Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/358

Mary I 200l.; to the convent of Black Friars at St. Bartholomew's, four hundred marks; to the nuns of Langley, 200l.; to the abbot and convent of Westminster, 200l.; for the relief of poor scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, 500l.; to the Savoy Hospital lands to the annual value of 600l.; for the foundation of a hospital for poor, old, and invalid soldiers land to the annual value of 400l.; and to her poor servants, 2,000l. In the codicil of 28 Oct. she desired her successor to carry out her bequests, and adjured Philip to maintain peace and amity with England. But neither request proved of any avail, and the provisions of her will were not carried out.

Soon after Mary's death Philip ceased to identify himself with England. In a vague hope that he might yet secure the succession, he at first made an offer to marry Elizabeth, by whom he had always been personally attracted; but he finally replied to her temporising reception of his advances by signing a peace with France, which secured her in the possession of Calais, and by marrying the French king's daughter Isabella (24 June 1559). At the end of the year he left the Netherlands for Spain, and remained there till his death. His third wife died in 1568, leaving him two daughters, and in 1570 he married his niece, Anne of Austria, by whom he was father of his successor, Philip III. Meanwhile his relations with England became openly hostile, and Elizabeth's enemies throughout Europe regarded him as their champion. The revolt of his subjects in the Netherlands excited the sympathy of Englishmen, whose fleets made repeated attacks on his possessions in South America. Philip intrigued with Mary Queen of Scots while Elizabeth's prisoner, and in 1588, after much delay, he formally, embarked on war with England, sending forth the Spanish Armada with ruinous results to his prestige. In 1590 his former subjects sacked Cadiz. He died at the Escurial, which he had built in accordance with a vow made on the field of St. Quentin, in September 1598. His religious feeling, always strong, degenerated in his later years into the least attractive form of bigotry.

Mary inherited a high spirit and strong will from both parents, and the early attempts of the enemies of her mother to detach her from her faith only riveted her to it the more closely. Mary's devotion to the catholic religion—the religion of her mother—was the central feature of her life and character. Filial piety forbade, in her view, any wavering in her adherence to the pope, who had identified himself with her mother's cause. Similar sentiments underlay her regard for her cousin Charles V, on whose advice she relied in the chief crises of her life. Only half an Englishwoman, she did not recognise the imprudence of identifying herself with her Spanish kinsmen, and to her blindness in that regard must be attributed her marriage—the great error of her life. That step outraged the national sentiment, and thus gave a colouring of patriotism to the protestant resistance which rendered the success of her religious policy impossible. She never stooped to conciliate popular opinion, and rarely deviated from a course that she had once adopted; but her obvious reluctance to seriously entertain Philip's proposal to marry Elizabeth to Philibert of Savoy indicates that before her death she realised that the country would not tolerate another queen wedded to a foreign prince. A prayer-book said to be hers, now in MS. Sloane 1583, is stained with tears and much handling at the pages which contain the prayers for the unity of the holy catholic church and for the safe delivery of a woman in childbed (f. 15). The fact is an instructive commentary on Mary's last years. In her domestic policy Mary showed much regard for legal form, although in her later financial measures she violated the spirit of it. She practically obtained parliamentary sanction for every step she toot to effect the restoration of Catholicism; she refused to support the Savoy marriage scheme on the ground that parliament was averse to it, and she bade her judges administer the laws without fear or favour. In January 1554, when she appointed Morgan chief justice of the common pleas, she addressed him thus: 'I charge you, sir, to minister the law and justice indifferently without respect of person; and notwithstanding the old error among you which will not admit any witness to speak or other matter be heard in favour of the adversary (the crown being party), it is my pleasure that whatever can be brought in favour of the subject may be admitted and heard. You are to sit there not as advocates for me, but as indifferent judges between me and my people' (State Trials, i. 72).

Although illness undoubtedly soured Mary's temper, and she was always capable of fits of passion, she treated her servants kindly, was gentle towards children, and was, in accordance with the dictates of her religion, very charitable to the poor. Her ladies-in-waiting were enthusiastic in their devotion to her (cf., Life of Jane Dormer). Her zeal for education was no less conspicuous than in the case of her brother and sister. She left money in her will to poor students at Oxford and Cambridge, and during her reign she founded