The World's Greatest Books - Volume 11 Part 29

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 ama.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionately 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 n.o.bleman 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Suffolk, to whom, by the will of Henry VIII., the crown would pa.s.s, 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, amba.s.sador 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sions 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 ma.s.s, 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 ma.s.sacre, 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 pa.s.sions. 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 ma.s.s 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.