tudor
race had ceased to suffer.
When Lady Jane was saluted by Northumberland and four other lords, all
kneeling at her feet, as queen, she shook, covered her face with her
hands, and fell fainting to the ground. The next Monday, July 10, the
royal barges came down the Thames from Richmond, and at three in the
afternoon Lady Jane landed at the broad staircase of the Tower, as
queen, in undesired splendour. But that same evening messages came
saying that Mary had declared herself queen. She had sent addresses to
the peers, commanding them on their allegiance to come to her.
Happily, the conspiracy in favour of Lady Jane was crushed, without
bloodshed, although it had seemed for a time as if the nation, was on
the brink of a civil war. But, though Mary wished to spare Lady Jane and
her husband, her intentions were frustrated by the determination of
Renard, ambassador of the emperor. Northumberland was sent to the Tower,
and beheaded on August 22, and in the following November Lady Jane and
her husband were also condemned. Mary long hesitated, but at length
issued the fatal warrant on February 8, 1554, and four days later both
were executed. Lady Jane was but a delicate girl of seventeen, but met
her fate with the utmost heroism.
Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, became the chief instrument of
the restoration of the Catholic faith under Mary. His fierce spirit soon
began to display itself. In the fiery obstinacy of his determination
this prelate speedily became the incarnate expression of the fury of the
ecclesiastical faction, smarting, as they were, under their long
degradation, and under the irritating consciousness of those false oaths
of submission which they had sworn to a power they loathed. Gardiner now
saw his Romanising party once more in a position to revenge their wrongs
when there was no longer any Henry to stand between them and their
enemies. He would take the tide at the flood, forge a weapon keener than
the last, and establish the Inquisition.
_The Reign of Terror_
Mary listened to the worse counsels of each, and her distempered humour
settled into a confused ferocity. Both Gardiner and she resolved to
secure the trial, condemnation, and execution of her sister Elizabeth,
but their plans utterly miscarried, for no evidence against her could be
gathered. The princess was known to be favourable to the Protestant
cause, but the attempts to prove her disloyalty to Mary were vain. She
was imprisoned in the Tower, and the fatal net appeared to be closing on
her. But though the danger of her murder was very great, the lords who
had reluctantly permitted her to be imprisoned would not allow her to be
openly sacrificed, or indeed, permit the queen to continue in the career
of vengeance on which she had entered. The necessity of releasing
Elizabeth from the Tower was an unspeakable annoyance to Mary. A
confinement at Woodstock was the furthest stretch of severity that the
country would, for the present, permit. On May 19, 1554, Elizabeth was
taken up the river.
The princess believed herself that she was being carried off _tanquam
ovis_, as she said--as a sheep for the slaughter. But the world thought
she was set at liberty, and, as her barge passed under the bridge, Mary
heard with indignation, from the palace windows, three salvoes of
artillery fired from the Steelyard, as a sign of the joy of the people.
Vexations began to tell on Mary's spirit. She could not shake off her
anxieties, or escape from the shadow of her subject's hatred. Insolent
pamphlets were dropped in her path and in the offices of Whitehall. They
were placed by mysterious hands in the sanctuary of her bedroom.
Her trials began to tell on her understanding. She was ill with
hysterical longings; ill with the passions which Gardiner, as her
chancellor, had provoked, but Paget as leader of the opposing party, had
disappointed. But she was now to become the wife of King Philip of
Spain. Negotiations for this momentous marriage had been protracted, and
even after the contract had been signed, Philip seemed slow to arrive.
The coolness manifested by his tardiness did much to aggravate the
queen's despondency. On July 20, 1554, he landed at Southampton. The
atmospheric auspices were not cheering, for Philip, who had come from
the sunny plains of Castile, from his window at Southampton looked out
on a steady downfall of July rain. Through the cruel torrent he made his
way to church to mass, and afterwards Gardiner came to him from the
queen. On the next Sunday he journeyed to Winchester, again in pouring
rain. To the cathedral he went first, wet as he was. Whatever Philip of
Spain was entering on, whether it was a marriage or a massacre, a state
intrigue or a midnight murder, his first step was ever to seek a
blessing from the holy wafer. Mary was at the bishop's palace, a few
hundred yards' distance. Mary could not wait, and the same night the
interview took place. Let the curtain fall over the meeting, let it
close also over the wedding solemnities which followed with due
splendour two days after. There are scenes in life which we regard with
pity too deep for words.
The unhappy queen, unloved, unlovable, yet with her parched heart
thirsting for affection, was flinging herself upon a breast to which an
iceberg was warm; upon a man to whom love was an unmeaning word, except
as the most brutal of all passions. Mary set about to complete the
Catholic reaction. She had restored the Catholic orthodoxy in her own
person, and now was resolved to bring over her own subjects. But clouds
gathered over the court. The Spaniards were too much in evidence. With
the reaction came back the supremacy of the pope, and the ecclesiastical
courts were reinstated in authority to check unlicensed extravagance of
opinion.
Gardiner, Bonner, Tunstal, and three other prelates formed a court on
January 28, 1555, in St. Mary Overy's Church, Southwark, and Hooper,
Bishop of Gloucester, and Canon Rogers of St. Paul's, were brought up
before them. Both were condemned as Protestants, and both were burnt at
the stake, the bishop at Gloucester, the canon at Smithfield. They
suffered heroically. The Catholics had affected to sneer at the faith of
their rivals. There was a general conviction among them that Protestants
would all flinch at the last; that they had no "doctrine that would
abide the fire." Many more victims were offered. The enemies of the
church were to submit or die. So said Gardiner, and so said the papal
legate and the queen, in the delirious belief that they were the chosen
instruments of Providence.
The people, whom the cruelty of the party was reconverting to the
reformation, while the fires of Smithfield blazed, with a rapidity like
that produced by the gift of tongues at Pentecost, regarded the martyrs
with admiration as soldiers dying for their country. On Mary, sorrow was
heaped on sorrow. Her expectation of a child was disappointed, and
Philip refused to stay in England. His unhappy wife was forced to know
that he preferred the society of the most abandoned women to hers. The
horrible crusade against heretics became the business of the rest of her
life. Archbishop Cranmer, Bishops Ridley and Latimer, and many other
persons of distinction were amongst the martyrs of the Marian
persecution. Latimer was eighty years of age.
Mary's miseries were intensified month by month. War broke out between
England and France. For ten years the French had cherished designs, and
on January 7, 1558, the famous stronghold fell into their hands. The
effect of this misfortune on the queen was to produce utter prostration.
She now well understood that both parliament and the nation were badly
disposed towards her. But her end was at hand. After much suffering from
dropsy and nervous debility, she prepared quietly for what she knew was
inevitable. On November 16, at midnight, taking leave of a world in
which she had played so evil a part, Mary received the last rites of the
church. Towards morning she was sinking, and at the elevation of the
Host, as mass was being said, her head sank, and she was gone. A few
hours later the pope's legate, Cardinal Pole, at Lambeth, followed her.
Thus the reign of the pope in England and the reign of terror closed
together.