CHAPTER XXIII. ANOTHER CHANGE OF SCENE. THE death of young Edward opened up a new phase of social turbulence. Retaliation and vengeance the motto of one party-defiance or dissimulation of the other. The reader has seen the condition of affairs under the Protector Somerset, and the barbarous treatment of the English peasantry. The accession of Mary was the signal for an attempt at rebellion, and there is certainly sufficient excuse for the severity with which the insurrection was extinguished. In this case the cause of Mary and Elizabeth was nearly the same. The Reformers, were, however, rebels by condition, and no constitutional historian, like Hallam, can defend their conduct in Mary's reign. In fact, the character or standing of scarcely one of the leading or subordinate rebels of that period can bear the test of inquiry. "Motives" have been dilated on, but the motives here can be easily defined. Knaves, unprincipled men, political adventurers, came to the front under the mask of reforming religion, without a particle of religion in their hearts. The "Reformation of the Church" was a question which they had never sincerely contemplated, but could not compass, even if the necessity for it existed; they were as indifferent on that head as the "freebooters and soldiers of fortune" who harried Germany as the "defenders of the pure Gospel." The conduct of the "German Reformers" is even now fearful to contemplate. The "Peasant War," and the iconoclastic Vandalism of the Low Countries sufficiently indicate the fruits of their propagandism. But I must return to England in the reign of Queen Mary. Bentivoglio, who investigated with critical accuracy the numbers and the professors of the antagonistic creeds marshalled in the arena in Mary's reign, considered those honestly attached either to the Catholic Church, or to the Reformation, as numerically very small. The really disinterested and sincere Catholics he reckons at about onethirtieth part of the inhabitants; those who would, without the least scruple, become Catholic and compel their tenants and followers to do so, if Catholicity became once more the established religion of the realm, he estimates at fourfifths.* The degradation in Queen Mary's time of the national character, so far as the politicians and parvenus of her father's reign could effect it, seemed complete. The House of Peers, which a few years before had unanimously embraced the " Reformation," and established it by statute law, as if it were a new form of Christianity, now turned round and almost without a dissentient voice enacted penal laws against the members of the very creed they had themselves so readily abandoned. The House of Peers presented at that sad epoch a sight at once shameful and despicable. Renaud could then vaunt that he had bribed, in the interest of the Emperor, many English peers.† The Venetian * Bentivoglio on the Condytion of Religion in England. ambassador likewise represents the nobility and gentry of England, as "utterly unprincipled." Harsh words, but he confirms them by stating that those whom he describes had no other religion than interest, and that, if only permitted to live in license, and derive advantage from the change, they would with alacrity embrace Mahometanism or Judaism at the bidding of their Sovereign.* Such was the debasement of the " upper classes," mainly produced by the evil reign of Henry VIII. The Parliament quickly changed, and were almost unanimously in favour of a return to the olden religion. In the Lords every voice was raised in favour of that view. In the Commons, out of three hundred members only twenty-nine were for maintaining the Reformation.† Nothing could exceed the outward enthusiasm evinced for Catholicity by the men who had been but a few weeks before the patrons of the preachers. No wonder that the unsophisticated preachers exclaimed in their ignorance and fanatic disappointment: "Alas, alas! we are betrayed and sold by the Parliament men to the Bishop of Rome." The leading Reformers manifested a very unspiritual suppleness, when, on Monday, November 12th, 1554, the Lords and Commons passed a Declaration, drawn up by the "whole Court of Parliament," Sir William Cecil being one of those present, attesting their sorrow for past proceedings against the Pope; and all acts against him were repealed on condition that his Holiness "would confirm them in their Correspondence of the Venetian Ambassador. + Burnet's Reformation; Strype's Memorials; Turner, vol. x.; Lingard, vol. v.; Froude's History of England, vol. v. purchases (?) of abbey and chantry lands." The world knows what sort of purchases were made by the Suffolks, Clintons, Seymours, Russells, and others of the period. The acquisitions of so many "noble " Reformers, were either bestowals, as in the Bedford case, or granted for considerations so insignificant as to make the title a gift. Well, Julian III. actually granted the "prayer" of this venal Parliament; but Queen Mary was not pleased with the decision, declaring that some of the Crown lands in her possession she would "set apart for the promotion of learning and the support of the destitute of God's creatures."+ Bishop Gardyner remonstrated with the Queen, and assured her that if she "made such a disposal she would lack money to support her royal position." Her Highness replied, that "she preferred the peace of her conscience to that of ten such crowns as England conferred upon her."§ Mary may have said this, or may not, for Burnet is a questionable authority unless corroborated by writers more truthful than himself. If Mary did say so, Burnet was doing her an unconscious and unintended act of justice. Mary of the sanguinary title was a personally honest woman-her greatest enemies cannot gainsay that—and in her five years' reign the ship of State was tossed about upon the angry sea of passion. She had a strong heart, but not much of a head to guide; yet she honoured and observed probity in financial matters, and she had a conscience, whose absence the long life of her critic has, in his own case, persistently manifested. * See Dugdale; Parry's Parliaments of England, p. 211. § Burnet's Reformation, vol. ii. p. 296. Conspiracies against the Queen's life," writes Miss Strickland," abounded at this unsettled time; even the students of natural philosophy were willing to apply the instruments of science to the destruction of Queen Mary." "I have heard," says Lord Bacon, "there was a conspiracy to have killed the Queen, as she walked in St. James's Park, by means of a burning-glass fixed on the leads of a neighbouring house. I was told so by a great dealer in secrets, who declared he had hindered the attempt. Of all things, the Queen most resented the libellous attacks on her character, which were set in motion by the Reformers. She had annulled the cruel law instituted by her father, which punished libels on the Crown with death.* But, to the Queen's anguish and astonishment, the country was soon inundated with them, both written and printed. One of these documents she had shown to the Spanish ambassador. The Queen could not suffer these anonymous accusations to be made unanswered, and said, with passionate sorrow, that she had always lived a chaste and honest life, and she would not bear imputations to the contrary, silently; and accordingly had proclamation made in every county, exhorting her loving subjects not to listen to the slanders that her enemies were actively distributing.† This only proved that the poisoned arrows gave pain "but did not abate the nuisance." Mr. Froude, who draws so startling a picture of the cruelties committed against the Reformers in the reign of * See Holinshed and Parliamentary Abstracts, which show that Henry VIII. for the first time in England, caused an act to be passed punishing libel against the Sovereign with death. + Tytler's Edward and Mary, vol. ii. p. 337. Miss Strickland's Queens of England, vol. v. p. 273. |