Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/359

Mary I grammar schools at Walsall, Clitheroe, and Leominster (all in 1554), and at Boston and Ripon (in 1555) (cf. Report of Schools Inquiry Commission) 1868, i. App. iv. 47). Fully sensible of the need of maintaining a dignified court, she spent much on pageantry and dress, and delighted in adorning herself with jewellery (Cal. Venetian, 1534–54, p. 533), while she encouraged foreign trade and was the first English sovereign to receive a Russian ambassador. She improved the music in the royal chapel, and was always devoted to the art. Roger Ascham [q. v.], despite his protestantism, she took into her service.

The ferocity with which Mary's personal character has been assailed by protestant writers must be ascribed to religious zeal. According to Foxe, Speed, Strype, and Rapin, she was cruel and vindictive, and delighted in the shedding of innocent blood, thus rendering 'her reign more bloody' than that of Diocletian or Richard III. Even Hume, Hallam, and Mr. Froude have largely accepted the verdict of their biassed predecessors. Camden, Fuller, and Godwin, with greater justice, admit that she was pious, merciful by nature, and munificent in charity. The policy of burning protestants, on which the adverse judgment mainly depends, was not lightly adopted. Mary had resolved to bring her people back to the old religion, and it was only when all other means seemed to be failing her that she had recourse to persecution, in the efficacy of which, as an ultimate resort, she had been educated to believe.

Mary had less dignity of bearing than Elizabeth (, Poesie, p. 248), but she was a good horsewoman, and practised riding assiduously, on the recommendation of her physicians. She spoke with effect in public. The reports of her beauty in her early years are hardly confirmed by her portraits, which give her either a vacant or a sour-tempered expression; but there is abundant evidence that her contemporaries thought her appearance attractive. Her complexion was good, but one of Philip's attendants declared she had no eyebrows. In middle life illness told on her, and gave her an aspect of age which her years did not warrant. Michiel, the Venetian ambassador, wrote of her in 1557 thus: 'She is of low stature, but has no deformity in any part of her person. She is thin and delicate. . . Her features are well formed, and. . . her looks are of a grave and sedate cast. Her eyes are so piercing as to command not only respect but awe from those on whom she casts them; yet she is very near-sighted, being unable to read, or do anything else without placing her eyes quite close to the object. Her voice is deep-toned and rather masculine, so that when she speaks she is heard some distance off.'

Portraits of Mary are numerous. In her youth Holbein painted her several times. His best example is at Burghley House, and is engraved by Lodge. A sketch by Holbein at Windsor has been engraved by Bartolozzi. The portrait painted by Sir Antonio More and sent to Philip before marriage is in the Prado Gallery at Madrid. An engraving by Vasquez is very rare. A picture containing whole-length portraits of Mary and Philip, also by More, is at Woburn Abbey, and is dated 1558. She also figures in a group of family portraits, including her father, Catherine Parr, and her sister and brother—now at Hampton Court. Two contemporary prints by Hogenberg were published in 1555; one, bearing her motto, 'Veritas Temporis Filia,' displays a very malignant expression. The second is more pleasing. [The Life by Miss Strickland gives a good deal of information, but its dates are confusing. It is at present the sole biography of any fulness. The Introduction by Sir Frederic Madden to the Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary (1831) supplies much good material for her early years. But the chief sources, the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII (ed. Brewer and Gairdner), the Domestic State Paper' (1547–58), and the three series (Foreign, Spanish, and Venetian) of the Calendars of State Papers, which give the despatches of the Imperial and Venetian ambassadors, with the prefaces of the editors, Father Stevenson, Rawdon Browne, and Major Martin A. S. Hume, largely supplement or supercede all that was written before their publication. The despatches of Michiel (the Venetian ambassador) from 1554 to 1557 have been published in the original Italian by Paul Friedmann, with a valuable preface in French (Venice, 1869). Michiel's depatches, like those of Badoaro, Venetian ambassador to Charles V, are also largely used in Rosso's very rare Historia delle cose occorse nel regno Inghilterra. . . dopo la morte di Odoardo VI, Venice, 1558 (Bodl. Libr.) Les Ambassades de Messieurs de Noailles en Angleterre, ed. Abbé de Vertot, Leyden, 1763, 6 vols., are invaluable for the French relations. Tytler's History of Edward VI and Queen Mary prints in English many of Renard's letters; others appear in the Papiers d'État de Cardinal Granvelle, published in Les Documents Inédits sur l'Histoire de France. Rawdon Browne's Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII, Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII, Friedmann's Anne Boleyn, and Froude's Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, all mainly based on the official correspondence of ambassadors, give many particulars of Mary's youth down to her mother's death. The Literary Remains of Edward VI (ed. Nichols for Roxburghe Club), the Chronicle