command of the whole of Italy that appertained to the Spaniards, whose armies were reinforced in order to meet the French (then preparing to cross the Alps under the Duke of Guise) and keep down the Italian people, who, in many places, were ready to rise. The pope was in a paroxysm of rage, which did not permit him to wear an almost useless mask. He arrested and threw into prison Garcilasso de la Vega, who was then at Rome as ambassador from Philip in his quality of King of England; and he imprisoned and put to the torture De Tassis, the Roman postmaster, for passing certain letters written in the Spanish interest. The Duke of Alva, who soon afterwards massacred the Protestants in heaps in the Low Countries, showed little delicacy towards this turbulent head of the Catholic church: anticipating his movements, he marched an army across the Neapolitan frontiers into the Roman states, being resolved that they, and not the Spanish kingdom of Naples, should be the seat of the war. The Spaniards spread confusion, destruction, and terror through the whole of the ecclesiastical states: people fled from the city of Rome, expecting another sack, and not doubting that the troops of his most Catholic majesty would prove as bloodthirsty and rapacious as the auxiliaries under the Constable Bourbon: but Paul IV., who had the fierce spirit of a pope of the fourteenth century, would not listen to terms of accommodation; and though one of his nephews, the Cardinal Caraffa, had a conference with the Duke of Alva on the little island of Fiumicino, they concluded nothing but a truce for forty days, which was rather meant for gaining time, and deceiving each other, than for a preliminary to any lasting peace. In the mean while, notwithstanding a solemn truce for five years, which still existed between France and Spain, the Duke of Guise had led an army of twelve thousand infantry, four hundred men-at-arms, seven hundred light-horse, and a great number of knights, through the passes of the Alps, and was looking forward with bright and not unreasonable hopes to the conquest of Lombardy.* This was the state of affairs in Italy towards the end of the year 1556. In the month of March of the present year (1557) King Philip gratified his wife Mary with a short visit, and he entered London in some state, being accompanied by the queen and divers nobles of the realm.† But it was soon seen that his most Catholic majesty had not come for love, the sole object of his visit being to drive Mary and her council into a declaration of war against France. This, however, was not so easy a matter as he had fancied: Cardinal Pole and nearly the whole of the council opposed the measure; and even such of the ministry as were more compliant dreaded the effects of a war with France, which was sure to be accompanied by a war with Scotland, in the present deranged state of the finances

Giannone, Storia Civile del Regno di Napoli, Summonte.-
Stow.-Holinshed.

De Thou.

and evident ill-humour of the people. Philip told his miserable wife that, if she failed to gratify him in this respect, he would instantly leave England, and never see her again; her councillors told her that, by her marriage articles, she was not bound to engage the country in her husband's wars, and that her so doing would be considered by the people as a reducing of England to a dependence on Spain. But the Spanish interests were served by a strange accident. Among the numerous English refugees in France was one Thomas Stafford, a person of some rank and influence, who entertained the notion of revolutionizing England. With only thirty-two persons, he crossed over from France, landed at Scarborough in Yorkshire, and surprised the castle there :* but, on the third day, they were all made prisoners, without effusion of blood, by the Earl of Westmorland. Stafford, Richard Saunders, and three or four others, among whom was a Frenchman, were sent up to London, committed to the Tower, and there tortured into a confession that Henry II., the French king, had aided and abetted their enterprise; which was not altogether improbable, as the French court knew what Philip and the Spaniards were doing in London, as well as the devotion of Mary to her husband's interests. Upon the 28th of May Stafford was beheaded on Tower-hill, and on the morrow three of his companions were drawn to Tyburn and there executed. Richard Saunders, who had probably been a traitor, or had divulged more than the rest, received the queen's pardon. Making the most of what had happened, the queen accused the French court of encouraging many traitorous bands of her subjects,-of giving an asylum to her outlaws, who were maintained in France with annual pensions, contrary to treaty,of sending over to the Castle of Scarborough Stafford and others in French ships, provided with armour, munition, and money; and on the 7th of June she made a formal declaration of war,-perhaps the first declaration of the kind thoroughly unpopular with the nation. Having obtained what he wanted, and earnestly recommended the instant raising of troops to act as auxiliaries to his own army on the northern frontiers of France, Philip took his departure on the 6th of July,—and, happily for England, he never returned! It was difficult-most difficult-to do her husband's bidding; but, with great exertions, Mary levied one thousand horse, four thousand foot, and two thousand pioneers, and sent them over to Flanders in the end of July, under the command of the Earl of Pembroke, with the Lord Robert Dudley for his master of the ordnance.†

Amidst this din of war the Lady Anne of Cleves died very quietly at Chelsea. She left a good

Though the means of execution were defective, the time was wel. chosen. King Philip had arrived in the beginning of March: Stafford came over at the end of the same month; and he instantly sent out letters, and bills, and manifestoes, printed and written, affirming the queen to be most unworthy, and that the king had brought into this realm the number of twelve thousand Spaniards, and that inte their hands were to be delivered twelve of the strongest holds in this realm.-Stow.

+ Stow.-Holinshed

name behind her among the people, and was buried like a princess royal in Westminster Abbey. "She was," says Holinshed, "a lady of right commendable regard, courteous, gentle, a good housekeeper, and very bountiful to her servants."

Having joined the bands of Flemings, Germans, Italians, Dalmatians, Illyrians, Croats, and others, that formed the army of King Philip, the English marched with this mixed host, under the supreme command of Elizabeth's rejected suitor, the Duke of Savoy, one of the most approved captains of those times; and they soon distinguished themselves by their bravery in a fierce battle under the walls of St. Quintin, where many of the chief nobility of France were cither slain or taken prisoners; and such a consternation was spread among the French, that it was thought by many that Philip might have taken Paris had he marched immediately upon it. But Philip was always wary and cautious; nor does he appear ever to have contemplated the doing of much more than the forcing of the Duke of Guise to come out of Italy. He sate down before the town of St. Quintin, which made a gallant resistance for seventeen days, during which the French had time to fortify Paris, and to call up troops from the provinces. But an invading army of sixty thousand men was so formidable that they were obliged even to recall the Duke of Guise, and, as Philip had calculated, that general, who had advanced to the frontiers of Naples, hurried back across the Alps. To prolong the campaign in an easy manner, Philip ordered the Spaniards, English, Croats, and the rest, to lay siege to Ham and Cattelet, which places they took, and then, on the approach of winter, they retired into quarters in Flanders. When the news of the great victory of St. Quintin reached England, which gained nothing by it, Mary caused processions to be everywhere made, and Te Deum to be sung, giving all laud and praise to Almighty God; "and in the streets of every city and town of the realm were made bonfires, with great rejoicing: which sudden gladness turned very shortly after to great and long sorrow."*

In fact, the coming of Guise out of Italy, which was so profitable to Philip, was a mortal blow to Mary; for that active commander, after securing the northern frontiers, resolved to sit down before Calais in the depth of winter, and vigorously, and with a large army, commence a siege which, for ages, had been deemed utterly hopeless. Calais, which the English considered as impregnable and as perfectly secure from an assault during the winter, had generally its garrison reduced at that season; but in the present year, through want of money and the efforts made to serve Philip, that reduction had amounted to two-thirds of the whole force; and when the Lord-Deputy Wentworth represented the danger of thus depriving the place of the means of defence, his representations were not heeded. In the month of November two skil• Holinshed.

ful Italian engineers, Strozzi and Delbene, reconnoitred the town and all the forts adjacent, having gained admittance in disguise. When Philip obtained a hint of the intended project of Guise, he offered to reinforce the garrison of Calais with a body of Spanish troops; but the English council, with a jealousy certainly not groundless, declined this offer. But at the same time they were unable to make any ready effort themselves, even when warned of the danger: the English navy had been allowed to go to wrack and ruin :* to victual the remnant of it, to send the troops to Flanders, the queen had seized all the corn she could find in Norfolk and Suffolk, without paying for it: to meet the expenses of that expedition she had forced the city of London to lend or give her sixty thousand pounds; she had levied before the legal time the second year's subsidy voted by parliament; she had issued many privy seals to procure loans from people of property; she had, in short, exhausted her means for her husband, and at the moment of crisis she appears to have dreaded calling her parliament together to ask for more money. thus were the weak garrison and the English citizens and merchants of Calais left to their fate, almost without a single effort being made for their relief.

And

A.D. 1558.-On New Year's Day Guise entered the English pale; and, sending one part of his army along the downs to Risebank, he, with the other, and an unusually heavy train of artillery, marched towards Nieulay, or Newnham Bridge, and, attacking in force an outwork at the village of St. Agatha, at the head of the causeway, drove the garrison into Newnham, and took possession of that outwork. The English Lord Deputy feeling that, from the miserable weakness of the gar rison, he could spare no assistance for the defence of the other outworks, ordered them to be evacuated as soon as they should be attacked. This was done at Newnham Bridge, whence the captain retired with his soldiers into Calais, and that so secretly, that the French kept firing at the fort when there was not a man in it; but the outwork of Risebank surrendered with its garrison. Thus, by the third morning of the siege, the Duke of Guise had made himself master of two most important posts, of which one commanded the entrance of the harbour, the other the approach across the marshes from Flanders. The next day, with five double cannons, and three culverins, he battered the walls near to the Water-gate, in order to make the English believe that he intended to force an entrance at that point, and cause them "to have the less regard unto the defence of the castle," which was the weakest part of the town, and the place "where the French were ascertained by their espials to win easy entry;" and while

The whole of the blame is not to be laid to Mary's government. The navy had been much diminished and shamefully neglected during the reign of Edward VI., when all the servants of govern ment, from the highest to the lowest, were addicted to gaspillage. But sailors are superstitious, and Mary's reign opened with a bad omen. "The Great Harry," which Holinshed calls "the notablest ship of England," was burnt at Woolwich on the 26th of August, 1553, through the carelessness of the sailors. She is said to have been of a thousand tons burthen.

the garrison lost time in repairing a false breach made by the Water-gate, Guise suddenly brought fifteen double cannons to bear upon the castle, which, with astounding negligence on the part of the English government, had been suffered to fall into such decay that it tottered at the first cannon shot, and a wide breach was made in it before evening. When that was done, Guise detached one body to occupy the quay, and another, under Strozzi, to effect a lodgement on the other side of the harbour; but Strozzi was beaten back with loss. About eight in the evening, at ebb tide, de Grammont was thrown forward with some three hundred harquebusiers to reconnoitre the great breach in the castle. The ditch was broad and deep, but the water was low, having been partially drained off, and the French had brought up by sea a great quantity of hurdles and other materials to facilitate the passage. Upon Grammont's report that the breach seemed to be abandoned, Guise threw himself into the ditch, and forded it, not finding the water much above his girdle: his men followed in great haste-and happy men were they to enter the rotten old castle without resistance. The Lord Wentworth, as the best thing that could be done, had withdrawn the English soldiers, had made a train with certain big barrels of gunpowder, and now anticipated the pleasure of blowing the castle and the Frenchmen into the air together. But this train was badly laid; the French, coming up out of the ditch with their clothes wringing wet, moistened the gunpowder, and saw the attempt to destroy them fail. After passing the night in the castle, Guise sent on his men to the assault of the town, which he fancied would be taken with equal ease; but the marshal, Sir Anthony Agar, with a small body of brave men, repulsed the French and drove them back to the castle. Sir Anthony next tried to drive them from that position, and persevered till he himself, his son and heir, and some fourscore officers and men were laid low in front of the castle-gate. So miserably weak was the garrison, that this small loss of men was decisive. Having in vain expected aid from Dover, having received no tidings, nor so much as a sign,-the Lord Deputy on that same night demanded a parley. The French acceded, but would grant none but the harshest terms of capitulation. After long debating, they concluded in this sort:-"First, that the town, with all the great artillery, victuals, and munitions, should be freely yielded to the French king, the lives of the inhabitants only saved, to whom safe conduct should be granted to pass where they listed; saving the Lord Deputy, with fifty such other as the duke should appoint, to remain prisoners, and be put to their ransom. The next morning the Frenchmen entered and possessed the town, and forthwith all the men, women, and children, were commanded to leave their houses, and to go to certain places appointed for them to remain in, till order might be taken for their sending away.'

Holiushed.

"The places thus appointed for them to remain in," continues Holinshed, "were chiefly four-the two churches of our Lady and St. Nicholas, the Deputy's house, and the Staple-where they rested a great part of that day and one whole night, and the next day till three of the clock at afternoon, without either meat or drink. And while they were thus in the churches, and those other places, the Duke of Guise, in the name of the French king, in their hearing, made a proclamation, strictly charging all and every person that were inhabitants of the town of Calais, having about them any money, plate, or jewels, to the value of one groat, to bring the same forthwith, and lay it down upon the high altars of the said churches, upon pain of death, bearing them in hand also, that they should be searched. By reason of which proclamation there was made a great and sorrowful offertory. And while they were at this offering within the churches, the Frenchmen entered into their houses, and rifled the same, where was found inestimable riches and treasure, especially of ordnance, armour, and other munitions. Thus dealt the French with the English in lieu and recompense of the like usage to the French when the forces of King Philip prevailed at St. Quintin; where, not content with the honour of victory, the English, in sacking the town, sought nothing more than the satisfying of their greedy vein of covetousness, with an extreme neglect of all moderation. About two of

the clock next day at afternoon, being the 7th of January, a great number of the meanest sort were suffered to pass out of the town in safety, being guarded through the army with a number of Scottish light horsemen, who used the English very well and friendly; and after this, every day for the

space of three or four days together, there were sent away divers companies of them till all were avoided, those only excepted that were appointed to be reserved for prisoners, as the Lord Wentworth and others. There were in the town of Calais 500 English soldiers ordinary, and no more and of the townsmen not fully 200 fighting men (a small garrison for the defence of such a town), and there were in the whole number of men, women, and children (as they were accounted when they went out of the gate) 4200 persons."

Thus was lost, in eight days, the town of Calais, which had cost Edward III. an obstinate siege of more than eleven months, and which the English had kept through all the varieties of their fortune for 211 years. When it was too late, some troops and ships were collected at Dover for its relief; "but such terrible tempests then arose and continued without abatement for four or five days together, that the like had not been seen before in remembrance of man; wherefore some said that the same was done by necromancy, and that the devil was raised up, and become French; the truth whereof is known to God." Such of the queen's ships as tried the passage were so shaken and torn with violence of weather, that they were

• Grafton.

forced to return with great danger, and with the loss of all their tackle and furniture. If this tempestuous weather had not chanced it was thought that they might have attempted to recover Calais, and to give some succour to Guisnes and Ham.

"So soon as this Duke of Guise, contrary to all expectation, had in so few days gained this strong town of Calais (afore thought impregnable), and had put the same in such order as best seemed for his advantage, proud of the spoil, and pressing forward upon his sudden fortune, without giving long time to the residue of the captains of the forts there, to breathe upon their business, the 13th day of the said month, with all provision requisite for a siege, he marched with his army from Calais unto the town and fort of Guisnes, five miles distant from thence." Though miserably fortified, the castle of Guisnes was most gallantly defended by Lord Grey de Wilton, who had obtained some four hundred Spanish and Burgundian soldiers from the army of King Philip; but in a few days the walls were completely shattered; the Spanish auxiliaries were killed almost to a man, and the garrison forced their officers to capitulate. Nothing now remained unconquered within the English pale except the little castle of Ham, which was so completely surrounded with marshes that the French would have found great difficulty in bringing up their heavy ordnance. But Lord Edward Dudley, the captain who commanded there, abandoned the place without regard to the honour of arms, the night after the surrender of Guisnes, and fled with his small garrison into Flanders. "Now seemed every day a year to the French

Grafton,

king, until he personally had visited Calais and his new conquered country: wherefore, about the end of January aforesaid, he took his voyage thither, accompanied with no small number of his nobility."* The grief of the English court, an the vexation of the people, were as great as the joy and triumph of the French. Yet, except as a humiliation to military fame, and as a blow to national pride, the loss was not so serious. Calais, indeed, had been reckoned as "one of the eyes of England," but it was an eye constantly in pain and peril, costing immense sums for its care and cure; and it was soon seen that England could see very well without it. Its importance as a mart was, indeed, wholly fictitious; and it was always a temptation to continental wars and invasions, by offering an easy entrance into France. If he had not been opposed by a public prejudice and the temper of Henry VIII., Cardinal Wolsey, it is said, would have sold Calais to its rightful owners-glad to have his country rid of it in any way that did not imply weakness or dishonour.† In very brief time, when better days came with Elizabeth, it was seen that English ships and English sailors were quite capable of guarding those narrow seas, without our having to support, at an enormous expense, a fortress on the opposite shores. Of course the weight of these reasons was not felt at the time-nor, indeed, till long after. The people murmured and lamented, and the government was disgraced and depressed in the extreme by this result of a war which they had engaged in without justice or reason. At the same time the Scots, acting on the usual impulse from + Southey's Naval History.

• Grafton,

France, began to stir upon the borders. After the peace, which we have mentioned in the preceding reign, the Queen-dowager Mary of Guise made a journey to France, carrying with her many of the principal Scottish nobility. She visited her daughter Mary and her relations, and arranged a grand political plan, by which, on her return, though not without difficulty, the Earl of Arran was induced to resign the whole government of the kingdom into her hands.* On the 12th of April, 1554, she assumed the name of Regent. In this capacity she acted chiefly under the guidance of d'Oisel, a Frenchman of great ability. Her government, upon the whole, was judicious and beneficial to Scotland; it would have been more so had the Regent not been obliged to make sacrifices to the politics, religion, and interests of her family and friends in France. When Mary declared war in the preceding year, the French court required the Queen-Regent of Scotland to make a diversion in their favour. She summoned a convention at Newbottle, and requested the states to concur in a declaration of hostilities against England; but the Scottish nobles, in part from a jealousy of the French, in part from their conviction that the war would be unprofitable, refused their assent. Upon this, having recourse to stratagem, she ordered d'Oisel to begin some fortifications at Eyemouth. As this was upon ground mentioned in the last treaty with Edward, part of the garrison of Berwick made an inroad to prevent the erection of the works. This proceeding, as she had calculated, exasperated the Scottish people, who anon retaliated in their own fashion by making forays into England, without waiting or caring for any declaration or orders from the government. But when D'Oisel, in person, undertook the siege of the castle of Wark, the council prevented him, and, not only recalled him, but gave him a sharp rebuke.

"After the French king's departure from Calais he made great haste for the accomplishment of the marriage before moved between Francis his eldest son, called the Dauphin, and Mary Stuart, daughter and sole heir of James V., late King of Scotland."+ The great political importance of this match will be developed in the following reign. For the present it will suffice to state that Mary Queen of Scots, in the sixteenth year of her age, was united to a sickly, silly boy, a few months younger than herself, and that the memorable marriage was solemnized in the city of Paris on the 24th day of April (1558) "with most magnificent pomp and triumph, being honoured with the presence of the most part of the princes, prelates, lords, and barons of both

Arran had been gratified with French pensions, with the highsounding title of Duke of Chatelherault, and with a public acknowledgment of his right as next heir (after the young Mary) to the Scottish throne. This paltry man had also thought it expedient to bargain that no severe investigation of his management of affairs, and of the public purse, while Regent, should be made by his successor in the regency. Arran's brother, the primate of Scotland, called him a fool for thus resigning the government when nothing stood between him and the crown but the life of a puling girl."Sir Walter Scott, Hist. Scot.

↑ Grafton,

the realms, as if it were for a confirmation of this Before this great event, but at a

new alliance."* time when it was known it would take place, and when the nation was smarting with the pang of the recent loss and disgrace at Calais, Queen Mary summoned a parliament that she might implore for more money. This parliament met, and the members being evidently excited by a passionate desire to recover Calais, or to vindicate the honour of the national arms by giving some notable defeat to the French, without making any reflections on the arbitrary methods recently resorted to by the queen for the raising of money, they proceeded to vote her a fifteenth, a subsidy of 4s. in the pound on land, and 2s. 8d. on goods, to be paid in four years, by equal instalments. From this liberal parliament the queen turned to the clergy, who readily granted her 8s. in the pound, to be paid in the like manner in four years. There was, however, some opposition in the Commons to the passing of an act confirming all the sales and grants of crown lands which the queen had made, or which she might make, for seven years to come. But the bill was passed, and one Copley, a member of the Lower House, was put under arrest for his opposition to it. With the money thus raised Mary, "who was a princess of heart and courage more than commonly is in woman-kind, thought herself so much touched in honour by the loss of her said town and possessions on that side the sea, as she counted her life irksome until the same were either recovered again or the loss redubbedt with some like victory against the French elsewhere." She therefore hired a number of ships, and dispatched a fleet of upwards of a hundred sail of all sizes, but chiefly small, under the High Admiral, Edward Lord Clinton, who was ordered to join King Philip's squadron, and while the French king should be engaged in the field with the Spanish army and their auxiliaries, to lay waste his coast and surprise some of his towns: Brest in particular, as well because of its convenient situation for receiving succours and supplies from England as because it was known not to be well garrisoned, was thought the best mark to be shot at for the time." "It is verily believed," says the chronicler, "that if the admirals of England and Flanders had been present there with their navies as the said other few ships of England were, and upon this sudden had attempted Calais with the aid of the Count of Egmont, having his power present, the town of Calais might have been recovered again with as little difficulty, and haply in as short a time, as it was before gained by the Duke of Guise. But the said admiral, as it appears, knew nothing thereof."§ But in other respects the expedition was badly managed: instead of making at once for Brest, Clinton and the Flemish admiral lay to near the little town of Conquet, where one morning at break of day they

• Grafton.

Redubbed, made up, from the old French redouber Holinshed,

Holinshed.-Grafton.-Southey's Naval History.