CHAPTER XXIII

THE ENGLISH COUNTER-REFORMATION. MARY (1553-1558)

Defeat of the Northumberland Plot (1553). — When Mary learned of the events in London she took refuge in a fortified manor house in Suffolk. At once, loyal gentlemen and their retainers flocked to her support. On the other hand, London showed no enthusiasm for Lady Jane Grey, and the citizens, alienated by the religious excesses of the late reign and the attempt to deprive the rightful heir, preserved an ominous silence as Northumberland led forth an army against the Marian forces. When, after his departure, Lady Jane's own father proclaimed Mary as Queen, 19 July, they responded joyously by ringing bells, lighting bonfires, and shouting applause. Northumberland's troops dropped away as he marched, so, 20 July, he declared for Mary himself, protesting tearfully that he knew her to be a merciful woman. Ordered to disband his army, he was arrested and taken to London, and, 3 August, 1553, the new Queen, accompanied by a glittering escort, rode into the City. Her first act was to release Norfolk, Gardiner, and various other prisoners. Of those who had plotted against her accession seven were tried and condemned, though only three were executed; even Lady Jane Grey was only imprisoned; but Northumberland tried in vain to avert his richly deserved fate by professing himself a Catholic.

Mary's Character and Policy. First Measures of the Reign. In spite of contemporary accounts of her beauty, portraits of Queen Mary represent her as prim and unprepossessing. Because of her unflinching loyalty to her mother and to the old religion, she had suffered much in her youth from the harshness of Henry VIII and his agents; yet she was highly educated, and not only her mental endowments but her accomplishments were uncommon, while, notwithstanding flurries of temper due to her joyless existence and constant ill-health, she was much loved by her servitors and ministers for her generosity and kindness. Her dearest wish was to restore England to the Catholic fold; for that she had embittered her life and all but lost her birthright. Almost directly upon her accession

she issued a proclamation urging all men to return to the old faith, she ordered the restoration of much of the stolen church plate, and she gave warning to "busy meddlers in religion," though the formal settlement of the religious problem was reserved to Parliament.

The System of Henry VIII Restored by Parliament (1553). — Parliament, which met 5 October, 1553, went no farther than to pass an act repealing all laws of Edward's reign affecting religion and the Church and restoring the service as it was in the last year of Henry VIII. Most of the members had no desire to reverse Henry's policy and again to accept papal rule. There was a general desire to have the Queen marry and settle the succession, though a considerable majority opposed a plan to unite her with Philip, son of the Emperor Charles V and heir to his Spanish dominions, a plan designed to counteract the Franco-Scot alliance and to restore the power of the Pope with Imperial aid. As a protest against the projected Spanish match, the Commons prepared an address praying the Queen to marry an English noble; but Mary, who had determined on Philip, rebuked them sharply. In January, 1554, the marriage articles were arranged, and upon terms most favorable to England. If the Queen should die. without issue her husband was to make no claim on the succession. On the other hand, any child born of the marriage would succeed both to the English Kingdom and to Philip's inheritance in the Low Countries. Also, Philip agreed not to engage England in his father's wars with France.

Wyatt's Rebellion (1554). - Popular opposition was aroused to a pitch sufficient to give Mary's enemies a chance to plan a widespread rebellion, which, while professing to free her from her evil councilors and to prevent the Spanish marriage, really aimed, with French help, to depose the Queen and to set up Lady Jane Grey or Elizabeth in her place. But the design leaked out prematurely and a complete confession was wrung from one of the leaders. Three separate outbreaks had been planned. One in Devon and one in the Midlands were easily suppressed, but the third, starting in Kent, under Sir Thomas Wyatt, a young Catholic, was serious; for he succeeded in marching his forces into the heart of London before he could be overcome. About sixty of the insurgent leaders, including Wyatt, were put to death, and Lady Jane Grey and her husband were now executed for their part in the old Northumberland plot. An effort to implicate Elizabeth failed from lack of evidence.

The Arrival of Philip and the Return to Rome (1554). · Wyatt's rebellion was followed by more rigorous measures against Protestants.

1 He was a son of the poet, v. p. 228.

Foreign congregations were ordered to quit the realm, married clergy were forced to give up their wives or to leave their benefices, and altars were erected in the village churches. On 20 July Philip landed in England. Mary met him at Winchester, where, on the 25th, they were married. After a month of festivities the royal pair journeyed to London with a stately train, including twenty-eight carts filled with bullion. But Philip was unable to overcome the general aversion with which he was regarded, and his attendants were hustled and beaten in the streets. Parliament met again, 12 November, 1554, the sheriffs had been ordered to return men of " a wise, grave, and Catholic sort," and, 29 November, in answer to their petition, Cardinal Pole, who had recently arrived as papal legate, solemnly received the realm "again into the unity of our own Mother the Holy Church." This reunion, however, even with a packed Parliament, would never have come to pass but for his assurance that the Pope had consented to waive the restoration of the Church lands. Parliament then completed the revival of the old order by repealing all measures against the See Apostolic of Rome since the twentieth year of King Henry VIII," and restoring all the heresy laws.

The Marian Persecutions (1555-1558). Then began four horrible years of persecution which have stained indelibly the memory of the Queen and fastened upon her the name of "Bloody Mary." Up to this time comparatively lenient, the national opposition, which had manifested itself in armed rebellion, really marked the turning point in her reign. Other causes, however, contributed to change her policy. Philip, who had married her purely for reasons of State, grew colder and colder, and soon left the country, to return only once again when he wanted aid; then Mary was denied what she most desired, an heir to perpetuate her name; and, finally, her health, never robust, grew steadily worse. While these facts help to explain the cruelty of her methods, it must not be forgotten that Mary regarded it as her supreme duty to extirpate heresy and restore the purity of the faith. Moreover, the reformers were violently abusive; there was no idea of toleration in those days, for heresy was regarded as a loathsome disease to be stamped out at all costs; thousands on the Continent suffered for their faith, and disregard of human life and suffering were everywhere a feature of the age. Mary was not alone in thinking that obstinate heretics should suffer death for " the great horror of their offense and the manifest example of other Christians"; still, if her lot had been a happier one and her subjects had not risen against her, she might have softened her stern sense of duty by considerations of policy and humanity.

Parliament shares the blame for the persecutions which followed. Gardiner, the Queen's chief Minister, advised the step; but he hoped that a few examples would be sufficient, and he died less than a year after the persecutions had begun. Pole was too gentle a spirit to enter into heresy-hunting with any zeal; although Mary forced him into line, he more than once admonished the bishops to moderation. Philip, keen scenter and torturer of heretics in his own dominions, for reasons of policy took no share in the proceedings in England. Bishop Bonner has often been charged with exceptional activity and cruelty, but he seldom spoke at the examinations, while, after an accused person had been condemned, he often worked secretly to make him recant. Furthermore, the Queen frequently had to spur his lagging zeal. His reputation seems to have been due to the fact that there were more executions in his diocese than elsewhere, but it contained the bulk of the heretics; and, when he felt duty bound to proceed with energy, he was hot-tempered and treated prisoners roughly, but more likely to frighten them into recanting than because he was bloodthirsty.

The Martyrs. Mary's victims numbered nearly 300, a total greater than that in Henry VIII's reign of thirty-eight years or Elizabeth's of forty-five. At the stake many faithful ministers of devoted flocks, and humble artisans and tillers of the soil as well, showed unflinching courage and serene imperviousness to frightful torture. In the pages of Fox's Martyrs their names shine brightly with those of their fellow sufferers high in social or church rank. On 16 October, 1555, Bishop Latimer, the matchless popular orator, and Bishop Ridley were burned at Oxford. At the stake he called to his weaker companion: "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as, I trust, shall never be put out." He received the flame as if embracing it, crying vehemently in his own English tongue: "Father in Heaven, receive my soul." Cranmer, perplexed and fearful of suffering, signed at least six recantations before he was finally condemned. Yet his end was truly heroic. Confessing himself "a wretched caitiff and a miserable sinner," he thrust first into the flames the hand which had signed the recantation, crying: "This hand hath offended." He perished, 20 March, 1556. The effect upon the people was tremendous. The Primate of the National Church, the author of the beautiful Book of Common Prayer, had been martyred for an ecclesiastical system which an English King and an English Parliament had discarded. Plainly such examples encouraged rather than frightened the weaker. Even the most devoted Romanists

recoiled, but the stern misguided Queen persisted in the useless butchery.

War with France (1557). Loss of Calais (1558). — Everything, however, worked against her. A new Pope, Paul IV, insisted upon the restoration of the Church lands, thus alienating many of her Catholic supporters. In March, 1557, Philip, during the course of a three months' visit, succeeded in drawing the English into a war between Spain and France which had just broken out. An excuse was furnished by anti-Marian plots, supposed, in spite of his denial, to have been assisted by the French King; but the result of this violation of the marriage treaty was most humiliating and damning to Mary. On 6 January, 1558, Calais, the last English possession on French soil, was captured by the French. Three months later Mary, Queen of Scots, was married to the Dauphin. At home the English prospects were as dark and threatening as they were abroad. An ague fever raged through the land during the summer and autumn of 1557 and 1558, corn was dear, trade and agriculture languished, and heavy taxes were imposed to meet the cost of the unsuccessful and unpopular war.

Death of Queen Mary (1558). In the midst of sullen discontent engendered by persecution, foreign and papal intermeddling, financial stress, and national humiliation, Mary, long ailing in health and broken down by a cumulation of disappointments, succumbed to the prevailing epidemic. The loss of Calais was the crowning grief. "When I am dead and opened," she said in her last illness, "you will find Calais lying upon my heart." She died 17 November, 1558. Pole, who had succeeded Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, followed her to the grave within a few hours. In a prayer book, said to be hers, the pages which contain the prayers for the unity of the Holy Catholic Church are stained with tears and much handling. Her marriage to Philip was the greatest mistake of her life; it outraged national sentiment and ruined what chance there was of making her religious policy prevail, while the oppositions which it excited, and its other unhappy consequences, accentuated her austere sense of duty into blind fanaticism.

The Results of the Marian Exile. The activity of the Marian exiles, who flooded the country with furious and inflammatory writings, made the lot of those who remained behind much harder than it might otherwise have been. At the beginning of the reign all foreign exiles had been ordered to leave the realm within twenty-four days under pain of imprisonment and loss of goods. About 800 migrated, together with 200 English disciples. During their sojourn