Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/621

Rh OF ENGLAND.] MARY 593 was thought right to give Mary an establishment of her own along with a council on the borders of Wales, for the better government of the Marches. For some years she p^cordingly kept her court at Ludlow, while new arrange ments were made for the disposal of her hand in connexion with the latest turn in the tortuous game of diplomacy. She was now proposed as a wife, not for the dauphin as before, but for his father Francis I., who had just been redeemed from captivity at Madrid, and who was only too glad of an alliance with England to mitigate the severe conditions imposed on him by the emperor. Wolsey, how ever, on this occasion, only made use of the princess as a bait to enhance the terms of the compact, and left Francis free in the end to marry the emperor s sister. It was during this negotiation, as Henry afterwards pretended, that the question was first raised whether Henry s own marriage with Catherine was a lawful one. The bishop of Tarbes, who was one of the ambassadors sent over by Francis to ask the princess in marriage, had, it was said, started an objection that she might possibly be considered illegitimate on account of her mother having been once the wife of her father s brother. The statement was a mere pretence to shield the king when the unpopu larity of the divorce became apparent. It is not only extremely improbable in itself, but is proved to be untrue by the strongest evidence, for we have pretty full con temporary records of the whole negotiation. On the con trary, it is quite clear that Henry, who had already for some time conceived the project of a divorce, kept the matter a dead secret, and was particularly anxious that the French ambassadors should not know it, while he used his daughter s hand as a bait for a new alliance. The alliance itself, however, was actually concluded by a treaty dated Westminster, the 30th April 1527, in which it was pro vided, as regards the Princess Mary, that she should be married either to Francis himself or to his second son Henry, duke of Orleans. But the real object was only to lay the foundation of a perfect mutual understanding between the two kings, which Wolsey soon after went into France to confirm. During the next nine years the life of Mary, as well as that of her mother, was rendered miserable by the conduct of Henry VIII. in seeking a divorce. During the most of that period mother and daughter seem to have been kept apart, and, though sometimes living at no great distance from each other, were strictly forbidden to see each other. Of the two it may be that Queen Catherine had the hardest trial ; but Mary s was scarcely less severe. Removed from court and treated as a bastard, she was, on the birth of Anne Boleyn s daughter, required to give up the dignity of princess and acknowledge the illegitimacy of her own birth. On her refusal her household was broken up, and she was sent to Hatfield to act as lady-in-waiting to her own infant sister. Nor was even this the worst of her trials ; her very life was in danger from the hatred of Anne Boleyn. Her health, moreover, was indifferent, and even when she was seriously ill, although Henry sent his own physician Dr Buttes to attend her, he declined to let her mother visit her. So also at her mother s death in January 1536 she was forbidden to take a last farewell of her. But in May following another change occurred which seemed to promise some kind of relief. Anne Boleyn, the real cause of all her miseries, fell under the king s displeasure and was put to death. Mary was then urged to make a humble submission to her father as the means of recovering his favour, and, after a good deal of correspondence with the king s secretary Cromwell, she actually did so. The terms exacted of her were bitter in the extreme, but there was no chance of making life tolerable otherwise, if indeed she was permitted to live at all ; and the poor friendless girl, absolutely at the mercy of a father who could brook no contradiction, at length subscribed an act of submission, acknowledging the king as supreme, repudiating the pope s authority, and confessing that the marriage between her father and mother &quot; was by God s law and man s law incestuous and unlawful.&quot; No act, perhaps, in the whole of Henry s reign gives us a more painful idea of his revolting despotism. Mary was a high-spirited girl, and undoubtedly popular. All Europe looked upon her at that time as the only legitimate child of her father, but her father himself compelled her to disown the title and pass an unjust stigma on her own birth and her mother s good name. Nevertheless Henry was now reconciled to her, and gave her a household in some degree suitable to her rank. During the rest of the reign we hear little about her except in connexion with a number of new marriage projects taken up and abandoned successively, one of which, to the count palatine Philip, duke of Bavaria, was specially repugnant to her in the matter of religion. Her privy purse expenses for nearly the whole of this period have been published, and show that Hatfield, Beaulieu or Newhall in Essex, Puchmond, and Hunsdon were among her principal places of residence. Although she was still treated as of illegitimate birth, it was believed that the king, having obtained from parliament the extra ordinary power to dispose of the crown by will, would restore her to her place in the succession, and three years before his death she was so restored by statute, but still under conditions to be regulated by her father s will. Under the reign of her brother Edward VI. she was again subjected to severe trials, which at one time made her seriously meditate taking flight and escaping abroad. Edward himself indeed seems to have been personally not unkind to her, but the religious revolution in his reign assumed proportions such as it had not done before, and Mary, who had done sufficient violence to her own convic tions in submitting to a despotic father, was not disposed to yield an equally tame obedience to authority exercised by a factious council in the name of a younger brother not yet come to years of discretion. Besides, the cause of the pope was naturally her own. In spite of the forced declaration formerly wrung from herself, no one really regarded her as a bastard, and the full recognition of her rights depended on the recognition of the pope as head of the church. Hence, when Edward s parliament passed an Act of Uniformity enjoining services in English and com munion in both kinds, the law appeared to her totally void of authority, and she insisted on having mass in her own private chapel under the old form. When ordered to desist, she appealed for protection to the emperor Charles V., who, being her cousin, intervened for some time not ineffectually, threatening war with England if her religious liberty was interfered with. But Edward s court was composed of factions of which the most violent eventually carried the day. Lord Seymour, the admiral, was attainted of treason and beheaded in 1549. His brother, the Protector Somerset, met with the same fate in 1552. Dudley, duke of Northumberland, then became paramount in the privy council, and easily obtained the sanction of the young king to those schemes for altering the succession which led immediately after his death to the usurpation cf Lady Jane Grey. Dudley had, in fact, overawed all the rest of the privy council, and when the event occurred he took such energetic measures to give effect to the scheme that Lady Jane was actually recognized as queen for some days, and Mary had even to fly from Hoddesden into Norfolk. But the country was really devoted to her cause, as indeed her right in law was unquestionable, and before many days she was royally received in London, and took up her abode within the Tower. XV. -- 75