XXXVII. 1558. CHAP. Voking Pole's legatine commission, appointed in his room Cardinal Peyto, an Observantine friar and confessor to the queen. But Mary would never permit the new legate to act upon the commission; and Paul was afterwards obliged to restore Cardinal Pole to his authority. There occur few general remarks besides what have already been made in the course of our narration, with regard to the general state of the kingdom during this reign. The naval power of England was then so inconsiderable, that, fourteen thousand pounds being ordered to be applied to the fleet, both for repairing and victualling it, it was computed that ten thousand pounds a year would afterwards answer all necessary charges. The arbitrary proceedings of the queen above mentioned, joined to many monopolies granted by this princess, as well as by her father, checked the growth of commerce; and so much the more, as all other princes in Europe either were not permitted, or did not find it necessary, to proceed in so tyrannical a manner. Acts of Parliament, both in the last reign and in the beginning of the present, had laid the same impositions on the merchants of the still-yard as on other aliens: yet the queen, immediately after her marriage, complied with the solicitations of the emperor, and, by her prerogative, suspended those laws. Nobody in that age pretended to question this exercise of prerogative. The historians are entirely silent with regard to it; and it is only by the collection of public papers that it is handed down to us. An absurd law had been made in the preceding reign, by which every one was prohibited from making cloth unless he had served an apprenticeship of seven years. The law was repealed in the first year of the queen; and this plain reason given, that it had occasioned the decay of the woollen manufacture, and had ruined several towns. It is strange that Edward's law should have been revived during the reign of Elizabeth; and still more strange that it should still subsist. A passage to Archangel had been discovered by the English during the last reign; and a beneficial trade with Muscovy had been established. A solemn embassy P. 259. b Burnet, vol. iii. e Rymer, vol. xv. p. 364. 1558. was sent by the czar to Queen Mary. The ambassadors CHAP. were shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland; but being XXXVII. hospitably entertained there, they proceeded on the journey, and were received at London with great pomp and solemnity. This seems to have been the first intercourse which that empire had with any of the western potentates of Europe. A law was passed in this reign, by which the number of horses, arms, and furniture was fixed, which each person, according to the extent of his property, should be provided with for the defence of the kingdom. A man of a thousand pounds a year, for instance, was obliged to maintain at his own charge six horses fit for demi-lances, of which three at least to be furnished with sufficient harness, steel saddles, and weapons proper for the demilances, and ten horses fit for light horsemen; with furniture and weapons proper for them: he was obliged to have forty corslets furnished; fifty almain revets, or, instead of them, forty coats of plate, corslets or brigandines furnished; forty pikes, thirty long bows, thirty sheafs of arrows, thirty steel caps or skulls, twenty black bills or halberds, twenty harquebuts, and twenty morions or sallets. We may remark, that a man of a thousand marks of stock was rated equal to one of two hundred pounds a year: a proof that few or none at that time lived on their stock in money, and that great profits were made by the merchants in the course of trade. There is no class above a thousand pounds a year. We may form a notion of the little progress made in arts and refinement about this time from one circumstance: a man of no less rank than the comptroller of Edward VI.'s household paid only thirty shillings a year of our present money for his house in Channel-row: yet labour and provisions, and consequently houses, were only about a third of the present price. Erasmus ascribes the frequent plagues in England to the nastiness and dirt and slovenly habits among the people. "The floors," says he, "are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lies unmolested an ancient collection e Hollingshed, p. 732. Heylin, p. 71. g Nicholson's Historical Library. VOL. III. f 4 and 5 Phil. and Mar. cap. 2. B b CHAP. of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of XXXVII. dogs and cats, and every thing that is nasty"." 1558. Hollingshed, who lived in Queen Elizabeth's reign, gives a very curious account of the plain, or rather rude, way of living of the preceding generation. There scarcely was a chimney to the houses, even in considerable towns: the fire was kindled by the wall, and the smoke sought its way out at the roof, or door, or windows; the houses were nothing but wattling plastered over with clay: the people slept on straw pallets, and had a good round log under their head for a pillow; and almost all the furniture and utensils were of wood'. In this reign, we find the first general law with regard to highways, which were appointed to be repaired by parish duty all over England". h Eras. Epist. 432. k 2 and 3 Phil. and Mar. cap. 8. i See note [S], at the end of the volume. CHAPTER XXXVIII. ELIZABETH. QUEEN'S POPULARITY.-RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PROTESTANT RELIGION.-A 1558. In a nation so divided as the English, it could scarcely CHAP. be expected that the death of one sovereign, and the XXXVIII. accession of another, who was generally believed to have embraced opposite principles to those which prevailed, could be the object of universal satisfaction: yet so much were men displeased with the present conduct of affairs, and such apprehensions were entertained of futurity, that the people, overlooking their theological disputes, expressed a general and unfeigned joy, that the sceptre had Queen's passed into the hand of Elizabeth. That princess had popularity. discovered great prudence in her conduct during the reign of her sister; and as men were sensible of the imminent danger to which she was every moment exposed, compassion towards her situation, and concern for her safety, had rendered her, to an uncommon degree, the favourite of the nation. A Parliament had been assembled a few days before Mary's death; and when Heathe, Archbishop of York, then chancellor, notified to them that event, scarcely an interval of regret appeared; and the two Houses immediately resounded with the joyful acclamations of "God save Queen Elizabeth! Long and happily may she reign!" The people, less actuated by faction, and less influenced by private views, expressed a joy still more general and hearty on her proclamation; and the auspicious commencement of this reign prognosticated that felicity and glory which, during its whole course, so uniformly attended it". Elizabeth was at Hatfield when she heard of her sister's death; and after a few days, she went thence to London, through crowds of people, who strove with each a Burnet, vol. ii. p. 373. 1558. CHAP. other in giving her the strongest testimony of their affecXXXVIII. tion. On her entrance into the Tower, she could not forbear reflecting on the great difference between her present fortune, and that which a few years before had attended her, when she was conducted to that place as a prisoner, and lay there exposed to all the bigoted malignity of her enemies. She fell on her knees, and expressed her thanks to Heaven for the deliverance which the Almighty had granted her from her bloody persecutors; a deliverance, she said, no less miraculous than that which Daniel had received from the den of lions. This act of pious gratitude seems to have been the last circumstance in which she remembered any past hardships and injuries. With a prudence and magnanimity truly laudable, she buried all offences in oblivion, and received with affability even those who had acted with the greatest malevolence against her. Sir Harry Bennifield himself, to whose custody she had been committed, and who had treated her with severity, never felt, during the whole course of her reign, any effects of her resentment". Yet was not the gracious reception which she gave prostitute and undistinguishing. When the bishops came in a body to make their obeisance to her, she expressed to all of them sentiments of regard; except to Bonner, from whom she turned aside, as from a man polluted with blood, who was a just object of horror to every heart susceptible of humanity. After employing a few days in ordering her domestic affairs, Elizabeth notified to foreign courts her sister's death and her own accession. She sent Lord Cobham to the Low Countries, where Philip then resided; and she took care to express to that monarch her gratitude for the protection which he had afforded her, and her desire of persevering in that friendship which had so happily commenced between them. Philip, who had long foreseen this event, and who still hoped, by means of Elizabeth, to obtain that dominion over England, of which he had failed in espousing Mary, immediately despatched orders to the Duke of Feria, his ambassador at London, to make proposals of marriage to the queen; and he offered to procure from Rome a dispensation for b Burnet, vol. ii. p. 374. c Ibid. Heylin, p. 102. |