any part of the Church lands retained by the Crown, it must be owned that she commenced her government in a state of personal poverty low enough to exonerate her from any charge of bribing her Parliament. Burnet and Rapin, however, have affirmed that the Emperor Charles furnished the funds for bribing that Parliament. If this statement had any foundation in fact, the "Parliament coves," as the Anabaptists styled them, were very ungrateful, since the only measures in which they opposed Queen Mary's wishes were those relating to her marriage with the Emperor's son.' * From The first act of legislation was to restore the English "lawes" to the state, regarding life and property, in which they stood in the twenty-fifth year of Edward III. the accession of the Tudor line a lamentable change had taken place. In the days of the Plantagenets, an open or overt act of violence or war against the Sovereign was needful before a man could be attainted; in the third year of Henry VIII. "a supposed knowledge of conspiracy was sufficient to incur all the penalties of treason." Few of Henry's numerous victims could have been put to death according to the ancient laws. Towards the end of Henry's reign the English statute-book became a disgrace to civilization—a black book of judicial murder. In the words of a German commentator, "the King and his advisers were steeped to the lips in crime, and their hands red with innocent blood." The old Saxon Chroniclers relate that William of Normandy and his sons made cruel laws for the protection of game. They acted according to the * Queens of England, vol. v. (first edit.); Tytler's Edward and Mary, vol. ii.; Records of Queen Mary's Parliament. severe. rude idea entertained in those days by successful soldiers of fortune, who despised the sanction of laws enacted by a legislative body; but Henry VIII. found a Parliament composed of persons supposed to be civilized and honest men, who passed a law to make it death for an Englishman to take a hawk's egg. This statute was passed in the twenty-fifth year of Henry's reign. In the thirty-first year of the same monarch's career, the laws became more 'Conjuring, sorcery, witchcraft, and 'digging up crosses, were punished with death. The Act under which Surrey the poet perished "was made law at the King's request," in the thirty-third year of Henry's reign. The most petty offence was death, and the "mode of death" varied according to the crime, or the alleged criminal. The conduct of the gaolers and executioners was indescribably horrible. Many of the worst statutes of Henry's reign were repealed by Queen Mary; but reenacted by Elizabeth in even a more odious form.† A viler body of men never dishonoured England at any period than the Parliaments of Edward and Mary, and, with a few exceptions, they were the same men in both reigns.‡ The Parliament had some customs, now obsolete. It was necessary for a Peer to obtain leave of absence from the Sovereign. If a member of the Commons absented himself, without having received permission, his pay was "cut off," for some time, to be decided by the Speaker and the King's Treasurer.§ It may be of some interest here to note the opinion of the ambassador at the Court of England of the "Queen * Statutes of the Realm; Holinshed, vol. i. + Parliamentary History, vol. iii. See Records of the Times, Social and Political. § Harl. MS., 980. of the Adriatic," then in the zenith of her glory-Venice, the valiant antagonist of Moslem barbarism, who so long stemmed the torrent of Turkish conquest that was finally swept back from the walls of Vienna by John Sobieski, whose heroic Poland ungrateful Europe afterwards permitted to be so cruelly partitioned and devoured. Soranzo, the Venetian ambassador, at this time (1553), writing to the Doge of Venice, presents "England and its people" in a favourable light. "The English," writes this observant diplomatist, "are, for the most part handsome of stature, with good constitution; complexions red or white. According to their stations, they are well dressed. The dress of the men resembles the Italian fashion, and that of the women the French style. The nobility and great knights are courteous and kindly to foreigners. They have grand establish ments. The Earl of Pembroke keeps upwards of one thousand men clad in magnificent livery, besides his other retainers. From the nobles down to the shop-keepers, all classes are profuse in their hospitality. The women, who are all pretty and kind-hearted, enjoy many privileges from their husbands, which the women of other countries know not of." The Lord Mayor of London was always an object of curiosity to foreigners. Signor Soranzo was delighted at his introduction to Sir Thomas Whyte, the Lord Mayor at the period of Wyatt's rebellion. The chief magistrate was a wealthy tailor, and a most loyal subject of the Queen. He was also the patron of learning, having largely endowed St. John's College, Oxford. Soranzo, in his despatches to the Doge of Venice, draws a pleasing picture of the profuse hospitality of the Lord Mayor of London. Owing to the many visits of the sweating sickness and "other scourges," the population of London was reduced at this period (1553) to 180,000. CHAPTER XXXII. DOMESTIC TRAITS OF QUEEN MARY. AMONGST the presents made by Queen Mary, when Princess, to Jane Gray, was a gold necklace. The entry set down in the royal diary runs thus :-" A gold necklace to my dear little cousin Jane." There is no date to this entry; but other incidents lead me to believe that Jane Gray was then about ten years old. The necklace was probably a birthday present. The Tudors were always profuse in birthday presents to distinguished foreigners. Henry VIII. gave a diamond worth £2000 to Queen Isabel, his mother-in-law. Many entries occur in Queen Mary's diary which prove her love of flowers, rare seeds, and roots. She was, in her youth, a tasteful horticulturist, and an importer of foreign plants. Her father gave £10 as a reward to Paul Goodchylde, for having brought safely to England several young trees and plants from Spain, which were ordered for the Princess's gardens.* Mary had a decided taste for clocks, like her illustrious relative Charles the Fifth, and clocks formed a prominent article in her yearly expenditure. Several valuable clocks were sent from Spain and Portugal * Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII, Gloves-a very to the Princess as "birthday presents." costly gift in those times were also sent to her fron Spain and Portugal. Her Highness gave a gentleman in the suite of the Lord Admiral, thirty shillings, for bringing her, from a Spanish Duchess, resident near Madrid, a coffer containing twelve pair of Spanish gloves. "Gloves of this kind," writes Miss Strickland, "bore a great price as late as the middle of the last century, and were probably some of the refined relics of Moorish industry. The gloves in question were made of exquisite leather, and embroidered with silk, gold, silver, and even with gems, and highly perfumed." The bigoted suspicions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, instilled into the people by conscious or ignorant incitation, led them to believe that the Spanish gloves were actually poisoned-poisoned for the purpose of destroying Protestants. Even John Foxe, or Roger Rasper, the "Hot-Gospel Puritan," might feel ashamed of such a disregard of common sense, in the commercial relations between nations. Lady Jane Dormer has left on record an interesting account of the manner of the Queen's life at Croydon. "Here her only amusement was walking, plainly dressed, with her ladies, and entering the cottages of the poor, and, unknown to them, relieving their wants. She likewise chose those of their children that seemed promising, for the benefits of education." This account agrees with her intelligent and gentle love for children, and the numerous godchildren and others, on whom she bestowed a great part of her narrow income in her youth. In 1537, the Princess Mary became the godmother of eighteen children; all of whom she visited frequently, and left them presents and money. She |