Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/532

518 whych been only the trewe goods, nether fyr nor water can take away. If you take labour and payne to do a vertuous thyng, the labour goeth away and the vertue remaynethe. Yf throughe pleasure you do any vicious thyng, the pleasure goeth away and the vice remaynethe. Good njadam, for my sake remember thys.


 * Your lovying mistress,



What we have hitherto said of the lady Mary, relates to her literary character; what yet remains untold, respects her conduct after she ascended the throne.

King Edward her brother dying 1553, she was on the 20th of the same month proclaimed, and on the 1st of October following, crowned in the abbey church at Westminster, by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester; she was married to Philip, Prince of Spain, eldest son of the Emperor Charles V; and having reigned five years, four months and eleven days, died of a fever, occasioned by her disappointment in not having children, and by the absence and unkindness of King Philip, in her palace at St. Jameses 1558, in the 43d year of her age; and was buried on the north side of King Henry Vllth's chapel, Westminster.

It is painful to dwell on the events of Mary's reign. Her sour and bigotted temper, not only made herself unhappy, but deluged the kingdom with innocent blood, by the barbarous persecution of the protestants during her reign.

Some protestants seem to think, that the Queen, in herself, abstracted from her opinions and bigotted counsellors, was of a compassionate disposition, and that most of those barbarities were committed by her bishops without her privity or knowledge. But this must