Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/386

372 possession of the Church property, on condition that the Papal supremacy was restored. The queen dispatched Sir Edward Hastings to accompany the cardinal; and Sir William Cecil, who had been Edward's unhesitating minister in stripping the Church, set out of his own accord to pay homage to the Papal representative. Cecil's only real religion was ambition, and Mary knew that so well that, spite of all his time-serving, she never would place any confidence in him, whence his bitter hostility to her memory.

Pole, on his arrival, ascended the Thames from Greenwich in a splendid state barge, at the prow of which he fixed a large silver cross, thus marking the entrance of the legatine and Papal authority into the country, as it were, in a triumphal manner.

Gardiner, the chancellor, received him at the Water-gate; King Philip at the grand entrance, and the queen at the head of the stairs, where she exclaimed on seeing him, "The day that I ascended the throne I did not feel such joy." His arrival was celebrated by grand banquetings and a tournament, at which the English and Spanish nobles contended, with King Philip at their head. In this tournament the Spaniards introduced a novelty—the Moorish game of throwing the jeered, or cane.

The cardinal had assigned him for his residence the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth, vacant by the imprisonment of the primate; and thus was the old faith placed in the ascendancy, its highest representative in this country occupying the official residence of the reforming metropolitan.

On the 24th of November the king and queen met the united Parliament in the presence-chamber of the palace of Whitehall: this was owing to the indisposition of the queen. Gardiner introduced the business, which, he told them, was the weightiest that ever happened in this realm, and begged their utmost attention to Cardinal Pole, who would open the same. Pole then made a long speech, reverting to his own history as well as that of the nation. All listened in solemn seriousness and yet apprehension when he announced to them the fact that the Pope was ready to absolve the English from their crimes of heresy and contumacy. But when he added that this was to be done without any reclamation of the Church lands, there was a unanimous vote of both Houses for reconciliation with Rome.

The nest morning, the king, queen, and Parliament met again in the presence-chamber, when, Pole presenting himself, Philip and Mary rose, and bowing profoundly to him, presented him with the vote of Parliament. The cardinal, on receiving it, offered up thanks to God for this auspicious event, and then ordered his commission to be read. The Peers and Commons then fell on their knees and received absolution and benediction from the hands of the cardinal, and thus for a time again was the great breach betwixt England and the Papacy healed, or rather skinned over. The whole assembly, including their majesties, proceeded to St. Stephen's Chapel, where "Te Deum" was sung, and the next Sunday the legate made his public entry into London, and he and Philip attended at St. Paul's Cross, where Gardiner preached, making great lamentation over his own backslidings and those of the nation in the reign of Henry VIII., and exhorting all now to do as he had done, and make reparation for their apostacy by seeking the unity of the Church.

Parliament proceeded to pass acts confirming all that was now done, repealing all the statutes which had passed against the Roman Church since the 20th of Henry VIII., and the clergy in Convocation making formal resignation of the possessions which had passed into the hands of laymen. The legate also issued decrees authorising all cathedral churches, hospitals, and schools, founded since the schism, to be preserved, and that all persons who had contracted marriages within prescribed degrees should remain married notwithstanding.

The Christmas of 1554 was celebrated with unusual splendour and gaiety. The wedding festivities of the queen had been cut short by the death of Norfolk, and it was intended to make these a sort of reparation to the pleasure-loving courtiers. The queen and the Princess Elizabeth being reconciled, that lady was present and treated with all distinction by both the king and queen. It was a popular idea that Philip was anxious to send Elizabeth to Spain and have her consigned to some convent there, but Philip was too politic for that. He had no children by his English queen, though there were confident expectations of that kind, and till he was secure of an English heir, it was his policy to maintain Elizabeth in the position of the heir-apparent, as a set off to the Queen of Scots, who was about to be married to the heir of the French throne.

Besides Elizabeth, there were now assembled at the English Court a number of persons destined to fill the most prominent places in the history of Europe, for good as for evil. There was the Duke of Alva, veiling under the graces of a fine person one of the most cruel and dangerous spirits which ever exercised its malignant force on human destinies. There were two, also, of the celebrated victims of Philip and Alva—the Counts Egmont and Horne, the patriots of Flanders, who shed their blood on the scaffold for defending their country against the tyranny of this king and this his minister. There was Ruy Gomez, the future famous prime minister of Spain; Philibert Emanuel of Savoy, the lover of Elizabeth and conqueror of St. Quintin; and the Prince of Orange, calmly mixing with the festive throng, unconscious that it was his high destiny to pluck oppressed Holland from the iron grasp of this same Philip. So closed, in a blaze of brief splendour, the year 1554.

To Mary the honour is due of concluding, early in the following year, the first commercial treaty with Russia. She sent Chancellor, the northern explorer, on an embassy to the Czar Iwan Wasiljevitch, who brought back with him Osep Napea Gregorivitch as the first Russian ambassador who ever appeared in England. She incorporated by charter the company of merchant adventurers trading to Muscovy. Napea was received with great distinction by Mary at Court, in May, 1555, and astonished the courtiers by the enormous size of the pearls and gems on his cap, and the ouches which he wore on his robes.

The year 1555 opened with dark and threatening