“A crown
Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns,
Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights
To him who wears the regal diadem.”—MILTON.
“One speaks the glory of the British Queen,
And one describes a charming Indian screen;
A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;
At every word a reputation dies.”—POPE.
THE lives of Queen Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen of Scots, are so
intimately associated, that a sketch of one includes that of the other;
and in order to give the history of that epoch with greater conciseness
and clearness without unnecessary repetition, a brief outline of each
of their lives is here sketched.
For the sake of perspicuity, a few lines will be given to intervening
events.
As we stated in the account of Catharine of Aragon, Henry VIII. married
Jane Seymour upon the day following the execution of Anne Boleyn.
Fortunately for Jane Seymour, death removed her during the succeeding
year, rather than the fatal axe of her royal husband. She left an
infant prince, who afterwards reigned a few short years as Edward VI.
[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH
Painting by Frd. Zucchero, “so-called Ermine portrait,” in the
possession of the Marquis of Salisbury, Hatfield House.]
In 1540 Henry VIII. married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. She had
been represented as a great beauty by Cromwell, whom the king
had raised to power. This Cromwell was a former servant of Cardinal
Wolsey. But so great was Henry’s disgust upon beholding the awkward,
ill-dressed, ill-featured, German princess, whom he had been inveigled
into making his fourth bride, that though the marriage was perforce
celebrated according to agreement, the unfortunate Cromwell was soon
after disgraced and executed, and the sensitive conscience of the
royal hypocrite was once again called into requisition to annul this
ill-starred union. The beautiful face of Lady Catharine Howard no
doubt quickened the stings of the conveniently tender conscience of
this dissembling King of Knaves, who declared with pious cant that,
having ascertained that Anne of Cleves had previously been betrothed
to the Duke of Lorraine, his punctilious scruples would not allow him
to retain her as his wife; whereupon King Henry, who waited not now
for pope or bishop to annul his marriage vows and break his conjugal
fetters, bestowed upon his divorced wife the title of “Adopted Sister,”
which honor poor Anne of Cleves consented to receive, doubtless
thanking heaven for having preserved her from the more terrible fate of
some of the wives of this fickle consort.
By way of celebrating his fifth nuptials, King Henry sent to the stake
Dr. Barnes and other heretics, while certain Catholics were quartered
for having refused to take the oath of supremacy. This persecution
of both parties occasioned the indignation of both Catholics and
Protestants. “How do folks manage to live here?” exclaimed a Frenchman,
in surprise at such fickle punishments. “The Papists are hanged, and
the anti-Papists are burned,” was the answer.
But Catharine Howard had not been queen of England one year before
her terrible doom overshadowed her. The king discovered certain
condemnatory circumstances regarding the conduct of the queen previous
to her marriage with him, and in a few short months Catharine also
expiated her ambition and her supposed guilt upon the scaffold.
King Henry again resorted to his literary pursuits for solace, being
for the time disgusted with his experiments in the matrimonial line,
as before his hapless wives had also been, and forsooth with graver
cause and better reason. “The king had better marry a widow,” said
the people; and that idea seeming to have occurred also to the mind
of his august majesty, in the year 1543, this “royal Bluebeard of
English history” took for his sixth wife, the Lady Catherine Parr, the
three months’ widow of Lord Latimer. She was an ardent partisan of the
Protestant party, as well as learned and beautiful, but her skill in
argument had well-nigh cost her dear.
To amuse her gouty, quarrelsome, would-be-literary and
spasmodically-religious royal spouse, Queen Catherine ventured to argue
with him upon certain points in theology. Finding himself worsted in
the mental contest, the irate king exclaimed: “A good hearing this,
when women become such clerks; and a thing much to my comfort to
come in my old age to be taught by my wife.” And thereupon the new
chancellor received the order to prepare the impeachment of the queen.
But Catherine was warned in time of her coming doom and was possessed
of self-control and tact sufficient for this emergency. When again the
conversation turned upon religious subjects and the king questioned her
upon some knotty point, she answered laughing: “I am not so foolish as
not to know what I can understand when I possess the favor of having
for a master and spouse a prince so learned in holy matters.”
“By St. Mary!” exclaimed the king; “it is not so, Kate; thou hast
become a doctor.”
“And surely,” quoth the queen with mirthful looks, “I thought I noticed
that such conversation diverted your Grace’s attention from your
sufferings, and I ventured to discuss with you in the hope of making
you forget your present infirmity.”
“Is it so, sweetheart?” replied the king; “then we are friends again,
and it doth me more good than if I had received a hundred thousand
pounds.”
The skilful and politic queen, well pleased to find her lovely head
still resting on her own shoulders instead of on the executioner’s
block, gave thanks to God for her deliverance, and henceforth left
theology in peace. The orders given to the chancellor not having been
revoked, the next day he arrived with forty men to arrest the queen,
but King Henry, feigning surprise and anger, sent him away with much
apparent displeasure.
Thus had Queen Catherine’s wit saved her neck, and the strong grip of
the increasing gout now came to her rescue, and this Prince of Shams
soon found himself held in the clutch of such a sturdy foe that neither
qualms of conscience, nor tears, nor threats, could rid him at last
of this dread consort of the tomb. Death claimed him, and the royal
hypocrite was forced to yield to that relentless conqueror; and Henry
VIII. faced the awful tribunal where no pretensions or shams could
avail to hide the horrid deformity of his sin-polluted soul.
Upon the death of Henry VIII. in 1547, his son Edward was proclaimed
king as Edward VI. But this young king died in 1553, at the age of
sixteen years, and the mighty realm of England was left to the
conflicting succession of two princesses, both of whom their royal
father had stigmatized with the ban of illegitimacy. In this emergency
the Protestants, headed by the Duke of Northumberland, determined to
set up a new claimant.
The daughter-in-law of the Duke of Northumberland was Lady Jane Grey,
who was the granddaughter by her mother’s side of Mary, queen-dowager
of France, and sister of Henry VIII. Upon the death of young Edward,
the Duke of Northumberland appeared before the gentle Lady Jane,—who
was occupied in reading Plato in Greek,—and bowing his haughty knee in
the presence of his daughter-in-law, he exclaimed:—
“The king, your cousin and our sovereign lord, has surrendered his soul
to God; but before his death, and in order to preserve the kingdom from
the infection of Popery, he resolved to set aside his sisters, Mary and
Elizabeth, declared illegitimate by an act of Parliament, and he has
commanded us to proclaim your Grace as queen and sovereign to succeed
him.”
Thereupon the poor, unwilling Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen, but
dearly did she buy her ten days of sovereign power. Mary was speedily
brought to London and declared queen, and for this innocent offence the
gentle Lady Jane Grey afterwards met death upon the scaffold.
The reign of Mary was made infamously illustrious by the execution of
Lady Jane Grey and many others, and the burning at the stake of the
bishops Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and many other religious martyrs. So
sanguinary was the reign of this queen that she is known in history as
_Bloody Mary_.
[Illustration: LADY JANE GREY