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 produced by a sudden change from a life such as I have described to a position of almost unchecked power, upon such a temperament, was not unlikely to drive her to some excesses.

In the first weeks after her accession, when, for almost the only time in her life, Mary found herself welcomed and apparently beloved by her people, she displayed for a brief moment some small measure of that geniality and frankness which made her father, and afterwards her sister, despite their rough dealings and choleric tempers, the most popular of sovereigns: but she seems to have expected every obstacle to give way at once before her; and when opposition and disappointment came upon her, and ill-health speedily followed, she sank at once into a soured, disappointed, angry zealot, rendered only the more self-willed, the more unscrupulous, and the more cruel, by the constant ill-success of all her efforts and the miscarriage of all her schemes.

The actual relations of Church and State during her reign changed more strangely than even during her father's. Mary found herself by law on her accession Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ supremum caput, albeit the assumption of such a title must have seemed to her the extreme of blasphemous presumption. Yet even Mary did not venture, in the first weeks of her reign, to show openly her intention of bringing England once more into bondage to the Pope, although the general disgust and disaffection, caused by the misgovernment of Edward's Council, might seem to have afforded an unusually good opportunity for so doing. Gardiner was released from the Tower and restored to the Council board. Edward's bishops were removed, and those expelled by him were restored to their sees, and Acts were