Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/367

A.D. 1553.] the Protestant preachers were silenced. The great bell at Christchurch, Oxford, was just recast, and the first use of it was to call the people to mass. "That bell then rung," says Fuller, "the knell of Gospel truth in the city of Oxford, afterwards filled with Protestant tears."

Such was the state of affairs when the queen's coronation took place on the 1st of October. Three days previous to this she proceeded from Whitehall to the Tower attended by a splendid retinue in barges, and was met by the lord mayor and the officers of the corporation in their barges, and with music. She had borrowed £20,000 from the City to defray the expenses of this ceremony till Parliament met, and granted her supplies. The next day she knighted fifteen knights of the Bath, amongst whom were her cousin Courtenay, Earl of Devon, and the Earl of Surrey. Tho following day Mary rode through the city in procession. She was borne in a magnificent litter betwixt six white horses; the Princess Elizabeth rode next in a rich open chariot, and by her side Anne of Cleves. They were preceded by a procession of 500 noblemen and gentlemen on horseback, including the foreign ambassadors and prebites; and after the chariot of Elizabeth, Sir Edward Hastings, the queen's Master of the Horse, led her palfrey. Then came a train of seventy ladies riding on horseback and in chariots, in alternate succession. The queen was attired in blue velvet furred with ermine, bearing on her head a caul of gold network, set with pearls and jewels, so heavy that she was obliged to support it with one hand. The ladies were chiefly dressed in kirtles of gold and silver cloths and robes of crimson velvet, the gentlemen in equally gorgeous costume.

The City presented a variety of pageants. In Fenchurch Street four giants addressed Her Majesty in orations, and in Gracechurch Street a stupendous angel, with a stupendous trumpet, sat upon a triumphal arch, and played a solo, to the astonishment of the people. In Cornhill and Cheapside the conduits ran with wine; and in the latter street the corporation presented the queen with a purse containing 1,000 marks of gold. Stowe says that "in Paul's Churchyard, against the school, one Master Heywood sat in a pageant under a vine, and made to her an oration in Latin and English. Then there was one Peter, a Dutchman, stood on the weather-cock of St. Paul's steeple, holding a streamer in his hand of five yards long; and waving thereof, stood some time on one foot, and some time on the other, and then kneeled on his knees, to the great marvel of all people."

The next day, the 1st of October, the coronation was conducted with equal splendour, the walls of the choir of Westminster Abbey being hung with rich arras, and blue cloth being laid from the marble chair in Westminster Hall to the pulpit in Westminster Abbey, for the queen to walk on. Directly after the queen walked Elizabeth, followed by Anne of Cleves, Mary showing an amiable desire to give every distinction to these near connections. Gardiner, in the absence of the imprisoned primate, placed the crown upon her head, or rather three crowns—first, the crown of St. Edward, then the imperial crown of England, and, lastly, a very rich diadem made expressly for her.

Four days later, Mary opened her first Parliament; and she opened it in a manner which showed plainly what was to come. Both peers and commoners were called upon to attend her majesty at a solemn mass of the Holy Ghost. This was an immediate test of what degree of compliance was to be expected in the attempt to return to tho ancient order of things; and the success of the experiment was most encouraging. With the exception of Taylor Bishop of Lincoln, and Harley Bishop of Hereford, tho whole Parliament—peers, prelates, and commoners—fell on their knees at the elevation of the host, and participated with an air of devotion in that which in the last reign they had declared an abomination. But such was tho zeal now for the lately abhorred mass, that the two uncomplying bishops were rudely thrust out of the queen's presence, and out of the abbey altogether. There were those who insinuated that the emperor furnished Mary with funds to bribe her Parliament on this occasion; but, besides that Charles was not so lavish of his money, events soon showed that the Parliament, though so exceedingly pliant in the matter of religion, was stubborn enough regarding the estates obtained from the Church, and also concerning Mary's scheme of a Spanish marriage.

The first act of legislation was to restore the securities to life and property which had been granted in the twenty-fifth year of Edward III., and which had been so completely prostrated by the Acts of Henry VIII. Such an Act had been passed at the commencement of the last reign, but had been again violated in the cases of the two Seymours. The defiance of all the safeguards of the constitution by Henry VIII. had been such, that it has been calculated that no less than 72,000 persons perished on the gibbet in his reign. The Parliament, looking back on the sanguinary lawlessness of that monarch, did not think the country sufficiently safe from charges of constructive treason and felony without a fresh enactment. It next passed an Act annulling the divorce of Queen Catherine of Arragon, by Cranmer, and declaring the present queen legitimate. This Act indeed tacitly declared Elizabeth illegitimate, but there was no getting altogether out of the difficulties which tho licentious proceedings of Henry VIII. had created, and it was deemed best to pass that point over in silence, leaving the queen to treat her sister as if born in genuine wedlock.

The next Bill went to restore the Papal Church in England, stopping short, however, of the supremacy. This received no opposition in the House of Lords, but occasioned a debate of two days in the Commons. It passed, however, eventually without a division, and by it was swept away at once the whole system of Protestantism established by Cranmer during the reign of Edward VI. The reformed liturgy, which the Parliament of that monarch had declared was framed by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, was now pronounced to be "a new thing, imagined and devised by a few of singular opinions." This abolished the marriages of priests and illegitimated their children. From the 20th day of the next month divine worship was to be performed, and the sacraments administered, as in the last year of the reign of Henry VIII. Thus were the tyrannic Six Articles restored, and all but the Papal supremacy. Even the discussion of the ritual and doctrines of Edward VI. became so warm, that the queen prorogued Parliament for three days. On calling the House of