CHAPTER XXX--ENGLAND UNDER MARY
The Duke of Northumberland was very anxious to keep the young King'sdeath a secret, in order that he might get the two Princesses into hispower. But, the Princess Mary, being informed of that event as she wason her way to London to see her sick brother, turned her horse's head,and rode away into Norfolk. The Earl of Arundel was her friend, and itwas he who sent her warning of what had happened.
As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of Northumberland and thecouncil sent for the Lord Mayor of London and some of the aldermen, andmade a merit of telling it to them. Then, they made it known to thepeople, and set off to inform Lady Jane Grey that she was to be Queen.
She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amiable, learned, andclever. When the lords who came to her, fell on their knees before her,and told her what tidings they brought, she was so astonished that shefainted. On recovering, she expressed her sorrow for the young King'sdeath, and said that she knew she was unfit to govern the kingdom; butthat if she must be Queen, she prayed God to direct her. She was then atSion House, near Brentford; and the lords took her down the river instate to the Tower, that she might remain there (as the custom was) untilshe was crowned. But the people were not at all favourable to Lady Jane,considering that the right to be Queen was Mary's, and greatly dislikingthe Duke of Northumberland. They were not put into a better humour bythe Duke's causing a vintner's servant, one Gabriel Pot, to be taken upfor expressing his dissatisfaction among the crowd, and to have his earsnailed to the pillory, and cut off. Some powerful men among the nobilitydeclared on Mary's side. They raised troops to support her cause, hadher proclaimed Queen at Norwich, and gathered around her at the castle ofFramlingham, which belonged to the Duke of Norfolk. For, she was notconsidered so safe as yet, but that it was best to keep her in a castleon the sea-coast, from whence she might be sent abroad, if necessary.
The Council would have despatched Lady Jane's father, the Duke ofSuffolk, as the general of the army against this force; but, as Lady Janeimplored that her father might remain with her, and as he was known to bebut a weak man, they told the Duke of Northumberland that he must takethe command himself. He was not very ready to do so, as he mistrustedthe Council much; but there was no help for it, and he set forth with aheavy heart, observing to a lord who rode beside him through Shoreditchat the head of the troops, that, although the people pressed in greatnumbers to look at them, they were terribly silent.
And his fears for himself turned out to be well founded. While he waswaiting at Cambridge for further help from the Council, the Council tookit into their heads to turn their backs on Lady Jane's cause, and to takeup the Princess Mary's. This was chiefly owing to the before-mentionedEarl of Arundel, who represented to the Lord Mayor and aldermen, in asecond interview with those sagacious persons, that, as for himself, hedid not perceive the Reformed religion to be in much danger--which LordPembroke backed by flourishing his sword as another kind of persuasion.The Lord Mayor and aldermen, thus enlightened, said there could be nodoubt that the Princess Mary ought to be Queen. So, she was proclaimedat the Cross by St. Paul's, and barrels of wine were given to the people,and they got very drunk, and danced round blazing bonfires--littlethinking, poor wretches, what other bonfires would soon be blazing inQueen Mary's name.
After a ten days' dream of royalty, Lady Jane Grey resigned the Crownwith great willingness, saying that she had only accepted it in obedienceto her father and mother; and went gladly back to her pleasant house bythe river, and her books. Mary then came on towards London; and atWanstead in Essex, was joined by her half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth.They passed through the streets of London to the Tower, and there the newQueen met some eminent prisoners then confined in it, kissed them, andgave them their liberty. Among these was that Gardiner, Bishop ofWinchester, who had been imprisoned in the last reign for holding to theunreformed religion. Him she soon made chancellor.
The Duke of Northumberland had been taken prisoner, and, together withhis son and five others, was quickly brought before the Council. He, notunnaturally, asked that Council, in his defence, whether it was treasonto obey orders that had been issued under the great seal; and, if itwere, whether they, who had obeyed them too, ought to be his judges? Butthey made light of these points; and, being resolved to have him out ofthe way, soon sentenced him to death. He had risen into power upon thedeath of another man, and made but a poor show (as might be expected)when he himself lay low. He entreated Gardiner to let him live, if itwere only in a mouse's hole; and, when he ascended the scaffold to bebeheaded on Tower Hill, addressed the people in a miserable way, sayingthat he had been incited by others, and exhorting them to return to theunreformed religion, which he told them was his faith. There seemsreason to suppose that he expected a pardon even then, in return for thisconfession; but it matters little whether he did or not. His head wasstruck off.
Mary was now crowned Queen. She was thirty-seven years of age, short andthin, wrinkled in the face, and very unhealthy. But she had a greatliking for show and for bright colours, and all the ladies of her Courtwere magnificently dressed. She had a great liking too for old customs,without much sense in them; and she was oiled in the oldest way, andblessed in the oldest way, and done all manner of things to in the oldestway, at her coronation. I hope they did her good.
She soon began to show her desire to put down the Reformed religion, andput up the unreformed one: though it was dangerous work as yet, thepeople being something wiser than they used to be. They even cast ashower of stones--and among them a dagger--at one of the royal chaplainswho attacked the Reformed religion in a public sermon. But the Queen andher priests went steadily on. Ridley, the powerful bishop of the lastreign, was seized and sent to the Tower. LATIMER, also celebrated amongthe Clergy of the last reign, was likewise sent to the Tower, and Cranmerspeedily followed. Latimer was an aged man; and, as his guards took himthrough Smithfield, he looked round it, and said, 'This is a place thathath long groaned for me.' For he knew well, what kind of bonfires wouldsoon be burning. Nor was the knowledge confined to him. The prisonswere fast filled with the chief Protestants, who were there left rottingin darkness, hunger, dirt, and separation from their friends; many, whohad time left them for escape, fled from the kingdom; and the dullest ofthe people began, now, to see what was coming.
It came on fast. A Parliament was got together; not without strongsuspicion of unfairness; and they annulled the divorce, formerlypronounced by Cranmer between the Queen's mother and King Henry theEighth, and unmade all the laws on the subject of religion that had beenmade in the last King Edward's reign. They began their proceedings, inviolation of the law, by having the old mass said before them in Latin,and by turning out a bishop who would not kneel down. They also declaredguilty of treason, Lady Jane Grey for aspiring to the Crown; her husband,for being her husband; and Cranmer, for not believing in the massaforesaid. They then prayed the Queen graciously to choose a husband forherself, as soon as might be.
Now, the question who should be the Queen's husband had given rise to agreat deal of discussion, and to several contending parties. Some saidCardinal Pole was the man--but the Queen was of opinion that he was _not_the man, he being too old and too much of a student. Others said thatthe gallant young COURTENAY, whom the Queen had made Earl of Devonshire,was the man--and the Queen thought so too, for a while; but she changedher mind. At last it appeared that PHILIP, PRINCE OF SPAIN, wascertainly the man--though certainly not the people's man; for theydetested the idea of such a marriage from the beginning to the end, andmurmured that the Spaniard would establish in England, by the aid offoreign soldiers, the worst abuses of the Popish religion, and even theterrible Inquisition itself.
These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy for marrying young Courtenayto the Princess Elizabeth, and setting them up, with popular tumults allover the kingdom, against the Queen. This was discovered in time byGardiner; but in Kent, the old bold county, the people rose in their oldbold way. SIR THOMAS WYAT, a man of great daring, was their leader. Heraised his standard at Maidstone, marched on to Rochester, establishedhimself in the old castle there, and prepared to hold out against theDuke of Norfolk, who came against him with a party of the Queen's guards,and a body of five hundred London men. The London men, however, were allfor Elizabeth, and not at all for Mary. They declared, under the castlewalls, for Wyat; the Duke retreated; and Wyat came on to Deptford, at thehead of fifteen thousand men.
But these, in their turn, fell away. When he came to Southwark, therewere only two thousand left. Not dismayed by finding the London citizensin arms, and the guns at the Tower ready to oppose his crossing the riverthere, Wyat led them off to Kingston-upon-Thames, intending to cross thebridge that he knew to be in that place, and so to work his way round toLudgate, one of the old gates of the City. He found the bridge brokendown, but mended it, came across, and bravely fought his way up FleetStreet to Ludgate Hill. Finding the gate closed against him, he foughthis way back again, sword in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, beingoverpowered, he surrendered himself, and three or four hundred of his menwere taken, besides a hundred killed. Wyat, in a moment of weakness (andperhaps of torture) was afterwards made to accuse the Princess Elizabethas his accomplice to some very small extent. But his manhood soonreturned to him, and he refused to save his life by making any more falseconfessions. He was quartered and distributed in the usual brutal way,and from fifty to a hundred of his followers were hanged. The rest wereled out, with halters round their necks, to be pardoned, and to make aparade of crying out, 'God save Queen Mary!'
In the danger of this rebellion, the Queen showed herself to be a womanof courage and spirit. She disdained to retreat to any place of safety,and went down to the Guildhall, sceptre in hand, and made a gallantspeech to the Lord Mayor and citizens. But on the day after Wyat'sdefeat, she did the most cruel act, even of her cruel reign, in signingthe warrant for the execution of Lady Jane Grey.
They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unreformed religion; butshe steadily refused. On the morning when she was to die, she saw fromher window the bleeding and headless body of her husband brought back ina cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill where he had laid down his life.But, as she had declined to see him before his execution, lest she shouldbe overpowered and not make a good end, so, she even now showed aconstancy and calmness that will never be forgotten. She came up to thescaffold with a firm step and a quiet face, and addressed the bystandersin a steady voice. They were not numerous; for she was too young, tooinnocent and fair, to be murdered before the people on Tower Hill, as herhusband had just been; so, the place of her execution was within theTower itself. She said that she had done an unlawful act in taking whatwas Queen Mary's right; but that she had done so with no bad intent, andthat she died a humble Christian. She begged the executioner to despatchher quickly, and she asked him, 'Will you take my head off before I layme down?' He answered, 'No, Madam,' and then she was very quiet whilethey bandaged her eyes. Being blinded, and unable to see the block onwhich she was to lay her young head, she was seen to feel about for itwith her hands, and was heard to say, confused, 'O what shall I do! Whereis it?' Then they guided her to the right place, and the executionerstruck off her head. You know too well, now, what dreadful deeds theexecutioner did in England, through many, many years, and how his axedescended on the hateful block through the necks of some of the bravest,wisest, and best in the land. But it never struck so cruel and so vile ablow as this.
The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but was little pitied. QueenMary's next object was to lay hold of Elizabeth, and this was pursuedwith great eagerness. Five hundred men were sent to her retired house atAshridge, by Berkhampstead, with orders to bring her up, alive or dead.They got there at ten at night, when she was sick in bed. But, theirleaders followed her lady into her bedchamber, whence she was brought outbetimes next morning, and put into a litter to be conveyed to London. Shewas so weak and ill, that she was five days on the road; still, she wasso resolved to be seen by the people that she had the curtains of thelitter opened; and so, very pale and sickly, passed through the streets.She wrote to her sister, saying she was innocent of any crime, and askingwhy she was made a prisoner; but she got no answer, and was ordered tothe Tower. They took her in by the Traitor's Gate, to which sheobjected, but in vain. One of the lords who conveyed her offered tocover her with his cloak, as it was raining, but she put it away fromher, proudly and scornfully, and passed into the Tower, and sat down in acourt-yard on a stone. They besought her to come in out of the wet; butshe answered that it was better sitting there, than in a worse place. Atlength she went to her apartment, where she was kept a prisoner, thoughnot so close a prisoner as at Woodstock, whither she was afterwardsremoved, and where she is said to have one day envied a milkmaid whom sheheard singing in the sunshine as she went through the green fields.Gardiner, than whom there were not many worse men among the fierce andsullen priests, cared little to keep secret his stern desire for herdeath: being used to say that it was of little service to shake off theleaves, and lop the branches of the tree of heresy, if its root, the hopeof heretics, were left. He failed, however, in his benevolent design.Elizabeth was, at length, released; and Hatfield House was assigned toher as a residence, under the care of one SIR THOMAS POPE.
It would seem that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a main cause of thischange in Elizabeth's fortunes. He was not an amiable man, being, on thecontrary, proud, overbearing, and gloomy; but he and the Spanish lordswho came over with him, assuredly did discountenance the idea of doingany violence to the Princess. It may have been mere prudence, but wewill hope it was manhood and honour. The Queen had been expecting herhusband with great impatience, and at length he came, to her great joy,though he never cared much for her. They were married by Gardiner, atWinchester, and there was more holiday-making among the people; but theyhad their old distrust of this Spanish marriage, in which even theParliament shared. Though the members of that Parliament were far fromhonest, and were strongly suspected to have been bought with Spanishmoney, they would pass no bill to enable the Queen to set aside thePrincess Elizabeth and appoint her own successor.
Although Gardiner failed in this object, as well as in the darker one ofbringing the Princess to the scaffold, he went on at a great pace in therevival of the unreformed religion. A new Parliament was packed, inwhich there were no Protestants. Preparations were made to receiveCardinal Pole in England as the Pope's messenger, bringing his holydeclaration that all the nobility who had acquired Church property,should keep it--which was done to enlist their selfish interest on thePope's side. Then a great scene was enacted, which was the triumph ofthe Queen's plans. Cardinal Pole arrived in great splendour and dignity,and was received with great pomp. The Parliament joined in a petitionexpressive of their sorrow at the change in the national religion, andpraying him to receive the country again into the Popish Church. Withthe Queen sitting on her throne, and the King on one side of her, and theCardinal on the other, and the Parliament present, Gardiner read thepetition aloud. The Cardinal then made a great speech, and was soobliging as to say that all was forgotten and forgiven, and that thekingdom was solemnly made Roman Catholic again.
Everything was now ready for the lighting of the terrible bonfires. TheQueen having declared to the Council, in writing, that she would wishnone of her subjects to be burnt without some of the Council beingpresent, and that she would particularly wish there to be good sermons atall burnings, the Council knew pretty well what was to be done next. So,after the Cardinal had blessed all the bishops as a preface to theburnings, the Chancellor Gardiner opened a High Court at Saint MaryOvery, on the Southwark side of London Bridge, for the trial of heretics.Here, two of the late Protestant clergymen, HOOPER, Bishop of Gloucester,and ROGERS, a Prebendary of St. Paul's, were brought to be tried. Hooperwas tried first for being married, though a priest, and for not believingin the mass. He admitted both of these accusations, and said that themass was a wicked imposition. Then they tried Rogers, who said the same.Next morning the two were brought up to be sentenced; and then Rogerssaid that his poor wife, being a German woman and a stranger in the land,he hoped might be allowed to come to speak to him before he died. Tothis the inhuman Gardiner replied, that she was not his wife. 'Yea, butshe is, my lord,' said Rogers, 'and she hath been my wife these eighteenyears.' His request was still refused, and they were both sent toNewgate; all those who stood in the streets to sell things, being orderedto put out their lights that the people might not see them. But, thepeople stood at their doors with candles in their hands, and prayed forthem as they went by. Soon afterwards, Rogers was taken out of jail tobe burnt in Smithfield; and, in the crowd as he went along, he saw hispoor wife and his ten children, of whom the youngest was a little baby.And so he was burnt to death.
The next day, Hooper, who was to be burnt at Gloucester, was brought outto take his last journey, and was made to wear a hood over his face thathe might not be known by the people. But, they did know him for allthat, down in his own part of the country; and, when he came nearGloucester, they lined the road, making prayers and lamentations. Hisguards took him to a lodging, where he slept soundly all night. At nineo'clock next morning, he was brought forth leaning on a staff; for he hadtaken cold in prison, and was infirm. The iron stake, and the iron chainwhich was to bind him to it, were fixed up near a great elm-tree in apleasant open place before the cathedral, where, on peaceful Sundays, hehad been accustomed to preach and to pray, when he was bishop ofGloucester. This tree, which had no leaves then, it being February, wasfilled with people; and the priests of Gloucester College were lookingcomplacently on from a window, and there was a great concourse ofspectators in every spot from which a glimpse of the dreadful sight couldbe beheld. When the old man kneeled down on the small platform at thefoot of the stake, and prayed aloud, the nearest people were observed tobe so attentive to his prayers that they were ordered to stand fartherback; for it did not suit the Romish Church to have those Protestantwords heard. His prayers concluded, he went up to the stake and wasstripped to his shirt, and chained ready for the fire. One of his guardshad such compassion on him that, to shorten his agonies, he tied somepackets of gunpowder about him. Then they heaped up wood and straw andreeds, and set them all alight. But, unhappily, the wood was green anddamp, and there was a wind blowing that blew what flame there was, away.Thus, through three-quarters of an hour, the good old man was scorchedand roasted and smoked, as the fire rose and sank; and all that time theysaw him, as he burned, moving his lips in prayer, and beating his breastwith one hand, even after the other was burnt away and had fallen off.
Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, were taken to Oxford to dispute with acommission of priests and doctors about the mass. They were shamefullytreated; and it is recorded that the Oxford scholars hissed and howledand groaned, and misconducted themselves in an anything but a scholarlyway. The prisoners were taken back to jail, and afterwards tried in St.Mary's Church. They were all found guilty. On the sixteenth of themonth of October, Ridley and Latimer were brought out, to make another ofthe dreadful bonfires.
The scene of the suffering of these two good Protestant men was in theCity ditch, near Baliol College. On coming to the dreadful spot, theykissed the stakes, and then embraced each other. And then a learneddoctor got up into a pulpit which was placed there, and preached a sermonfrom the text, 'Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity,it profiteth me nothing.' When you think of the charity of burning menalive, you may imagine that this learned doctor had a rather brazen face.Ridley would have answered his sermon when it came to an end, but was notallowed. When Latimer was stripped, it appeared that he had dressedhimself under his other clothes, in a new shroud; and, as he stood in itbefore all the people, it was noted of him, and long remembered, that,whereas he had been stooping and feeble but a few minutes before, he nowstood upright and handsome, in the knowledge that he was dying for a justand a great cause. Ridley's brother-in-law was there with bags ofgunpowder; and when they were both chained up, he tied them round theirbodies. Then, a light was thrown upon the pile to fire it. 'Be of goodcomfort, Master Ridley,' said Latimer, at that awful moment, 'and playthe man! We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, inEngland, as I trust shall never be put out.' And then he was seen tomake motions with his hands as if he were washing them in the flames, andto stroke his aged face with them, and was heard to cry, 'Father ofHeaven, receive my soul!' He died quickly, but the fire, after havingburned the legs of Ridley, sunk. There he lingered, chained to the ironpost, and crying, 'O! I cannot burn! O! for Christ's sake let the firecome unto me!' And still, when his brother-in-law had heaped on morewood, he was heard through the blinding smoke, still dismally crying, 'O!I cannot burn, I cannot burn!' At last, the gunpowder caught fire, andended his miseries.
Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to his tremendousaccount before God, for the cruelties he had so much assisted incommitting.
Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. He was brought out again inFebruary, for more examining and trying, by Bonner, Bishop of London:another man of blood, who had succeeded to Gardiner's work, even in hislifetime, when Gardiner was tired of it. Cranmer was now degraded as apriest, and left for death; but, if the Queen hated any one on earth, shehated him, and it was resolved that he should be ruined and disgraced tothe utmost. There is no doubt that the Queen and her husband personallyurged on these deeds, because they wrote to the Council, urging them tobe active in the kindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known notto be a firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him with artful people,and inducing him to recant to the unreformed religion. Deans and friarsvisited him, played at bowls with him, showed him various attentions,talked persuasively with him, gave him money for his prison comforts, andinduced him to sign, I fear, as many as six recantations. But when,after all, he was taken out to be burnt, he was nobly true to his betterself, and made a glorious end.
After prayers and a sermon, Dr. Cole, the preacher of the day (who hadbeen one of the artful priests about Cranmer in prison), required him tomake a public confession of his faith before the people. This, Cole did,expecting that he would declare himself a Roman Catholic. 'I will make aprofession of my faith,' said Cranmer, 'and with a good will too.'
Then, he arose before them all, and took from the sleeve of his robe awritten prayer and read it aloud. That done, he kneeled and said theLord's Prayer, all the people joining; and then he arose again and toldthem that he believed in the Bible, and that in what he had latelywritten, he had written what was not the truth, and that, because hisright hand had signed those papers, he would burn his right hand firstwhen he came to the fire. As for the Pope, he did refuse him anddenounce him as the enemy of Heaven. Hereupon the pious Dr. Cole criedout to the guards to stop that heretic's mouth and take him away.
So they took him away, and chained him to the stake, where he hastilytook off his own clothes to make ready for the flames. And he stoodbefore the people with a bald head and a white and flowing beard. He wasso firm now when the worst was come, that he again declared against hisrecantation, and was so impressive and so undismayed, that a certainlord, who was one of the directors of the execution, called out to themen to make haste! When the fire was lighted, Cranmer, true to hislatest word, stretched out his right hand, and crying out, 'This handhath offended!' held it among the flames, until it blazed and burnedaway. His heart was found entire among his ashes, and he left at last amemorable name in English history. Cardinal Pole celebrated the day bysaying his first mass, and next day he was made Archbishop of Canterburyin Cranmer's place.
The Queen's husband, who was now mostly abroad in his own dominions, andgenerally made a coarse jest of her to his more familiar courtiers, wasat war with France, and came over to seek the assistance of England.England was very unwilling to engage in a French war for his sake; but ithappened that the King of France, at this very time, aided a descent uponthe English coast. Hence, war was declared, greatly to Philip'ssatisfaction; and the Queen raised a sum of money with which to carry iton, by every unjustifiable means in her power. It met with no profitablereturn, for the French Duke of Guise surprised Calais, and the Englishsustained a complete defeat. The losses they met with in France greatlymortified the national pride, and the Queen never recovered the blow.
There was a bad fever raging in England at this time, and I am glad towrite that the Queen took it, and the hour of her death came. 'When I amdead and my body is opened,' she said to those around those around her,'ye shall find CALAIS written on my heart.' I should have thought, ifanything were written on it, they would have found the words--JANE GREY,HOOPER, ROGERS, RIDLEY, LATIMER, CRANMER, AND THREE HUNDRED PEOPLE BURNTALIVE WITHIN FOUR YEARS OF MY WICKED REIGN, INCLUDING SIXTY WOMEN ANDFORTY LITTLE CHILDREN. But it is enough that their deaths were writtenin Heaven.
The Queen died on the seventeenth of November, fifteen hundred and fifty-eight, after reigning not quite five years and a half, and in the forty-fourth year of her age. Cardinal Pole died of the same fever next day.
As BLOODY QUEEN MARY, this woman has become famous, and as BLOODY QUEENMARY, she will ever be justly remembered with horror and detestation inGreat Britain. Her memory has been held in such abhorrence that somewriters have arisen in later years to take her part, and to show that shewas, upon the whole, quite an amiable and cheerful sovereign! 'By theirfruits ye shall know them,' said OUR SAVIOUR. The stake and the firewere the fruits of this reign, and you will judge this Queen by nothingelse.