Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/388

374, on their part, recognised the Pontiff as the head of the universal Church, presented him a copy of the Act by which his authority was restored in England, and obtained his ratification of the acts of his legate, granting absolution to all for the offence of the schism, and confirming the bishoprics created during that period.

Whilst the ambassadors were thus cementing again the ancient alliance at Rome, the Spanish rule in England was growing every day more unpopular. Few of the Spaniards as had been allowed to remain, the English saw them with unconquerable aversion. They could not pass them in the streets without insulting them. These fracas became so frequent and violent, and the English had such a positive notion that Philip meant to bring this country under Spanish rule, that he was obliged to try and hang a Spaniard who had killed an Englishman at Charing Cross. The people were ready to listen to any story which confirmed this idea, or which promised to unsettle the Government, and amongst other projects there was one of the Simnel and Warbeck class, though a very threadbare one.

A youth appeared in Kent, who gave himself out as Edward VI., who, he declared, had only been in a trance, and not actually dead, and had been recovered from the tomb. The story, improbable as it was, soon flew far and wide amongst the people, and reaching the ears of the Council, excited so much apprehension, that the lad was seized at Eltham, and conducted to Hampton Court. He there confessed that he had been put upon this scheme, and he was sent in a cart through London with a paper over his head, stating that he was the impostor who had pretended to be King Edward. He was then conveyed to Westminster, exhibited in the hall, and afterwards whipped at a cart's tail back through the streets of London, and then sent off into the north, whence, it seems, he came. Being afterwards found rambling about and repeating the same tale, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, in the following year.

Before launching into the horrors that are now before us, we will quote the observations of Miss Strickland in her life of Queen Mary, because they take a view of the character of Mary, and of the real origin of the persecutions of her reign, different from the general estimate, and, at all events, deserving of being heard.

Noailles expressly assured his sovereign, the King of France, that it was of little use appealing to Queen Mary as an independent sovereign; for from the day of her marriage, Philip of Spain ruled virtually in every measure, domestic or foreign, in the kingdom of England.

"The bishops received notice to make processions and prayers for the life and safety of the heir to the throne, of which the queen expected to become mother.

"It is true that her hope of bringing offspring was utterly delusive; the increase of her figure was but symptomatic of dropsy, attended by a complication of the most dreadful disorders which can afflict the female frame, under which every faculty of her mind and body sank for months. At this time commenced that horrible persecution of the Protestants which has stained her name to all futurity; but if eternal obloquy was incurred by the half-dead queen, what is the due of the Parliaments which legalised the acts of cruelty committed in her name? Shall we call the House of Lords bigoted, when its majority, which sanctioned this wickedness, were composed of the same individuals who had planted, very recently, the Protestant Church of England? Surely not; for the name implies honest though wrong-headed attachment to one religion. Shall we suppose that the land groaned under the iron sway of a standing army? or that the Spanish bridegroom had introduced foreign forces? But reference to facts will prove that even Philip's household servants were sent back with his fleet, and a few valets, fools, and fiddlers belonging to the grandees, his bridesmen, were all the forces permitted to land—no very formidable band to Englishmen. The queen had kept her word rigorously when she asserted 'that no alteration should be made in religion without universal consent.'

"Three times in two years had she sent the House of Commons back to their constituents, although they were most compliant in any measure relative to her religion. If she had bribed one Parliament, why did she not keep it sitting during her short reign? If the Parliament had been honest as herself, her reign would have been the pride of her country, instead of its reproach; because if they had done their duty in guarding their fellow-creatures from bloody penal laws respecting religion, the queen, by her first regal act in restoring the free constitution of the great Plantagenets, had put it out of the power of her Government to take furtive vengeance on any individual who opposed it. She had exerted all the energies of her great eloquence to impress on the minds of her judges that they were to sit 'as indifferent umpires between herself and her people.' She had no standing army to awe Parliament—no rich civil list to bribe them. By restoring the great estates of the Howards, the Percys, and many other victims of Henry VIII., and of the regency of Edward VI., by giving back the revenues of the plundered bishoprics and the Church lands possessed by the Crown, she had reduced herself to poverty as complete as the most enthusiastic lover of freedom could desire. But her personal expenditure was extremely economical, and she successfully struggled with poverty till her husband involved England in a French war. The French ambassador affirmed in his despatches that the queen was so very poor that her want of money was apparent in everything pertaining to herself, even to the dishes put upon her own table. Such self-denial contributed to render her unpopular among her courtiers, and penuriousness has been added to the list of her ill qualities; but those who reckon up the vast sums she had restored to their rightful owners, or refused to appropriate in confiscation, will allow that hers was an honourable poverty.

"The fact of whether the torpid and half-dead queen was the instigator of a persecution the memory of which curdles the blood with horror, at this distance of time, is a question of less moral import at the present day than a close analysation of the evils with which selfish interests had infected the legislative powers of our country. It was in vain that Mary almost abstained from creation of peers, and restored the ancient custom.