[Transcriber's note: This production is based on https://archive.org/details/popularhistoryeng02guiz/page/n7/mode/2up

The typesetting, inking and proofing of this book are exceptionally defective. Missing letters and words (in square brackets) have been inserted and spelling and punctuation errors have been corrected.

As in the first volume, the recurring theme is death and deception. This is a list of words occurring at least 20 times each, in order of frequency:

death (143), army (116), Tower of London (95), war, died, battle, arms, money, power, enemies, soldiers, reign, prison, unhappy, insurrection, condemned, vain, treaty, refuge, possession, influence, forces, poor, arrested, prisoner, secret, anger, suffered, blood, execution, prisoners, insurgents, violent, victory, siege, dying, cried, treason, surrounded, scaffold, rebels, executed, sentence, killed, die, crime, attack, enemy, crimes, blow, sword, mercy, fight, fatal, courage, struck, rival, retreat, knights, danger, attacked, seized, ruin, reinforcements, pardon, defend, conspiracy, captive, perished, defeated, beheaded, arrest, vengeance, trial, threatened, repulsed, captured.]

Parting Of Sir Thomas More And His Daughter.

A Popular History Of England
From the Earliest Times
To The Reign Of Queen Victoria

BY
M. Guizot

Author of "The Popular History of France," etc.

Authorized Edition

Illustrated

Vol. II

New York
John W. Lovell Company

150 Worth Street, Corner Mission Place

Volume Two.

Table Of Contents.

{7}

Guizot's
History Of England,
Vol. II.

From the accession of Henry V.,
to the death of Queen Elizabeth, 1413-1603.

Chapter XIII.

Grandeur And Decline.
Henry V., Henry VI.
(1413-1461).

Henry of Monmouth ascended the throne under happy auspices. His father had expended the popularity which in the first place had carried him into power, and had lived amidst the anxieties and cares of usurpation; but the work was accomplished, and his son felt his authority so well established, that the first acts of his reign bear testimony to a generous disdain towards conspiracies and rivals. The body of King Richard II. was carried away from the convent of Langley, and solemnly brought back to Westminster, to be interred there beside his wife, Anne of Bohemia, as the unhappy monarch had wished during his lifetime. The king himself was the chief mourner. The young Edmund, earl of March, was restored to liberty, and the son of Hotspur Percy was recalled from his long exile in Scotland. Everywhere the former adversaries of Henry IV., exiled or punished through his fear and prudence, experienced the clemency of the young king, who contrived to gain the affection of the greater number of them, by the firmness and energy of character which were united in him with generosity.

Recovered from any follies and excesses which may have sullied his youth, Henry V., when he ascended the throne, showed himself from the first to be austere in his life and in his morals, resolved to fear God, and to cause his laws to be respected. He was not in favor of the religious movement which was being propagated in his kingdom, particularly among the lower classes of society. {10} The doctrines and the preaching of Wycliffe, and the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures which he had begun to diffuse, had born much good fruit; but the disciples had, upon several points, swerved from the teaching of their master, and from free investigation had sprung up many dangerous errors as well as the most sacred truths. The people designated the reformers under the name of "Lollards," a word, the origin of which is not exactly known, but which very possibly came from the German heretic, Walter Lolhard, burnt at Cologne in 1322. Already, under Henry IV., the secular arm had descended heavily upon the partisans of the new doctrines. A priest, formerly rector of Lynn in Norfolk, and who had for awhile abjured his opinions, had asked to be heard by the Parliament, before which he had frankly expounded the doctrines which he had been compelled to abandon. Being declared for this deed a heretic and a relapser, Sacoytre was burnt at Smithfield in the month of March, 1401, presenting for the first time to the English people the terrible spectacle of a man put to death for his opinions. A tailor, named John Batby, suffered the same punishment in 1410. But at the beginning of the reign of Henry V., the anger and uneasiness of the Church were directed against a personage better known, and of higher rank. The Lollards had become sufficiently numerous to have attributed to them a declaration, placarded by night in London, announcing that a hundred thousand men were ready to defend their rights by arms. All regarded as their chief Sir John Oldcastle, generally called Lord Cobham, by the right of his wife. He was a good soldier, and the friend of Henry V., in his youth. {11} When Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, came to accuse Lord Cobham before the king, the latter could not decide to deliver him up to the Church, and he promised to labor himself to reclaim him; but the king's powers of controversy were not equal to the convictions of Lord Cobham. The monarch became angry, and as his old friend had taken refuge in his manor of Cowling, in Kent, Henry abandoned him to the archbishop. For some time the clever soldier contrived to avoid the delivery of the arrest warrant, but a body of troops sent by the king having surrounded the castle, he surrendered, and was conducted to the Tower. For two days he defended himself unaided against all the clergy assembled, he was then condemned to the stake; but the king, who still retained some affection for him, obtained a respite, during which Sir John contrived to escape from the Tower. He no longer hoped to live in peace; perhaps he reckoned upon the devotion of his brethren. It is related that he assembled a considerable number of Lollards, and that he made an attempt to surprise the king; having failed in his design, he had convoked his partisans in the fields of St. Giles, near London, on the morrow of the Epiphany. The king was forewarned of the conspiracy and repaired thither. Sir John was not there; a hundred men at the utmost had assembled in the meadow; they carried arms, and confessed that they were waiting for Oldcastle. Two or three other little assemblages were also captured, and, on the 13th of January, thirty Lollards suffered at St. Giles's the punishment of traitors. The Parliament was agitated, and the State was believed to be in danger; the judges, and magistrates were authorized to arrest every individual suspected of heresy, and made oath to prosecute the guilty in all parts. Death and confiscation were decreed against them. {12} Sir Roger Acton, a friend of Oldcastle, was arrested, quartered, and hanged on the 10th of February. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Arundel, died on the 28th of the same month; but his successor, Chicheley, was no less ardent than he against heresy, and it was at his request and at his suit that Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, after having for a long while remained concealed, was rearrested in 1417, and burnt at a slow fire in the meadow of St. Giles, on the 25th of December following.

The terror which the Lollards had caused was beginning to subside. The king had had leisure to reflect upon the sad condition of France; the weakness in which it was plunged reminded him of the counsels of his dying father. It is said that Henry IV. had advised his son to engage his country in a great war, to divert it from conspiracies. The ardour of the young king had become inflamed at this idea, and he had come to look upon himself as the messenger of God, sent to punish the crimes of the French princes, and to deliver from their hands the kingdom which they were oppressing. In the month of July, 1414, he suddenly laid claim to the crown of France, as the decendant of Isabel, the daughter of Philip the Fair. This pretension, groundless on the part of Edward III., became absurd in the mouth of Henry V., because the right of succession if transmissible by females, belonged to the Earl of March. The Duke of Berry, then in power, peremptorily repelled the demand of King Henry, who thereupon proclaimed other pretensions. He consented to leave the throne to King Charles, but he claimed for England the absolute sovereignty of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Aquitaine, besides the towns and territories ceded in other parts of France by the treaty of Brétigny. {13} He claimed at the same time one half of Provence, the inheritance of Eleanor and Sanche, the wives of Henry III., and of his brother, the Duke of Cornwall; and the fifteen hundred thousand crowns remaining to be paid upon the ransom of King John; finally, he formally demanded the hand of the Princess Catherine, the daughter of King Charles VI., with a dowry of two million of crowns. In reply to these exorbitant demands, the Duke of Berry proposed to surrender Aquitaine to the King of England, and to give him the Princess Catherine, with a dowry of six hundred thousand crowns. Never had a daughter of France brought so large a dowry to her husband, and the payment of it would probably have been difficult in the state of poverty which the country was in. King Henry thereupon recalled his ambassadors, convoked the Parliament, and, having obtained large subsidies, sent a second mission to the court of France. The Earl of Dorset entered Paris with a magnificent retinue. He proposed a prolongation of the truce for four months, and consented to receive the princess with a dowry of one million crowns only. Henry had also renounced his pretensions to Maine, Anjou, and Normandy. The answer was the same, but two hundred thousand crowns were added to the dowry of Catherine. The ambassadors started back for England in March, 1415; the preparations for war immediately commenced.

The situation of France was more than ever deplorable. The Armagnacs and the Burgundians were contending with each other for the power, and a third competitor had entered the lists; the dauphin, Louis, the eldest son of the unhappy Charles VI., arrived at manhood, and supported by his uncle, the Duke of Berry, endeavored to seize the reins of government. {14} Dissolute and unmannerly, as profligate and as cruel as his adversaries, he sometimes made use of the king's name, at others he declared him incapable of directing his affairs, and plotted to drive out the Armagnacs or the Burgundians. Blood flowed in all parts, and the unhappy populations of the towns and the country, exhausted by taxes and exactions, sighed after each abuse for a new master: "What worse could the English do than that from which we suffer?"

While the French nation, overwhelmed by its misfortunes, lost even the wish of defending itself against foreigners, King Henry had summoned a council of the Lords at Westminster. In the last Parliament, his uncle, Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of England, had delivered a great speech upon this text: "While we have time, let us do every good work." The king announced to his councillors that he had resolved to put his hand to the task and to recover his inheritance. All the prelates and barons approved of his intentions, and his brother John, duke of Bedford, was nominated Regent of England during his absence. The conditions of military service were determined. The king undertook to make a regular payment, curiously graduated according to the rank of those who followed him; a duke was to receive every day thirteen shillings and fourpence; an earl, six shillings and eightpence; a baron, four shillings; a knight, two shillings, an esquire, one shilling, and an archer sixpence. All were to bring a certain number of horses, which the king undertook to equip. Henry had pawned his jewels, contracted loans, and had collected a very considerable sum of money, when he marched forth in the month of July, to embark at Southampton.

At Winchester, the king encountered the Archbishop of Bourges, sent by the Duke of Berry, in the frivolous hope of appeasing the storm which threatened France. "I have a right to the crown," said Henry, "and I will conquer it with my sword." In vain did the archbishop invoke the help of God, of the Virgin Mary, and of the saints, who would defend the just cause of King Charles; in vain, exasperated by the disdain of the English, did he exclaim that the king had only made such liberal offers for love of peace, and that King Henry would soon find himself repulsed as far as the sea, if he should not be killed or made a prisoner; Henry contented himself with smiling. "We shall see shortly," said he; and loading the prelate and his retinue with presents, he sent him back with no other reply.

The embarkation of the troops had already commenced, when the king was suddenly warned of a plot against his life. One of his friends, Lord Scroop of Masham, in whom the king reposed such confidence, that he always made him sleep in his own chamber, and Sir Thomas Grey Heton, had conspired with the Earl of Cambridge, the brother of the Duke of York, and as treacherous as he. The king dead, the young Earl of March was to replace him upon the throne. The three conspirators suffered the penalty of their crime. Henry at length set sail for France, on the 13th of August, 1415. The fleet entered the Seine on the morning of the 14th, and thirty thousand men, which it carried, landed within a league of Harfleur. The spot was ill-chosen for the landing, and the defence would have been easy; but no obstacle presented itself to impede the operations of the English, and, on the 17th, King Henry laid siege to Harfleur. The town was strong and well defended by the Sire d'Estouteville; sickness was beginning to ravage the English army; several barons of consequence died, as well as a large number of soldiers; but the besieged suffered also, and the governor in vain asked for assistance.

The Sire d'Estouteville formed his resolution; he issued secretly out of the town and repaired in person to Rouen, where the French forces were beginning to assemble. But confusion and disorder reigned there; no one thought of delivering Harfleur. The brave governor returned, re-entered the town, and surrendered it on the 22nd of September, after a siege which had lasted thirty-six days. King Henry installed a garrison there, then embarked his sick and wounded soldiers, whom he sent back to England, and took account of his army thus diminished, nine thousand men at the utmost remained under his banners. His supporters hesitated to advance into France. Henry had sent to the dauphin a challenge to single combat; but Louis had not even replied.

The king silenced the timid counsels. "No," said he, "with the help of God, we must first see a little more of this good soil of France, which all belongs to us. We will go, with God's help, without hurt or danger: but if we should be interfered with, we will fight, and the victory will be ours." Reassuring his men thus, the King of England set out on his way to Calais, on the 6th of October. The army at Rouen, under the orders of the king and the dauphin, did not stir; but that of the Constable had preceded the English in Picardy, and every day troops passed by on their way to join him. Watched by some detachments larger than his entire army, Henry traversed Normandy without any obstacle; near Dieppe, however, he was attacked by the garrison of Eu, but the enemy was thrown back in disorder. {17} Like Edward III., Henry found himself stopped by the river Somme, and could not discover a ford; Blanche Tache was guarded; the greater number of the passages were furnished with stakes. The soldiers were beginning to murmur, when, on the 19th of October, a passage was found between Bethencourt and Vogenme, and the English army crossed the Somme without impediment. The Constable had established himself at Abbeville, and the military council assembled at Rouen decided that battle should be given. The immense superiority of the French army had caused the wise usages of King Charles V. to be forgotten.

On the 20th of October, three French heralds presented themselves at the camp of the enemy, and the Duke of York conducted them to the king. "Sire," they said, bending the knee before him, "my masters, the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, and my lord the Constable, inform you that they intend to give battle to you." "God's will be done," replied the king without emotion. "And by which road do you intend to proceed?" resumed the heralds, who had noticed with amazement the small number of English tents, and the weary appearance of the soldiers. "That of Calais, straight along," replied Henry. "If my enemies wish to stop me, it will be at their peril. I do not seek them, but I will proceed neither faster nor more slowly to avoid them." And raising his camp on the morrow, Henry indeed continued his march, as though death or defeat could not lie hidden behind each hill, or await him in the neighboring plains. On the 24th he had crossed the river of Ternois, when he perceived the first columns of the enemy. He immediately formed his troops into battle order; but the Constable having fallen back upon Agincourt, the King of England took up his quarters in the village of Maisoncelles. The royal standard of France was planted on the road to Calais; death or victory was imperative.

King Henry had sent his marshals to reconnoitre the position of the French. They brought back alarming particulars as to their strength, and the number of pennants and banners spread out in the wind; the soldiers were laughing around their fires, and the spies heard them calculating the ransom of the English barons. The veteran knights alone appeared less joyful; the Duke of Berry, who, when quite a child, had fought at Poictiers, had opposed with all his might the project of giving battle. He had succeeded in preventing the arrival of the king. "It is better," he said, remembering the captivity of his father, King John, "to lose the battle than to lose both the king and the battle." The English trumpets sounded throughout the night; but the soldiers had confessed, and many of them had made their wills; they appreciated all the danger that threatened them.

At daybreak, on the 25th of October, the king attended mass. Three altars had been erected in the camp, in order that the soldiers might all be present at divine worship. The English were composed of three divisions; two detachments were stationed at the wings. The archers, placed in the form of a quoin in front of the men-at-arms, drove into the ground long stakes, intended to protect them against the charge of the cavalry; for the first time, the points of the stakes were furnished with iron. The baggage, the priests, and the greater number of the horses had remained in the rear-guard, near Maisoncelles. The king rode slowly along the lines upon his little grey horse; the crown which surmounted his helmet sparkled in the rays of the sun, but the youthful and handsome countenance of the young sovereign above all attracted the attention of his soldiers.

The French Chivalry the Night before the Battle of Agincourt.

"My course is taken," he said, "to conquer or die here. Never shall England pay a ransom for me. Remember, Soissons, [Footnote 1] my archers; the French have sworn to cut off three fingers from the right hand of every one of you, so that you may never be able to shoot an arrow again in your lives. We have not come to our kingdom of France like enemies; we have not sacked the towns and insulted the women; they are full of sin and have not the fear of God before their eyes." A gallant warrior, Walter Hungerford, said aloud, as the king passed by, that he would like to see at his side a few of the good knights who remained idle in England. "No," cried Henry, "I would not have here one man more. If God give us the victory, the fewer we are, the greater will be the honor; if we fail, the country will be less unhappy." And he smiled, like a man certain of victory.

[Footnote 1: Two hundred English archers, prisoners of war, had been hanged at Soissons.]

The French did not make an attack. By the advice of the old Duke of Berry, they had resolved to await the onslaught, and they had seated themselves upon the ground, like the English at Crecy. Henry had reckoned upon the confusion and disorder which every movement would bring upon this compact and confused mass, where each knight obeyed his liege lord, without concerning himself about the general direction, and he hesitated to make an attack. The Constable wished to wait for the Duke of Brittany, who was to bring fresh reinforcements; but, seeing that the English remained stationary, he despatched Messire Guichard Dauphin to King Henry, to offer him a free passage, if he would surrender Harfleur and renounce his pretensions to the crown of France. {20} Henry refused without hesitation; he was willing to negotiate, he said, upon the conditions which he had offered from London. They could delay no longer; the English army was destitute of provisions. The king gave orders to his two detachments to creep, one to the left and the other to the rear of the French army; he then in a ringing voice cried, "Advance, banners!" It was mid-day. Sir Thomas Erpingham, the venerable commander of the archers, threw his white staff into the air, and gave the order to "Shoot." The English, having advanced within bowshot, planted their stakes, and, uttering their battle cries, began to shoot. Their comrades, hidden upon the left flank of the French, answered them with cries and with arrows. Messire Clignet de Brabant charged the archers, crying, "Montjoie! Saint Denis!" The ground was soft and moist with rain; the horses slipped and fell; the horsemen were wounded by the arrows, and their lances could not reach, behind the ramparts of stakes, the bare breasts of the archers, who had nearly all thrown off a portion of their clothing so as to fight more at ease. The Brabantines were compelled to retire in disorder, breaking up at their rear the advancing ranks. The mass became so confused and the ranks so crowded that neither horses nor men had room to move. The English archers had drawn their stakes, and, having discontinued shooting, charged with mallet and battle-axe in hand. The French cavalry had made a side movement, but the horses sank into the freshly ploughed soil; the men, heavily armed, had difficulty in dismounting, while their enemies ran lightly upon the yielding ground.

Henry V.'s Review Before Agincourt.

The Constable had been slain; the Duke Anthony of Brabant fell beneath a battle-axe, at the moment when the second French division attacked the English men-at-arms who were advancing in their turn. The struggle then began between the cavalry. The Duke of Clarence had been overthrown; Henry, standing before his body, defended him single-handed. Eighteen knights, bearing the banner of the Count of Croy, attacked him at the same moment; they had sworn to capture the King of England dead or alive. A blow from a battle-axe caused the knees of Henry to bend; he was about to perish, when his knights rejoined him; the king rose, and the eighteen assailants were killed. The Duke of Alençon, sword in hand, had arrived at the foot of the standard of England, having overthrown the Duke of York. King Henry defended his treacherous relative, and the battle-axe of the French prince smashed a half of the crown which surmounted his helmet. At the same moment the duke was surrounded. "I surrender," he cried. "I am the Duke of Alençon." But already the blows of the English had stretched him upon the ground, and when King Henry went to receive his gage, he was dead. The French troops faltered; their chiefs were either captured or slain. The third division began to fly; the ground gave under their feet; the horses sank into the mud. Then a great tumult arose in the rear of the English. The third division rallied, the Duke of Brittany was hourly expected with numerous reinforcements: King Henry gave orders to kill the prisoners with whom each Englishman was encumbered; the greatest names of France were falling beneath the dagger. Again the alarm subsided; the peasants who had made a raid upon the baggage had been repulsed, the French cavalry had resumed their gallop; the King of England arrested the slaughter, and gave orders to raise the wounded. {22} The day was ended; the king rode over the field of battle with his barons; the heralds examined the arms of the dead knights. Henry encountered Montjoie, the French king-at-arms, who had been made a prisoner. "This butchery is not of our doing," he said, "but of the Almighty, who wished to punish the sins of France. To whom falls the honor of the victory?" "To the King of England," gravely replied Montjoie. "What is the name of this castle?" resumed the king. "Agincourt." "The day's work shall then be called the battle of Agincourt," said Henry, and he resumed his march amidst the dead and the dying. Eight thousand gentleman had fallen upon the field of battle, of whom one hundred and twenty were great noblemen bearing banners. The Duke of Orleans, the Count of Richemont. Marshal Boucicault, the Duke of Bourbon, the Counts of Eu and Vendôme, were prisoners. Amongst the English the Earl of Suffolk and the Duke of York had been killed.

The king retook the road to Calais, the young Count of Charolais, the son of the Duke of Burgundy, whom his father had forbidden to take part in the combat, had performed the last duties towards his uncles, the Duke of Brabant and the Count of Nevers. At the same time, he caused to be interred at his own expense, all those whose friends had not come to take away their bodies. Nearly six thousand men were deposited in the cemetery improvised upon the field of battle, and the Bishop of Guînes said the last prayers there.

The King of England had merely passed through Calais, then returned home, laden with booty, amidst the shouts of joy of his subjects, some of whom, on his arrival, threw themselves into the sea and carried him to land upon their shoulders. In its gratitude, the Parliament had granted to him, for his lifetime, the subsidy upon woollens and leathers, which it had formerly so bitterly regretted presenting to King Richard. Henry V., however, was too much occupied by his foreign ventures, and was naturally too just and too generous to abuse the favors of his people. During the whole course of his reign he lived in peace and in mutual understanding with his Parliament.

The King of England was occupied in receiving with magnificence the Emperor Sigismund, who was travelling, like a knight errant, from kingdom to kingdom, endeavoring to effect the cessation of the schism which was desolating the Church, by causing the anti-popes to abdicate and thereby restore to Christianity a universally recognized chief, when, in the month of August, 1416, came the news that Harfleur was closely pressed by a body of French troops. The king was ready to embark; but Sigismund dissuaded him, under the pretext that this enterprise was not worthy of so great a prince, and the Duke of Bedford was entrusted to deliver the garrison of Harfleur. He found a pretty considerable fleet, reinforced by some Genoese and Spaniards, which awaited him at the mouth of the Seine, and on the 15th of August he was attacked by the French who were soon defeated; but the Genoese caracks rose so high above the water, that the English sailors were compelled to climb up like cats to board them: they succeeded, however, for "at sea," says the old chronicler, "neither those who attack, nor those who defend have any place of refuge or means of escape, and the combat is therefore more desperate." The French fleet was destroyed, and the land forces were retreating in disorder; but the sea was covered with dead bodies, which came floating around the vessels, and the sight was still horrible when the Duke of Bedford returned to England, leaving Harfleur revictualled and in a good state of defence.

The Emperor Sigismund had accompanied his royal host to a conference, at Calais, whither the Duke of Burgundy, who began to incline towards the English, had repaired. The Count of Armagnac was all-powerful in Paris, and King Henry was preparing a large army to attempt a fresh invasion of France.

The Dauphin Louis was dead, poisoned, it was said, by the Armagnacs, who dreaded the influence of his father-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy. Prince John, who had become dauphin, had been accompanied to Compiègne by his brother-in-law, the Count of Hainault. He was quite a Burgundian, and did not long survive his elevation. "At the beginning of 1417," wrote the Duke of Burgundy, "our much dreaded lord and nephew was stricken one evening with so severe an illness that he died immediately; his lips, tongue, and face all swollen, which was a pitious sight, for like this are persons who are poisoned." The new dauphin, Charles, was but sixteen years of age; he belonged to the Armagnacs, who had caused Queen Isabel to be seized in the castle of Vincennes, and had imprisoned her at Tours. She had thereupon entered into friendly relations with the Duke of Burgundy, whose partisans had been driven in a mass from Paris. The English disembarked at the same time at Touques, in Normandy.

From this period, and for twenty years, the history of England is made in France. Absorbed at first in their conquests, then in the attempt to preserve them, the English princes asked nothing of their native country but men and money. The towns of Normandy fell one after another into the power of King Henry: Caen was taken by storm; Lisieux, Bayeux, Laigle, had been abandoned by the population, who had taken refuge in Brittany. {25} Nothing arrested his triumphal march. In vain did the French deputies endeavor to negotiate; Henry demanded the hand of the Princess Catherine, and only consented to leave the royal title to Charles VI. on condition of governing during his lifetime as regent, and having possession of the crown after his death. The winter had arrived and the Scots had attempted an incursion into the Northern counties; but Bedford had repulsed them. In the beginning of the spring (1418), King Henry resumed his military operations. Large reinforcements had arrived from England; Cherbourg, Domfront, Louviers, Pont-de-l'Arche, besieged by large detachments, surrendered almost at the same time. The whole of Lower Normandy was in the hands of the conqueror, who established his government there. The salt tax was abolished, and the chancellor of the duchy was entrusted to govern with strict justice. On the 30th of July, the King of England laid siege to Rouen.

Meanwhile Paris was more than ever a prey to flames and bloodshed. The Duke of Burgundy had released Queen Isabel, who had declared herself regent of the kingdom, without concerning herself about the rights of her son. She was advancing against Paris, which trembled under the Count of Armagnac. "In those days, it was sufficient in Paris to say that a man was a Burgundian for him to be dead," say the chronicles. The population began to weary of this sanguinary yoke. In the night of the 23rd of May, 1418, one of the gates of the city was secretly opened to a small body of Burgundians, by Perrinet Leclerc, the son of a civil guard. {26} The Sire of Isle-Adam, who commanded the detachment, hastened to the Hôtel St. Pol; the dauphin had already been dragged as far as the Bastille by Tanneguy-Duchâtel, a Breton knight and an ardent Armagnac. The Constable had concealed himself; the poor king, awakening with a start, recognized Isle-Adam. "How is my cousin of Burgundy?" he said courteously. "It is a very long time since I have seen him." The populace of Paris had risen and were rushing upon the Armagnacs; the king was placed on horseback and conducted through the streets of Paris. The Constable had been discovered, and thrown into prison with his partisans; but on the 12th of June a cry was raised that the enemy were at the gates: the people ran to the prisons, the captives were dragged into the yards, and immediately slaughtered, notwithstanding some efforts of the Burgundian knights. Nearly five thousand persons perished in this massacre, which lasted several days. Tanneguy-Duchâtel had conducted the dauphin to Bourges, when the Duke of Burgundy and the queen entered Paris in triumph. The two parties endeavored to negotiate with King Henry, who listened to them but rejected their proposals one by one: he having persuaded himself that he was the avenger sent by God. "He has conducted me hither by the hand to punish the sins of the land and to reign as a true king," he replied to the solicitations of the Papal Legate in favor of peace. "There is neither law nor sovereign in France, none think of resisting me; I will maintain my just rights and will place the crown upon my head. It is the will of God."

Meanwhile the siege of Rouen still continued. From every captured town and abandoned castle, the best combatants had taken refuge in the capital of Normandy. The citizens thereof had always been valiant and passionately attached to independence.

Entry of the Burgundians into Paris.

Henry in vain repeated to them that he was of Norman race, a descendant of Rollo and William the Conqueror; the Rouennais kept their gates closed, fighting valiantly upon the ramparts, and making frequent sorties. Hunger, however, began to make itself felt; an old priest left the city secretly and repaired to Paris to ask for assistance. He addressed himself to Maître Pavilly, the greatest doctor and preacher of the Sorbonne, beseeching him to preach a sermon in favor of the unfortunate besieged of Rouen. The eloquence of Maître Pavilly moved all his auditors to tears. "I have come to raise the hue and cry," said the old priest. Assistance was promised him, but days elapsed and nobody came. The dogs and cats were eaten; the besieged caused a capitulation to be proposed to King Henry. "In your present state," replied the conquerer, "I intend to see you at my mercy." When Messire Le Bouteiller, the governor of the city, received the answer, he no longer took any counsel but that of despair. "Let us set fire to the houses," he said, "and arm ourselves as well as we are able, with the women and children in our midst; we will thus make a breach in the wall, which is ruined, and will throw ourselves upon the camp of the English, to go where we can." The rumor of this resolve reached the ears of King Henry. He was harsh, and urged on his projects without concerning himself much about human sufferings; but he was unwilling to see Rouen reduced to ashes; he promised to the men-at-arms their life and liberty, on condition of not fighting against him for one year. The citizens retained their property and their liberties, by paying a fine of three hundred thousand crowns. The king entered Rouen on the 16th of January, 1419, amidst the dead bodies with which the streets were strewn: fifty thousand persons, it was said, had perished in the city during the siege.

The consternation was great in France, when it was learnt that Rouen had succumbed. The Duke of Burgundy quitted Paris with the king and queen, and negotiations were again entered into with the King of England. The conditions offered by the Duke of Burgundy were so advantageous that Henry consented to negotiate in person. The plain beyond the environs of Meulan was chosen for the interview; the court of France was at Pontoise, and the King of England had established himself at Mantes. On the 30th of May, two magnificent retinues appeared in the field, around whom a crowd of people thronged; silken tents had been erected. For the first time Henry saw that Princess Catherine with whom he had been smitten through a portrait, and whom he had chosen for the lady of his thoughts. Tall, slim, fair, with black eyes, the beauty of the princess made a lively impression upon her knight, but without disturbing for a moment the policy of the king. Interviews succeeded each other, but Henry abated nothing of his demands. "Good cousin of Burgundy," said he, "I will have the daughter of your king for my wife, and with her all that I have demanded." But when the King of England presented himself for the eighth conference, the French tents were deserted. A treaty had been concluded between the Duke of Burgundy and the dauphin, they having embraced upon the road between Melun and Corbeil; the two parties were for the moment reunited against the English. King Henry, indignant at this treachery, and swearing to avenge himself unaided, advanced as far as Pontoise, which was taken on the 27th of July. Isle-Adam, who defended the town, was compelled to fly, leaving behind him the treasure which he had amassed in Paris by hanging the Armagnacs.

The Duke of Burgundy was at Saint-Denis; but he made no effort to defend Pontoise. Paris remained undefended; nobody thought any longer of taking possession of that unhappy city, the scene of so many horrors and crimes. There was uneasiness around the King of England; the negotiations which were on foot between the court of France and the Regent of Scotland were known; the King of Castile had armed a large fleet which ravaged the coasts of Guienne. Henry V. alone had not lost confidence: he counted upon the justice of God as well as upon the internal treachery of his adversaries; the event proved that he had not been mistaken. Since his reconciliation with the dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy strongly urged the latter to repair to Troyes, where the king and queen were; the young prince, or rather his councillors, insisted upon a preliminary interview at Montereau. The duke hesitated; he had received several warnings of the evil designs of Tanneguy-Duchâtel. But the influence of a woman, the Dame de Giac, gained over by the Armagnacs, decided him to risk all, and he started for Montereau. Tanneguy-Duchâtel came forward to meet him; the servants of the duke still insisted on his retreating. "No," said he, "if I die, it will be as a martyr, and the councillors of my lord the dauphin are good knights." Then, as Duchâtel entered, "This is what I rely upon," he said, resting his hand upon his shoulder; "Messire Tanneguy answers for my safety." The Armagnacs reiterated protestations, while leading the duke towards the pavilion which had been prepared upon the bridge. Barriers closed it upon both sides; they were carefully thrown down as soon as the duke had entered. {30} He uncovered his head and placed one knee upon the ground before the dauphin, who leant against the balustrade in the centre of the pavilion. The young prince scarcely answered, muttering some reproaches. At the same moment, upon a movement of John Sans Peur which caused his sword to clatter, Tanneguy cried, "A sword before my Lord," and struck the duke a blow upon the head with his battle-axe. The Sire de Navailles, raised his arm to defend his master; but the Viscount of Narbonne sprang upon him. The duke had been thrown down without having been able to draw his sword; two noblemen raised his coat of mail and plunged their daggers in his breast; the Burgundians of the retinue were made prisoners and two of them were seriously wounded. The troops of the dauphin had scattered the escort; the young prince had retired; John Sans Peur remained upon the bridge, lifeless, and divested of his jewels and his rich habiliments. This bold and cunning heart, this egotistical ambition which nothing arrested, this magnificent life of pleasures and politics, all had been ended by a crime, and the public indignation enumerated the good qualities of the duke without recalling his vices; the death of John Sans Peur opened a wide entrance for the English in France.

Philip, count of Charolais, now Duke of Burgundy, was at Ghent, when he learnt of the assassination of his father. "Michelle," he said, turning towards his wife, the daughter of Charles VI., "your brother has killed my father." Amidst deputations which arrived from all parts to deplore the crime, and to throw the responsibility of it upon the dauphin, the first care of the new duke was to enter into negotiations with the King of England.

Anger and vengeance were about to give to Henry all that his victories had not yet been able to wrest from the weakness of France. The proposals of the dauphin had been rejected; but when the young Duke of Burgundy was entrusted to negotiate by Queen Isabel, the king entered into parleys; the hand of the Princess Catherine was promised him, with the regency of the kingdom, and the crown at the death of Charles VI. He consented, in his turn, to renounce the title of King of France during the lifetime of King Charles, to govern his new kingdom upon the advice of a French council, to respect the liberties of the Parliaments and towns, and to reannex Normandy to the crown of France on his accession to the throne. A private treaty assured certain favors to the Duke of Burgundy. Neither of these documents contained the clause which had led to their conclusion; but it was understood that the dauphin should be pursued to the death.

The Duke of Burgundy had assured himself of his revenge; he returned to Troyes; all the constituent bodies had already reassembled at Paris,—the Parliament, the Chamber of Accounts, the University,—and all had approved of the treaty with the English. The great qualities of King Henry were enumerated; prudent and wise, loving peace and justice, maintaining a strict discipline among warriors, protecting the poor people, resigned to the will of God, praising Him in good fortune and accepting bad fortune without anger. It was added that he was of noble bearing and of an agreeable countenance. None objected; people were weary of the civil wars; misery had exhausted their hearts and benumbed their courage; the Duke of Burgundy was all-powerful. A few noblemen alone dared to complain: the Duke Philip had great difficulty in making John of Luxemburg and the Bishop of Thérouenne, his brother, to swear peace. {32} "You wish it," they said, "we will therefore take the oath, and also will we, keep it until death." Others formally refused, and, in the duchy of Burgundy, all the towns at first resisted the oath of fidelity required by the King of England. "Those who looked displeased," says Juvenal des Ursins, "were treated as Armagnacs, but they were only good and loyal Frenchmen." The treaty of Troyes was the disgrace of France.

King Henry arrived at the court on the 20th of May, followed by the flower of his army, upon which he had imposed a severe discipline; in traversing the country, he had everywhere required the soldiers to put water in their wine. The Princess Catherine was awaiting her chevalier, who was affianced to her with great ceremony, and on the morrow the treaty was signed. The King of England, regent of France, had received the oaths of his new subjects, when his marriage was celebrated on the 2nd of June, by the Archbishop of Sens, amidst the most brilliant ceremonies. The young knights and gallants hoped for a joust and some passages of arms on the occasion of this great union; but Henry was not so full of love as to forget his affairs. "I beg my lord the king," he said, "for permission, and I command his servants as well as my own be in readiness to-morrow morning to proceed to lay siege to the city of Sens, where are the enemies of the king. There each of us will be able to joust, tourney, and display his prowess and courage, for there is no finer prowess than to mete out justice to the wicked in order that the poor people may live." The court of Queen Isabel was not accustomed to this serious and firm language, but they set out for Sens without complaining. The town was taken at the end of two days; the king caused the archbishop to be called, and conducted him to the church. "You have given me a bride, and I restore yours to you," he said to the prelate.

From Sens the army went to Montereau; the Burgundians were fighting furiously, eager to have possession of the spot in which the body of their duke reposed. The garrison had been compelled to retire within the castle, where the Sire de Guitry defended himself yet for some time. Scarcely had Philip of Burgundy entered the town, when the women conducted him to the church wherein his father had been hurriedly interred. He caused the tomb to be opened; the body was riddled with wounds, disfigured by the blows of the battle-axe of Tanneguy-Duchâtel; all wept while looking at him: the body was transported to Dijon with the greatest honors, and deposited in the tomb of Philip the Bold. The bastard De Croy, killed during the siege, took, in the church of Montereau, the place which the Duke John left empty.

The army had repaired to Melun; but the town was defended by the Sire de Barbazan, one of the dauphin's most gallant knights. The siege might have been protracted; the court came and established itself at Corbeil. Every day the besieged made sorties; an assault had been attempted without success; mines were defeated by counter-mines; the English, Burgundian, and French knights sometimes took pleasure in breaking lances in those dark galleries; the Sire de Barbazan there had the honor of encountering the King of England without knowing him; but the combats of the men-at-arms were more serious, and the knights sometimes took part in them. {34} "You do not know what it is to fight in a mine," said De Barbazan to the young Louis des Ursins, who was preparing to descend there; "have the handle of your battle-axe cut down; the passages in the mines are often narrow and zigzagged; short sticks are necessary for fighting hand to hand."

Meanwhile the people suffered cruelly within the town, and the dauphin could not succor it: the English and Burgundian forces would have crushed his little army. The besieged still held out. King Henry had in vain caused Charles VI. to be brought to the camp; De Barbazan replied that he would open the gates to him willingly, but not to the mortal enemies of France. Already the English and the Burgundians began to quarrel among themselves; the French noblemen complained of the small court and the shabby costume of their king, while the King of England had a gorgeous establishment. Henry, besides, feeling himself surrounded by scarcely subjected enemies, and little accustomed to all the delicate shades of French courtesy, treated the barons with less consideration then they were wont to encounter. The Marshal of Isle-Adam, who was in command at Joigney, had come to Sens on some matters of business. "Is that the dress of a marshal of France?" asked King Henry, while surveying him from head to foot. "Sire," replied the marshal, "I had this light grey robe made to come here by water." "What!" cried the king, "do you look a prince in the face in speaking to him?" "Sire," and the Burgundian drew himself up, "in France it is the custom when one man speaks to another, of whatever rank, or whatever power he may be, that he pass for a bad man of little honor if he does not dare to look him in the face." "It is not our fashion," muttered Henry, and shortly afterwards Isle-Adam was deprived of his command.

Melun had at length been compelled to capitulate, on the 18th of November, and the King of England made his entry into Paris. That city was a prey to the most frightful misery; little children were abandoned and died of hunger and cold in the streets; wolves entered the cemeteries and even into the streets, to devour the dead bodies which none took the trouble to inter. Notwithstanding the distress, all Paris was holiday-making for the arrival of the two kings; the poor Charles VI. rode beside his son-in-law, who vied with him in courtesy at the doors of the churches when the relics were presented to them to be kissed. The Duke of Burgundy as well as all his household, clad in mourning, followed the King of France: the Dukes of Clarence and Bedford accompanied their brother. The misery was redoubled within Paris after the magnificences of the royal reception. Henry established himself at the Louvre, where he held court sumptuously; the old king had re-entered the Hotel St. Paul, but few people repaired thither to wish him a happy Christmas.

The Duke of Burgundy had formally demanded justice for the death of his father, and the murderers had been condemned by a decree of Charles VI., without giving the names and without personally accusing the dauphin. The King of England was in need of money, and, entrusting the command of his army to the Duke of Clarence, after having provided for the principal officers of the kingdom men who were devoted to him, he set sail for England, notwithstanding the severity of the weather. He landed at Dover, in the middle of January, welcomed by the acclamations of his people. The royal retinue resembled a triumph when it entered London. {36} Catherine was crowned at Westminster, "with such great pomp and feasting and jollity, that since the time of the very noble and very warlike King Artus was not seen in the city of London a similar rejoicing for any English king," says Monstrelet. The sovereigns had commenced a journey in their states when, at York, the king learnt the sad news of the death of his well-beloved brother, the Duke of Clarence, slain in the combat of Baugé. He was ravaging Anjou, which still recognized the authority of the dauphin. The Seigneur de la Fayette had raised a few troops to resist him, and a numerous body of Scottish auxiliaries had joined him under the orders of the Earl of Buchan. Clarence did not know with what enemies he had to deal; he had imprudently advanced and had been killed by Lord Buchan together with a great number of English who remained upon the field. The dauphin then nominated the Earl of Buchan Constable of France.

Negotiations were then in progress for the release of King James of Scotland, so long a prisoner at the court of England; King Henry caused him to come, and, his face flashing with rage, he said, "Forbid all your subjects ever to lend assistance against me to the dauphin." "I should make a sorry figure by giving orders, being a prisoner," firmly replied James; "but if you will take me with you to France, I shall learn the art of war in a good school, and, perhaps, when my Scots shall see me with you, they will not fight on the other side." Henry V. had an affection for the King of Scotland, and granted him his request; but Archibald Douglas was already preparing to proceed to France, to join Lord Buchan.

Meanwhile, the king was assembling a more considerable army than any that he ever led beyond the seas, the Parliament having liberally voted subsidies. On the 10th of June, 1421, Henry landed at Calais, leaving Queen Catherine in England. The King of Scotland was entrusted to besiege Dreux, and Henry himself laid siege to Meaux, which detained him for several months; the town was commanded by the bastard De Vaurus, who had made of it a haunt of crimes and of pillage. When the castle was at length surrendered, in the month of May, 1422, the governor was hanged upon the great oak of which the branches had so often borne the corpses of his victims. Catherine, accompanied by the Duke of Bedford, had rejoined her husband, to whom she had recently presented a son. The dauphin, driven back by degrees by the English arms, had finally taken refuge in Bourges; but the Earl of Buchan continued to keep the field; he had taken La Charité and was besieging Cosne. The dauphin had repaired to the army, and the King of England, already for a long time enfeebled by fever, was preparing to attack him with the Duke of Burgundy, when his strength completely failed and he was compelled to halt at Corbeil. The Duke of Bedford having assumed the command of the army, the king was carried back in a litter to the castle of Vincennes: the queen having remained at Paris.

The hand of God was about to arrest this great career; at thirty-four years of age, King Henry V. was dying; the Duke of Bedford was arrested in a march during which he had encountered no enemies, by the wish of his brother, who desired to say farewell to him. Every worldly gift had been lavished upon the young conqueror; the master of two kingdoms, surrounded by the esteem and affection of his English subjects, recently married to the woman of his choice, just become the father of an infant son, he was about to leave them; but the faith and resignation of a Christian surmounted in the soul ready to take flight, the frail benefits of the earth. {38} Amidst his grandeurs and his conquests Henry had led a pure and austere life, and had not neglected to serve God. He dreamt continually, when peace should be re-established, of proceeding to the East, to deliver the Holy Sepulchre; this vision still floated around his death-bed. He had caused his faithful servants to be summoned, "Since it is the will of God, my Creator, thus to shorten my life," he said to them, "His will be done! Console my sweet Catherine; she will be the most disconsolate creature there is in the world." He confided the education of his son to the Earl of Warwick. "You cannot yet love him for his own sake; but, if you should think that you owe me anything return it to him." He had entrusted John, duke of Bedford, to govern France, and designated Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, as regent of England. "Tell Humphrey to beware of quarrels for love of me, and never to allow anything in the world to separate him from John; do not separate yourselves from the Duke of Burgundy." He had summoned his physicians, asking them how long he had yet to live. They hesitated. "Speak," said he impatiently. "Sire," said one of them, "think of your soul, for in our judgment you have not two hours to remain on earth."

The king had finished his last instructions; he had said farewell to the affairs of this world; his confessor and the priests of his chapel surrounded his bed; the 51st Psalm was being recited: "Build the walls of Jerusalem!" chanted the chaplain. "Upon the faith of a dying king," murmured Henry, "if it had pleased the Lord God to prolong my life, I intended to proceed against the infidels, and deliver the Holy Sepulchre from their hands." The voice was dying away; he closed his eyes, and, amidst the prayers which were being repeated around him, the great soul of King Henry V. entered into eternal repose.

No life in its brevity had been more active than his and no monarch was more bitterly regretted; it was so even in France, for the people saw themselves thrown back into the horrors of internal dissensions; he was mourned for in England, with sincere and profound grief. After the magnificent ceremonies celebrated in France, the body was brought to England, and solemnly interred at Westminster, beside the shrine of Edward the Confessor. King James of Scotland was chief mourner, while the Duke of Bedford, profoundly sad, seized in France the ill-secured power which his dying brother had confided to him, and endeavored to secure the two crowns upon the head of the child destined to lose them both.

The religious ceremonies had been prolonged in France; Queen Catherine embarked in the month of October, accompanying the body of her husband, when her father, King Charles VI., died of quartan ague. Notwithstanding his thirty years of madness, and the evils which they had suffered under his reign, the French had remained attached to their unhappy monarch, and the mob thronged the hall of the Hôtel St. Paul, where he was exposed. "Ah! dear prince!" it was said, amidst tears, "never shall we have one as good as you; you have gone to your rest; we remain in tribulation and grief, and seem made to fall into the distress in which were the children of Israel during the captivity of Babylon." The Duke of Burgundy was bitterly reproached for not having come to see the king during his sickness, and also for not having followed his funeral; the Duke of Bedford was chief mourner, and on the 10th of November, 1422, in England and in France, at Westminster and at Saint-Denis, the obsequies of King Henry V and those of King Charles VI. were solemnized. {40} The royal remains being lowered into the grave, the heralds broke their wands and cried, "God grant long life to Henry, by the grace of God King of France and of England, our sovereign Lord." And the people shouted, "Long live the king!" The hand which was to bear this weighty inheritance was not yet one year old.

The Duke of Bedford had taken the reins of government in France without opposition; in England, the lords of the Parliament had contested the right of the deceased king to designate the regent of the kingdom, and had given to the Duke of Gloucester the title of Protector of the State and of the Church, which was to remind him, it was said, of his duties. Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, brother of King Henry IV. by the third wife of John of Gaunt, was entrusted to second the Earl of Warwick in the education of the little king. The Parliament voted the necessary subsidies, and the war continued in France.

The death of Charles VI. had rallied a few adherents around the Dauphin, proclaimed King of France at Mehun-sur-Yèvres, in Berry, under the name of Charles VII. Shortly afterwards he caused himself to be crowned at Poictiers, Rheims being in the power of the English. Right was upon the side of Charles, dispossessed as he was; the memory of the kings his ancestors, the natural aversion to foreigners, increased by eighty years of war, fought in his favour; the noblemen who did not rally around him were less eager to serve the Duke of Bedford than they had been to second Henry V., and, already it had been necessary to stifle; at Poissy, a trifling insurrection in favor of the Dauphin.

Meanwhile, the Duke of Bedford had caused all the large towns and constituent bodies in France to swear fidelity to his nephew, and in order to strengthen that intimacy with the Duke of Burgundy which had preoccupied King Henry even upon his deathbed, he had married Anne of Burgundy, his sister Madame de Guienne, the widow of the first Dauphin, shortly afterwards gave her hand to the Count of Richemont, the brother of the Duke of Brittany, and a solemn treaty of friendship united the three dukes to each other. Brittany and Burgundy, at the same [time], concluded a private alliance unknown to the Duke of Bedford.

The Regent was returning from Troyes, where his marriage had been celebrated and was fighting upon the way when he learnt that the Earl of Buchan was attacking his fortress of Crevant-sur-Yonne, endeavoring to open up a communication between the northern territories, which recognized the authority of Charles VII., and the southern provinces, where his cause had made great progress. The Earls of Salisbury and Suffolk were immediately despatched to relieve Crevant; a troop of Burgundians joined them. The orders of the Duke of Bedford were precise: the archers carried their stakes.

The battle was to be fought on foot, as at Agincourt, without giving any quarter to the enemy. The army of King Charles VII. was, it was said, superior in numbers to that of the English.

On arriving before Crevant, the assailants found themselves arrested by the river Yonne, and remained there two days; when the English had at length forced a passage, they attacked the Scots, leaving the French troops to the Burgundians. "There is no other antidote for the English than the Scots," said Pope Martin V. after the battle of Baugê, but at Crevant the Scots were defeated. The French had promptly yielded, only the bravest knight had supported their allies; Lord Buchan and the Count of Ventadour had both lost an eye, and were taken prisoners, as well as Saintrailles, a famous Armagnac knight; subsequently the English re-entered Paris in triumph. Scotland, however, was not exhausted of knights in search of adventure. Archibald Douglas had disembarked at La Rochelle with five thousand men, and King Charles VII., in his gratitude, conferred upon him the title of Duke of Touraine; he loaded with honors the other Scottish noblemen, of whom several finally became naturalized in France; the barons began to complain of the favours which the king lavished upon his foreign allies. The Duke of Milan sent him a large reinforcement of Italians.

The Duke of Bedford was uneasy concerning the relief which arrived from Scotland for his adversaries, and he hoped to dry up the source of it by sending back King James into his dominions; negotiations had been opened up; the marriage of the captive prince with Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and niece of the Bishop of Winchester, had been celebrated; the ransom was settled and James I. had returned to Scotland after nineteen years of captivity, there to govern with an honest firmness to which his people had not been accustomed; but the tide of emigration towards France, although slightly slackened had not ceased in the meanwhile; the justice of the king was rigorously exercised upon the old enemies of his family, and a large number of Scottish knights, flying from his anger, took refuge in the army of Charles VII.; it was with their assistance that the royalist noblemen marched, in the month of August, against Ivry, in Normandy, which the Duke of Bedford was attacking. {43} But the position of the English was strong, discord reigned in the French army, deprived of a chief by the indolence of Charles VII. Douglas and Buchan wished to make the attack; the Count of Alençon and the Count of Aumale refused their consent, and drew the army with them. In withdrawing they surprised Verneuil; the town was important, and the duke of Bedford followed the French thither. A tumultuous council resolved to repulse him in the open plain; the royalists, all on foot, quitted Verneuil; the Milanese alone remained on horseback. The English awaited the attack from behind the stakes of their archers. "Let us allow them to come," said Douglas; but the French noblemen despised the adventurers, as they called their valiant allies, and they made the attack. The combat was terrible; at one moment La Hire and Saintrailles, at the head of the Milanese, broke the reserve of the archers; but the reinforcements of the principal body repulsed them, and they were completely routed. Douglas had been slain, as well as his son. Lord Buchan lay upon the field of battle with the Counts of Narbonne, Tonnerre, and Ventadour; the Count of Alençon and the Marshall de la Fayette were prisoners. On his side, the Duke of Bedford had suffered; but the army of King Charles VII. was destroyed; the town of Verneuil surrendered immediately, and the Duke of Bedford caused to be beheaded those of the prisoners who, having sworn allegiance to his nephew, had not kept their oaths.

Bedford conducted affairs in France with firmness and prudence, but he was thwarted in his policy by the thoughtless and passionate acts of his brother, the Duke of Gloucester. The latter had become smitten with Jacqueline of Hainault, the daughter and heiress of the Count of Hainault, and married, in the first instance, to the second Dauphin, John, poisoned at Compiègne. Still young at the death of that prince, she had married the Duke of Brabant; but she soon conceived a horror of her husband, who had, she said, the taste for favourites of low degree, and abandoning him after three years of union, she had taken refuge in England, where King Henry IV. had received her with great honours. He had, however, opposed the project of marriage of his brother, and upon his death-bed had recommended him to renounce them. The Pope, Martin V., had refused to break off the marriage of Jacqueline of Hainault with the Duke of Brabant; but she pleaded the degree of relationship; and addressed herself to the Anti-Pope, Benedict XIII., who had refused to submit to the decision of the Council of Constance to terminate the schism. Too happy to perform the act of a pontiff, Benedict pronounced the nullity of the marriage, and the Duke of Gloucester espoused Jacqueline of Hainault. The remonstrances of the Duke of Burgundy became more ardent; he had, from the first moment, defended the rights of his cousin, the Duke of Brabant, proposing to refer the case to the arbitration of the Duke of Bedford. "I am content," said he, "that we should take as judge my very dear and beloved cousin, and also your brother the regent, Duke of Bedford, for he is such a prince, that I know that to you and to me, and to all others, he would be an upright judge." {45} The Duke of Gloucester had listened to no remonstrance, and the dangerous disaffection of the Duke Philip was secretly becoming graver, when, shortly after the battle of Verneuil, Gloucester and Jacqueline landed at Calais with a body of English soldiers, notwithstanding the entreaties of their uncle Beaufort in England, and those of the Duke of Bedford in France; they traversed the dominions of the Duke of Burgundy, and attacked the Duke of Brabant in Hainault; they had already taken possession of Mons when the Duke of Burgundy, in a state of fury, wrote to Gloucester, challenging him to single combat. At the same time he sent considerable assistance to the Duke of Brabant, accepting for that favour the service of his former enemies. Saintrailles was among the number of the knights who proceeded to fight against the English in the Low Countries.

The bonds which united the House of Burgundy to England were beginning to relax, and the Pope was already working secretly in concert with the Duke of Savoy, to negotiate an agreement with Charles VII. The Duke of Gloucester had returned to England; fearing the influence of his uncle Beaufort, he had left Jacqueline entrusted to defend her inheritance. Scarcely had he departed, when the majority of the towns opened their gates to the Duke of Burgundy; and Jacqueline, at first tightly held within Mons, then led a captive to Ghent, escaped with great difficulty to take refuge in Holland.

So much imprudence on the part of his nephew had irritated the Bishop of Winchester so far as to bring about an open quarrel. The Duke of Bedford was compelled to repair to England towards the end of the year 1425 to prevent bloodshed between the two parties. He had some trouble in effecting a reconciliation, sincere on the part of the Duke of Gloucester, whose character was as frank as it was impetuous; doubtful in that of the priest, more implacable than the warrior; the Bishop of Winchester resigned the seals, and finding himself elevated by Martin V. to the dignity of a Cardinalship, he quitted England with the Duke of Bedford. The latter had been recalled to France by the defection of the Duke of Brittany, who had recently declared himself in favour of King Charles VII. at the instigation of his brother, the Count of Richemont, already for some time rallied, and whom the king had made Constable. Scarcely had Bedford set foot upon French soil, when he sent an army into Brittany; the country was devastated, the Duke of Brittany was shut up within Rennes and so closely pressed, that he found himself compelled to sever his alliance with the King of France; he swore for the second time to the treaty of Troyes, and did homage to the little king Henry VI.

The Pope, Martin V., had solemnly declared the nullity of the marriage of Jacqueline de Hainault with the Duke of Gloucester, and the latter had consoled himself by espousing Eleanor Cobham, formerly a lady of the household of his wife. The Countess Jacqueline still held out bravely in Holland; the Duke of Brabant had recently died; his brother, who had succeeded him, had no claim upon Jacqueline or upon her dominions; she would have been free if the enemy whom she had raised up had not been too powerful and too greedy to stop on such a fine road; from town to town, from territory to territory, the Duke of Burgundy prosecuted his conquest, and Jacqueline, abandoned by nearly all her vassals, a victim on sea and on land, at length consented, in the summer of 1428, to recognize the Duke Philip as her heir, and to entrust to him immediately the government of her dominions. {47} The duke, satisfied with the English, who had not hindered him in this last act of his ambition, promised troops for the great expedition which was being prepared against the country beyond the Loire, almost entirely rallied to King Charles VII.

The war had languished since the battle of Verneuil; the King of France was poor, indolent, and delivered up to favourites. The Sire de Giac and the Sire de Beaulieu had given place to the Sire de la Trémoille, more adventurous and more dangerous than the two others; he counteracted beside the king the influence of the Constable de Richemont and of the true friends of France. The Duke of Bedford for a long time paralyzed by the quarrels of the Duke of Gloucester, had recently received reinforcements from England, under the order of the Earl of Salisbury. The latter resolved to undertake the siege of Orleans. On the 12th of October, 1428, he appeared before the city, commencing his siege preparations according to the most learned rules of the time, but not considering that he had given time for the place to furnish itself with men and victuals, to repair its fortifications, and to place itself in a state of defence; the best knights of the King of France had shut themselves up in Orleans.

The assaults failed, the citizens of Orleans valiantly supporting the garrison. The Bastard of Orleans, Count of Dunois, had brought reinforcements, Salisbury dreamt of metamorphosing the siege into a blockade, when, contemplating the city from the Tournelles fort, which he had taken at the outset, he was struck in the face by a stone shot from a falconet, which rebounded against the embrasure of the window and killed his esquire beside him. The general was dying; it was found necessary to carry him to Fertê-sur-Meung, where he died at the end of a few days, to the great joy of the population of Orleans. The Earl Suffolk arrived to take the command, and the siege continued. The English army, badly installed beneath its huts of tree branches, suffered from the cold, and often from hunger; the country which surrounded them was hostile and devastated; the Duke of Bedford resolved, in the month of February, to send provisions to him from Paris. It was during Lent and the convoy which Sir John Falstaff was entrusted to lead, consisted especially of herrings, when, on the 12th of February he was attacked by the French near the village of Rouvray, between Graville and Orleans. As usual, the Scotch and the French quarrelled among themselves; the former, wishing to fight on foot, the latter to remain on horseback; they were within bowshot, and the English archers were beginning to shoot; the rout was not long delayed, and Sir John Falstaff arrived triumphantly at the camp with the herrings which gave their name to his victory.

This defeat threw discouragement into Orleans; hunger began to make itself felt; the citizens spoke of surrendering their city, not to the English but the Duke of Burgundy; the latter came to Paris to consult about it with the regent. "No," said Bedford, "it is just that those who have had the trouble should have the honour." {49} Philip did not remonstrate; disquieting rumours were beginning to circulate among the Burgundians: it was said that the Duke of Bedford had declared that the Duke of Burgundy would finally proceed to England to drink more beer than would quench his thirst. The duke quitted the court, dissatisfied and gloomy. The King of France was at Chinon; his affairs appeared desperate; many noblemen had abandoned him, and he would have willingly retired to the South, abandoning to their fate Orleans and the banks of the Loire, but for the efforts of his wife, Mary of Anjou, and the anger of Dunois. La Trémoille had caused the Constable to be sent away.

Deliverance was approaching by the weakest instrument which it has ever pleased God to employ for the accomplishment of His designs. A young girl was growing up in the village of Domrémy, upon the borders of Lorraine and Burgundy; she was named Joan of Arc, she was eighteen years of age, she was good and pious. For a long while already—from the age of thirteen years—she had begun to have visions, to hear voices, Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret commanding her to go to France, to the assistance of the king: as she grew up the voices became more urgent. People began to speak in the village of the strange exaltation of Joan. The Sire de Baudricourt, in command at Vaucouleurs, wished to see her; but he sent her back ridiculing her. Urged however, by others, he resolved to cause her to be taken to the king. "I must go to the king before Mid-Lent," said Joan, "even should I have to wear my legs to the knees to reach him, for nobody in the world, neither king nor duke, nor daughter of the King of Scotland can deliver the kingdom of France; I should prefer to remain and spin beside my poor mother, for it is not my work, but I must go, because Messire wills it." "Who is Messire?" it was asked. "It is God," said Joan, and the noblemen who were leading her forward were struck with admiration on seeing her pass the night kneeling in the churches, and fasting on bread and water.

When she arrived at Chinon, the king refused for several days to see her, saying that she was a mad woman; but the rumour of her journey had already spread. Dunois and the besieged in Orleans had caused inquiry to be made as to who this young girl was who was to deliver them; Joan was admitted into the great hall full of noblemen richly dressed; none of them detached himself from the groups; she went straight towards Charles VII. and knelt before him. "I am not the king, Joan," he said, and he indicated one of his courtiers to her. "By my God, gentle prince," she said, "it is you, and no other. Most noble lord Dauphin, the King of Heaven sends a message to you through me, to be consecrated and crowned in the city of Rheims, and you shall be His Lieutenant in the kingdom of France." Charles was won over; he drew Joan into a corner, and asked a thousand questions of her. Confidence began to spread in the army; the soldiers asked that Joan should be placed at their head, to go and deliver Orleans. The doctors and the bishops caused her to undergo interrogations; after having said that she was mad, they feared that she might be a sorceress, but neither examinations nor interrogations shook her simplicity and resolution. "The sign which I am to give is to cause the siege of Orleans to be raised," she said. "But if God wishes to deliver France, He has no need of armed men," insisted the doctors. "Ah!" she replied, "the soldiers will fight, and God will give them the victory."

Joan of Arc recognizes the French King.

At least it was resolved to attempt the venture, and Joan, with the state of a chieftain departed from Blois at the head of a considerable convoy, led by the best captains of the French army. She wished to attack Orleans from the right bank, saying that her voices had commanded her to do it; but the soldiers were of a contrary opinion; they deceived Joan, and were arriving by the left bank; Dunois came in a little boat to meet the convoy. "Are you the Bastard of Orleans?" she said to him. "Yes, and very pleased at your arrival." "You gave advice that we should come by the Sologne," she said, "and not by the Beauce, across the dominion of the English: the advice of Messire was not yours. I bring you the best succour that ever knight or city received; it is the succour of the King of Heaven." And everybody was surprised on hearing her speak so well. The convoy entered Orleans without striking a blow; the soldiers returned therefrom, but Joan wished to remain in the city. The besieged crowded round her, already reassured and encouraged by her presence. Anxiety prevailed in the English camp; the leaders declared that Joan was mad; the soldiers feared that she might be a sorceress. She had written to the Earl of Suffolk and to Talbot, inviting them to retire. As they would not listen to her, and loaded her with insults, she was greatly enraged, and demanded that they should be attacked immediately. A second convoy had entered the city; Joan was sleeping; suddenly she awoke. "Ah! Lord," she said, "the blood of our people is flowing; why was I not summoned sooner? My arms! My horse!" and she ran towards the fortress of Saint Loup. {52} She had not been deceived; a few soldiers had attempted a sally against the fortress occupied by the English; they were beginning to waver when Joan arrived; many soldiers had followed her; the English were repulsed, and the fortress recaptured. Joan had fought like at knight, and every one had admired her; but she was sad; many men had died without confessing. "I have compassion for their souls," she said. Terror spread among the English. "She performs miracles," it was said at Orleans. "She is a sorceress," said the archers of the enemy, but they began to fear her.

From fortress to fortress, from rampart to rampart all that the English had gained was by degrees taken from them; the Tournelles fortress had recently been taken; the citizens of Orleans were rejoicing; the Earl of Suffolk and his lieutenants had resolved to retire. However, they did not wish to escape ignominiously. The camp had been fired, and, arrayed in battle order, the English appeared to await the attack. It was on the 8th of May, 1429. "Do not assail them first," said Joan; "for the love and honour of the holy Sabbath, let them be allowed to depart if they wish to go: if they should attack you, defend yourselves boldly and you shall be masters." The English did not make an attack, but retreated without a struggle; Joan could not prevent the soldiers from throwing themselves upon the rear of the English army and gaining a large quantity of booty. Plunder, like disorder of all kinds, agitated and saddened her: she asked pardon of God in all the churches for all the evil which she had not been able to prevent.

Great satisfaction prevailed at the court of King Charles, who ordered rejoicings in honour of Joan; but she took no pleasure in the amusements; she wished the king to go and cause himself to be consecrated at Rheims. "I am strongly urged to conduct you thither," she said; "I shall last but one year or scarcely more; I must therefore employ it well." And as she was questioned about the voices, "I offered up a prayer," she said; "I complained that you would not believe what I say, thereupon the voice came and said, 'Go! go! my child, I will help you; go!' and it made me very joyful; I wish it might last forever." On the 11th of June the French army was before Jargeau, where the Earl of Suffolk had shut himself up. At the head of the attacking party was the Duke of Alençon, recently withdrawn from captivity. "Forward, gentle duke, to the assault!" cried Joan, and as he delayed, "Ah! gentle duke, are you afraid?" said she; "you well know that I have promised to your wife to return you safe." A large stone overthrew Joan; for a moment she was thought dead, but immediately afterward, she arose. "Come! come! at the English!" she cried; "Messire has condemned them; they are ours." Jargeau was carried by storm; the Earl of Suffolk and his brother, John de la Pole, were made prisoners; several fortresses fell into the power of the French; the English had retreated towards the Beauce, under the orders of Talbot.

The Constable had recently rejoined the army; it was resolved to follow the enemy. "Ah! my God!" said Joan, "we must fight them, were they even suspended to the clouds, we should have them, for God has sent us to punish them. The gentle Dauphin will to-day gain the greatest victory which he has yet had; my Counsel has told me that they are ours."

The English had halted in the open field in the environs of Patay; Sir John Falstaff and many others were inclined not to fight. The soldiers were discouraged by their recent checks, they said, and the spells of Joan took away all their courage; but Talbot was ashamed of having retreated so far; he began to make his arrangements for the fight; and the archers were driving in their stakes, when the advanced guard of the French army came and attacked them with that inconsiderate ardour, so sadly rewarded at Crecy and at Poictiers; but this time the English were in disorder; the soldiers who had remained on horseback fled; the rout was complete, and Sir John Falstaff gallopped to Paris, where the Duke of Bedford, in a great rage, wished to send him the Garter. Lord Talbot and a large number of knights were made prisoners. "Well, Messire Talbot," said the Duke of Alençon, "you did not expect this, this morning?" "It is the fortune of war," replied the Englishman, without emotion. Joan no longer spoke of anything but the visit to Rheims.

The councillors of King Charles still hesitated; the Sire de la Trémoille feared lest he might be supplanted beside his master; he contrived once more to remove the Constable; at length the persistence of Joan prevailed, and the king started with his little army; Auxerre, summoned to surrender, promised to open its gates if Troyes and Rheims would do likewise. The Burgundian garrison of Troyes resisted, and the French had no provisions. Murmurs began to be uttered against Joan; she urged the king to make the assault. "You will enter into Troyes within two days, by love or by force, and the trecherous Burgundians will be completely dismayed." "Whoever should be certain of obtaining possession of it in six days, could well wait Joan," said the chancellor, Archbishop of Rheims. {55} "Yes," she persisted, "you shall have it to-morrow." On the morrow the entry into Troyes was made; Friar Richard, a famous preacher, came to meet Joan, and besprinkled her with holy water, to assure himself that she was not a sorceress; Joan smiled. On the 15th of July, 1429, Rheims opened its gates, and on the 17th the king was at length crowned in the cathedral. Joan stood beside him, holding her white standard, with these two words: "Jesus, Maria." When the king had received the sacrament, she threw herself at his feet, in tears. "Gentle king," she said, "now is fulfilled the good pleasure of God, who willed it that you should come to Rheims to receive your worthy consecration, to show that you were king, and he to whom the kingdom should belong." And, from that day, she spoke no longer but of returning to her village. "I have accomplished that which Messire has commanded me," she repeated, "which was to raise the siege of Orleans and to cause the gentle king to be crowned; I wish he could cause me to be taken back to my father and mother, who would be so pleased to see me again. I would mind their sheep and cattle, as I was wont to do."

Meanwhile, the Duke of Bedford was collecting reinforcements; the dissensions which continued in the English council between the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal de Beaufort impeded the consignments of men and money; the regent had even been compelled to weaken his garrisons in Normandy, to assemble an army in the neighbourhood of Paris, when his uncle, the Cardinal, sent him a corps of two or three thousand men, whom he had raised with the object of making war in Bohemia, against the partisans of John Huss, that were excommunicated in a body by the Pope. {56} The cardinal had already furnished heavy sums for sustaining the war in France, and this fresh succour enabled the Duke of Bedford to make an expedition into Normandy, with the intention of stifling the insurrections which had attracted the Constable. The noblemen favourable to the French were restrained and the Constable was repulsed; but meanwhile Charles VII., led by Joan of Arc, whom he retained beside him, made an attempt upon Paris. Soissons, Senlis, Beauvais, had opened their gates to him, but the soldiers marched unwillingly towards the capital; the captains did not agree; the assault was lightly made, and Joan was wounded. The troops were furious. "You told us that we should be in Paris this evening," they said to Joan. "And so should we have been there, if you had fought well," she replied. The king, discouraged, retired to Bourges, to spend the winter.

While the King of France was going away from his good city of Paris, the Duke of Burgundy arrived there, still hesitating between the two parties, notwithstanding the efforts of his sister, the Duchess of Bedford, to renew his old intimacy with the English regent. By degrees the influence of national feeling began to reawaken in the soul of the Duke Philip, as his thirst for vengeance was appeased; the French promised him every conceivable reparation for the assassination of John Sans Peur, and it was necessary, in order to retain him in the camp of the English, for the Duke of Bedford to offer him the command of the allied forces, thus abdicating in his favour. The regent retired to Normandy, where he preserved the most complete authority. {57} Joan was waging war upon the banks of the Loire; she had taken the castle of Pierre-le-Montoir, but she had been repulsed before La Charité. When the king at length took the field in the spring of 1430, Joan was entrusted to deliver Compiègne, besieged by the Duke Philip in person, and she contrived to enter into the town. The fatal moment however was approaching.

On the 25th of May the garrison of Compiègne made a sally. Joan led the troops, and she had attacked an important position occupied by the Burgundians, when a crushing force made her retreat. She covered and directed the retreat: at the moment when she was about to re-enter the town, the drawbridge was withdrawn, and, whether by mistake or treason, Joan found herself almost alone outside the walls. She had rallied a few soldiers around her, and endeavoured to gain the country; but she had been recognized and was surrounded and thrown from her horse. She was still upon the ground when she surrendered to the Bastard of Vendôme, who conducted her to the quarters of John of Luxembourg.

The rejoicing was great in the English and Burgundian camp, the Duke of Bedford caused a Te Deum to be sung; but the French did not concern themselves about the heroine who had delivered them: her task was accomplished; she had restored courage to the soldiers and hope to the captains; her enthusiasm had drawn along the most distrustful. Now she was a prisoner. Her enemies were negotiating among themselves to possess her; but those whom she had saved by the help of God did not raise a sword to defend her, nor a farthing to ransom her.

The Duke of Burgundy had returned to his dominion of Flanders, agitated by several insurrections when the Bishop of Beauvais, Peter Cauchon, at the instigation of the English, claimed Joan from John of Luxembourg. "The sorceress had been captured in his diocese," he said, "and should be tried by the Church." The count resisted for a long time, but they finally gave him ten thousand livres, and he sold Joan. She was led in the first place to Arras, then to Crotoy; at length she was taken to Rouen, where the little king, Henry VI., had recently arrived. The French arms continued to make fresh progress; every day the English lost some towns; the Duke Philip, lieutenant-general of the kingdom, who had recently become master of Brabant by the death of the young duke, maintained the English alliance by such slight bonds, that one check more might suddenly break them; the anger and shame of the English willingly attributed all their misfortunes to Joan; when she appeared they were at the height of success; since then every thing had failed them. Perhaps her death might bring a return of good fortune. The most enlightened among the English captains looked upon her as a sorceress. "She is an agent of Satan," the Duke of Bedford had written to the Council of England. Hatred always finds cowards to serve her; Peter Cauchon had been driven from Beauvais by his flock, as English, when [the] town had surrendered to Charles VII., he had been proposed to the Pope by the Duke of Bedford for the archbishopric of Rouen; his vengeance and ambition impelled him to ruin Joan. The English, however, had not sufficient confidence in him to place her in his hands. Joan was kept in the large tower of the castle, in the custody of the Earl of Warwick.

The noblest hearts, the firmest minds of the middle ages appeared to lose all generosity and all justice when they found themselves confronted with an unhappy wretch, accused of sorcery. The brave Warwick concealed himself to hear what the prisoner said to the treacherous confessor who had been brought. She was conducted before the Council of Inquisition, presided over by the Bishop of Beauvais. Neither violence nor ill-will succeeded in agitating her: nothing disconcerted this poor country girl, who knew nothing but her prayers. "Are you in the grace of God?" she was asked suddenly. "It is a great thing," she replied, "to answer such a question." "Yes," said one of the inquisitors, "and the accused is not obliged to answer." "You would do better to hold your tongue," exclaimed the Bishop angrily. "If I am not," replied Joan, "may God receive me into it; and if I am, may God preserve me in it." "What virtue do you attribute to your banner?" asked the bishop. "None at all; I said, 'Enter boldly among the English,' and I entered myself." "Why, then, did you hold it beside the altar at Rheims?" "It had had all the trouble," said Joan, smiling, "it was quite right that it should witness the honour."

In vain was she interrogated upon her visions; she always replied that St. Catherine and St. Margaret visited her and encouraged her in her prison; it was by their advice that she refused to discard man's attire, which had been made a crime against her. She was urged to submit herself to the Church, but she did not understand what was asked of her, and seeing before her priests hostile to her cause and to her king, she implored that there might be among the judges some men of her party.

The sentence was pronounced: the Church rejected Joan as an impure member, and delivered her up to secular justice. The justice was the vengeance of the English. The unhappy prisoner was conducted to the public square, where two scaffolds were erected; Joan was placed upon one of these, the preacher who was to expound the sentence to the people was upon the other, the multitude were crowded together below.

As long as the Doctor of the Sorbonne dwelt upon her misdeeds and the deceptions by which she had deluded the poor people of France, Joan listened in silence; but when he exclaimed, "Charles, who proclaimest thyself her king and governor, thou hast adhered like a heretic as thou art to the words and acts of a woman defamed and without honour," the loyal heart of Joan was unable to contain its emotion. "Speak of me," she exclaimed, "but not of the king; he is a good Christian, and I dare say and swear under pain of death that he is the noblest among the Christians who love their faith and their Church." "Silence her," cried the Bishop of Beauvais.

They wished to make her sign her abjuration. "What is abjuration?" she said. "It is that your judges have judged well." She refused. "What I have done, I have done well to do," she repeated. At length she yielded. "I submit to the Universal Church," she said, "and since the clergy say that my visions are not credible I will no longer maintain them." "Sign or you will perish by the fire," said the preacher. She made a cross at the foot of the paper which was presented to her, and was taken back into her prison. Her submission pledged her to resume woman's clothing.

The English murmured, not understanding anything of the manœuvres of the bishop. "All goes ill, because Joan escapes," said the Earl of Warwick. The priests smiled. Two days after her abjuration, Joan, on awaking, found only in her chamber a man's dress: she resisted for a long time. "You know that I have promised not to wear it," she said; she was obliged to rise however. The jailors went and informed the Bishop. "She is taken!" said the Earl of Warwick. "You have fallen back into your illusions," said Cauchon to the prisoner; "you have heard your voices." "Yes," said Joan resolutely, "and they have told me that it was a great pity to have signed your abjuration in order to save my life. I only signed through fear of the fire. Give me a comfortable prison, and I will do what the Church may wish."

The stake awaited her. "Farewell," cried Cauchon to the Earl of Warwick, on going out of the prison. The poor child tore out her hair when she learnt the sentence passed upon her. "I had seven times rather that they should behead me," she repeated. She was being conducted to execution, when she perceived the Bishop of Beauvais. "Bishop, I die through you," she said. Eight hundred Englishmen accompanied the cart. She prayed aloud with so much fervour that the French wept on hearing her; several of the judges who had taken part in the prosecution, had not the strength to follow her to execution. The public square had been reached. "Ah! Rouen! Rouen!" she said, "is it here that I am to die?" The preacher had reproached her with her relapse; she listened to him with calmness, redoubling her prayers. The Bishop of Noyon descended from the scaffold, being unable to bear this spectacle; the Bishop of Winchester was weeping; she was embracing the parish cross which had been brought to her. {62} The executioner seized her. Above the stake were written the words: "Heretic, relapser, apostate, idolater." Joan's new confessor, a good monk who did not betray her, had mounted upon the stake with her; he was still there when the fire was lighted. "Descend quickly," said Joan, "but stay near enough for me to see the cross. Ah! Rouen! Rouen! I greatly fear that you may suffer for my death." The flame enveloped her: she was still heard praying; at length a last cry, "Jesus!" and all was ended, The English themselves were touched. "It is a fine end," said the soldiers; "we are very happy to have seen her, for she was a good woman." "She has died a martyr, and for her true Lord," said the French. The executioner went and confessed on the same evening, fearing never to obtain the forgiveness of God. Cardinal Beaufort caused the ashes of the stake to be cast into the Seine fearing that they might be made into relics; and the King of England addressed to all the princes of Christendom, a letter recounting the proceedings, and how the victim herself had acknowledged that evil and lying spirits had deluded her. The process of rehabilitation, afterwards made at the court of Rome, at the request of Charles VII., the only token of remembrance which he gave of the unhappy Joan, established in its real light the historical truth; but justice had already been done by public opinion, "She was a marvellous girl, valiant in war," it was said in Flanders as well as in Burgundy and in France; "the English have wickedly caused her death, and through revenge." Peter Cauchon was never Archbishop of Rouen; he became Bishop of Lisieux, where he was interred in the wall of St. James's church, as though he did not feel himself worthy to repose in the sacred place.

In burning Joan the English had hoped to regain their former good fortune; but it was not so. Every day a fresh town opened its gates to the French. Indolent as Charles VII. still was, national instinct now fought for him. The Duke of Bedford wished to satisfy the taste of the Parisians for festivals while giving religious sanction to the rights of his nephew upon France; and on the 17th of December, 1431, the little King Henry VI., nine years of age, was solemnly crowned at Notre Dame. The ceremony was magnificent: wine and milk flowed in the streets; but the French noblemen were few, the Duke of Burgundy had not arrived, and Cardinal Beaufort himself placed the crown upon the head of Henry VI.: it was the English coronation of an English Prince. The sovereign started shortly afterwards for England, leaving with all those who had approached him a sad impression of languor and melancholy.

The war languished meanwhile: the English were in need of men and money, and the quarrels of the favourites with the great French noblemen continued around King Charles VII.; but the Duke of Burgundy detached himself more and more from England. The Duchess of Bedford died without children in the month of November, 1432, and six months after her death the Duke married Jacquette of Luxembourg, daughter of the Count of Saint Pol. The Duke of Burgundy considered himself offended by the shortness of the mourning, and by the union contracted without his authority with one of his vassals. He was seeking a pretext for a quarrel; his treaty with King Charles was almost concluded; the blood which had inundated France for fourteen years, sufficed, it was thought, to satisfy the shade of the Duke John. {64} The counsellors of the king urged the duke towards peace; but he made much of his scruples anent the oaths which bound him to the English. Appeal was made to Pope Eugenius IV., and through his efforts a great congress assembled at Arras, in 1435. The Duke of Burgundy had summoned all his nobility; King Charles had sent twenty-nine noblemen, at the head of whom walked the Constable. Cardinal Beaufort, with twenty-six barons, half English and half French, represented the interests of England. The Duke Philip displayed, for receiving such great company, all his wonted magnificence; festivals succeeded festivals, and jousts followed tournaments; but matters were meanwhile being negotiated and so manifestly manœuvered to the advantage of the French, that Cardinal Beaufort shortly retired in disgust, denying the authority of the congress. Affairs proceeded more rapidly after his departure; the Duke Philip caused his forgiveness and his alliance to be dearly purchased; but at length the treaty was concluded, and on the 26th of September 1435, the Duke of Burgundy, relieved of his oaths to the English, promised to live in peace and friendship with the King of France. All the noblemen swore likewise; when it came to the turn of the Sire de Lannoy, he cried, "I have already five times sworn with this hand to keep the peace during the war which has just ended, and my five oaths have been violated. With the grace of God, I will keep this one."

The Duke of Bedford had not lived long enough to see the conclusion of a treaty which virtually took from England the conquests of King Henry V.; he had died at Rouen, on the 14th of September, exhausted by the struggle which he had sustained for thirteen years, with a courage, firmness and prudence worthy of the confidence which had been manifested towards him by his dying brother. Three days after the signing of the peace, an unnatural mother, abandoned by all her children—Queen Isabel of Bavaria, was dying alone in Paris, in solitude and misery, the just punishment of her crimes; the Duke of Burgundy had publicly declared war against the English, and in the month of April, 1436, at his instigation, the feeble English garrison which was stationed in Paris was overcome by the people, and found itself compelled to open the gates to the Marshal of Isle-Adam: the capital once more became French, the English were driven back into Normandy, where their authority remained complete. The Duke of York, for a moment regent of France, had been replaced by the Earl of Warwick, who established the seat of his government at Rouen where he died. Two towns yet remained to the English near Paris, Meaux and Pontoise; these were taken by the troops of King Charles VII. For a moment, in 1436, the Duke of Burgundy even threatened Calais with a considerable army; but before the arrival of the Duke of Gloucester, who had challenged him to combat, and claimed to take possession of the dominions of his wife, Jacqueline, who had recently died, the Duke Philip retreated precipitately into his dominions, impelled by his troops, who were disbanding. In 1444, through the efforts of Isabel of Portugal, wife of the Duke of Burgundy, added to the representations of the Duke of Orleans, recently snatched from the captivity which he had suffered since the battle of Agincourt, a truce of two years was concluded between the two nations; the horrors of the Hundred Years' War were at length reaching their end.

While the English were losing ground by degrees in France, England impoverished by the necessities of the war, underwent the commotion of a continual struggle between the two chiefs of the government, the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort. Queen Catherine, the mother of the king, had retained no influence, and three years after the death of Henry V. she had married a plain Welsh gentleman, Owen Tudor, by whom she had had three sons, whom she confided to the young King Henry VI. when she died in 1437, The Duchess of Bedford followed her example, by wedding Sir Richard Woodville of Wydeville; but these misalliances had proved grave dangers to the ambitious men, elevated to a rank for which they had not been born; Owen Tudor and Woodville were thrown into prison, and the wife of the Duke of Gloucester, Eleanor Cobham, accused of sorcery, was condemned to do public penance and to be imprisoned for the remainder of her days. The young King Henry had assumed no authority over his kingdom. He was twenty-two years of age; he was tall and handsome, but languid, apathetic, timid, solely occupied by his books and his devotions. He might have become a holy monk, but he was destitute of the qualities necessary to a king in difficult and hard times. A wife was sought for him who might supply the defects of his character, and the choice of his advisers fell upon Margaret of Anjou, cousin of the Queen of France, and daughter of René of Anjou, King of Sicily and Jerusalem, Duke of Maine, Anjou, and Bar; but a king without kingdom, a duke without duchy, a chevalier and a poet, without other fortune than his harp and his sword. {67} His daughter was purchased of him by restoring to him his two provinces of Anjou and Maine, which the French arms had not yet been able to break through. The English now held but Normandy and a few towns in Guienne. The marriage of the king concluded by the Earl of Suffolk and Cardinal Beaufort, against the advice of the Duke of Gloucester, had not been successful in England. There, there were regrets for the loss of the two provinces which formerly formed part of the dominions of the Angevin kings, and over which England had always thought she had rights. Queen Margaret, besides, with her beauty, her wit, and her energy, brought into her new country ideas of government which were little favourable to English independence. She had confidence in the worthy Suffolk, who had become a Marquis and soon afterwards a Duke; she shared his power, and treated with haughtiness those who approached her. She manifested, in particular, little liking for the Duke of Gloucester, whom she considered as her enemy. In the month of February, 1447, the Parliament was convoked at Bury St. Edmund's; the partisans of Suffolk were assembled in the neighborhood, when the Duke of Gloucester arrived on the morrow of the opening of the session. Being immediately arrested and accused of the crime of high treason, he was found dead in his bed on the 28th of February, as had been formerly at Calais another Duke of Gloucester. A few of his servants were executed after his death, under pretext of a plot to release the Duchess Eleanor. Suffolk took possession of the property of the duke, whom the public voice accused him of having murdered. {68} Cardinal Beaufort had recently died in his palace of Walvesey (on the 11th of April), leaving immense riches consecrated to the foundation of charitable institutions which still exist. Suffolk remained the sole master of the government. King Henry VI. was occupied in the creation of Eton College, and in the erection of King's College, at Cambridge, where the marvelous beauty of the chapel remains as a monument of the exquisite taste of the poor king, so little suited to the affairs of this world. Meanwhile the truce with France, several times renewed, had been violently broken by King Charles VII., under pretext of an infraction which well suited his wishes. France was rising again, and England was profoundly weakened by her internal dissensions. The troops assembled in Maine, then entered Normandy; the Duke of Somerset, who commanded there had few soldiers and no money. Dunois marched against Rouen, and notwithstanding the desperate resistance of Talbot, who was consigned as a hostage into the hands of the French, the citizens delivered up the city. Sir Thomas Kyriel, despatched with a reinforcement to the Duke of Somerset was defeated on the 13th of April, 1450, near Formigny, by the Constable and the Count of Clermont. Bajxux, Avranches, Caen succumbed in succession; Cherbourg was taken by storm, and by the 12th of August the English had lost the whole of Normandy. In the following year the towns which yet remained to them in Guienne surrendered without striking a blow. Calais alone was now all of the soil of France that remained to Henry VI. Charles VII., drawn from his elegant indolence, proposed negotiations. "My sword shall never return to its scabbard, until I have retaken all that I have lost!" cried poor king Henry VI., who had never drawn a sword in his life: but France no longer feared him.

Internal difficulties sufficed to absorb the efforts of the faithful servants of the King of England. The Parliament had at length risen against the Duke of Suffolk; he had been conducted to the tower, protesting his innocence. The accusations produced against him were confused, ill-founded, and frivolous; the graver subjects of distrust had scarcely been touched upon. The duke threw himself upon his knees before the king, refused to shield himself with his privilege by demanding the judgment of his peers, and consigned himself to the justice of his master, who wished to save him. He was simply banished from England for five years: the Parliament accepted this compromise, not without a protest on the part of the lords in favour of the rights of their order.

The anger of the population of London was not so easy to disarm as the vengeance of the Parliament. Suffolk had difficulty in retiring safe and sound to his estate; he had gathered around him friends and partisans, swearing before them that he was innocent, when he embarked for the Continent on the 1st of May, 1430. He was sailing about on the morrow between Dover and Calais, when a large war-ship, the Nicholas-de-la-Tour, hailed his little vessel. The duke was summoned on board the ship. "You are here, traitor," said the captain, as he placed his foot upon the deck, and Suffolk was immediately placed under arrest. Two days elapsed; the duke had asked for a confessor; a little bark came up with the Nicholas; she bore an executioner with an axe. Suffolk was led upon deck and beheaded. {70} None inquired whence had come the warrant; but the importance of the ships entrusted to arrest the banished man at sea, caused a supposition that the greatest personages of the kingdom had not remained strangers to the execution. The people were satisfied, their vengeance was consummated. New events now absorbed all minds.

Numerous insurrections had during a short time past broken out in different parts of England. An adventurer, Jack Cade, an Irishman by origin, who had for a long while served in the English armies in France, placed himself at the head of the insurgents. He had assumed the name of Mortimer, and represented himself a relative of the Duke of York, who then commanded in Ireland. Thirty thousand men soon found themselves assembled around Cade, nearly all from the county of Kent. It was said that the queen wished to avenge herself for the death of her favourite, whose decapitated body had been brought by the waves to the coast of Dover. Cade brought his forces to Blackheath, as Wat Tyler had formerly done, and the "complaints of the commons of Kent," were dispatched to the king at London. Amongst the number of the demands of the insurgents, they begged Henry VI. to recall to his side his blood relatives, the Dukes of York, Exeter, Buckingham, and Norfolk, in order to punish the traitors who had caused the death of the Duke of Gloucester, the holy father in God, Cardinal Beaufort, and lost the dominions of Maine, Anjou, and Normandy. The reply of the court was the dispatch of an army against the rebels; but the first detachment was defeated: the soldiers murmured, saying that they did not like to fight against their countrymen, who claimed the liberties of the nation. {71} Concessions were attempted: but the forces of Cade swelled every day, and on the 3rd of July he entered London. Lord Say, one of the most unpopular ministers, was dragged from the tower, where he had been sent by the court in the hope of satisfying the insurgents; and, notwithstanding his protestations, he was executed after a mock trial. Some houses were pillaged, and on the morrow, when the rebels wished to re-enter into London, after having been encamped at Blackheath, the citizens defended the bridge. Cade was compelled to retreat. He was amused by vain concessions and the promise of an amnesty but was soon afterwards pursued and killed; and his head was planted upon London Bridge. The insurrection was stifled; but the name of the Duke of York had been put forward; it circulated from mouth to mouth, and many people began to ask whether the rights to the throne which he held through Anne Mortimer, his mother, did not supersede those of King Henry VI. Prince Richard, son of the Earl of Cambridge, had succeeded to the title of Duke of York, at the death of his paternal uncle; the successes which he had obtained in his government of Ireland had increased his popularity.

Suddenly, towards the end of August, 1451, the Duke of York appeared at the court without giving a reason for having quitted Ireland, and after a short visit to the king, retired to his castle at Fotheringay. Henry VI. endeavoured to place in opposition to him the Duke of Somerset, the head of the younger branch of the House of Lancaster; but the duke was under suspicion, as a favourite of the queen, and too much ill feeling existed against him for the loss of Normandy for it to be possible to counterbalance the influence of the Duke of York. {72} In the Parliament, which opened in November, the proposal was made in the House of Commons to declare the Duke of York heir to the throne, as the king had no children. The author of the proposal was sent to the Tower, and projects menacing to the liberty of the Duke of York began to circulate. He retired into Shropshire, where he assembled together some troops, while protesting his fidelity towards the king. Whilst an army was marching against him, he advanced upon London; the gates of that city were closed to him, and it was at Dartford, that he met the king. After some peaceful negotiations, York repaired alone to the royal tent, but was immediately arrested there. The Duke of Somerset wished for a summary trial and execution; but the king athwart the mists of his intellect had a horror of blood, so he sent the Duke of York to the Tower. He was soon released upon the rumour of the approach of his son, the Earl of March, at the head of an army. He promised to be faithful to the king, and he was left free to return to his castle at Wigmore. The Duke of Somerset remained at the head of the government.

A movement in favour of the English had manifested itself in Guienne. The brave Talbot was despatched thither, notwithstanding his eighty years, at the head of a small army of picked men. Bordeaux surrendered easily, and the red cross of England reappeared in the greater number of the southern towns, when King Charles VII. entered with his troops into the province. He had assembled together considerable forces, and was laying siege to Castillon, when Talbot resolved to relieve the town; he made the attack on the 30th of July, 1453, and was about to carry the position, when the Count of Ponthieu fell upon him with reinforcements; the English retreated, and Talbot was slain. {73} The French army presented itself before Bordeaux; the garrison held out bravely during two months; hunger compelled it to capitulate, and on the 10th of October, the English soldiers, accompanied by a great number of citizens of the place, embarked for England. Guienne was henceforth French; and the last fragment of the inheritance of Eleanor of Aquitaine had slipped from her descendants.

The mental derangement of King Henry VI. continued to increase, and the Parliament had recalled the Duke of York to the council. A son had been born to Queen Margaret; she had from that circumstance, assumed more pride and a more fixed determination to govern at her pleasure. Meanwhile the Commons had obtained the impeachment of the Duke of Somerset, who had been sent to the Tower. The Parliament of 1454 was opened by the Duke of York as the lieutenant of the king. For some time past, efforts had in vain been made to ascertain the real state of King Henry; twelve peers, who contrived to be admitted to him on the occasion of the death of the chancellor, found him incapable of understanding a word or of replying to their questions. Upon their report, the Parliament nominated Richard of York Protector and defender of the throne of England, upon condition of resigning his dignity in favour of the Prince of Wales, as soon as the latter should attain his majority. York protested his loyalty, and furnished proof of it in the following year, when the king, having recovered his reason, reclaimed the royal power. {74} The first use which he made of his recovered authority was to release the Duke of Somerset. The poor monarch endeavoured to reconcile the two rival Houses; but the Duke of York shortly afterwards affected to believe himself in danger, and again raised some troops. The king with Somerset marched against him; a battle began in the very streets of St. Alban's. The archers of the Duke of York were good marksmen: the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Clifford, fell beneath their arrows; and the king himself was wounded. York, seeking him after the victory, found him in bed, in the house of a tanner, and both repaired together to the church, the victor treating the vanquished king with respect. The Duke did not immediately take advantage of his success, but contented himself with appearing before the Parliament as the lieutenant of the king. The Commons, however, claimed for him the title of Protector, and imposed their will upon the Lords. With the moderation which had always characterized his political conduct, York contented himself with consigning to trustworthy hands some important offices, entrusting the custody of Calais to his brother-in-law and faithful friend, the Earl of Warwick; but he did not wreak revenge upon his enemies, and resigned the power to the king without objection at the beginning of 1456, when the monarch, again cured, wished to take back the authority. Soon, however, Queen Margaret everywhere replaced the friends of York by her favourites; the duke then retired to his estates, and the great men of his party did likewise, for the relatives of the noblemen slain at St. Alban's spoke aloud of vengeance.

Hopes were still entertained of arriving at some arrangement. In his moments of reason, the king was gentle, charitable, and humane; he endeavoured to re-establish peace around him. York and Warwick had again protested their fidelity towards him. Henry placed himself as arbitrator between the two parties, and decreed certain fines and reparations towards the families of the victims. The victors of St. Alban's accepted these conditions; the king, the queen, the Duke of York, and all the Yorkist and Lancastrian noblemen solemnly repaired to St. Paul's Cathedral; the Duke of York offered his hand to the queen. The Earl of Warwick however had remained at Calais.

Fresh quarrels soon brought about fresh insurrections. The two parties reciprocally felt too great a distrust ever to live in peace. In the month of September, 1459, the Earl of Salisbury, brother of Warwick, united his forces to those of the Duke of York, and, after a bloody combat in the environs of Drayton, in Shropshire, where the Lancastrians were defeated, the Earl of Warwick repaired to England with some troops which he had carefully gathered at Calais; but scarcely did his soldiers find themselves in front of the royal standard, when a loyal instinct carried them off into the ranks of the army of Henry VI. The strength of the Duke of York no longer allowed him to keep the field, and on the 20th of November the Parliament convoked by the queen at Coventry accused of high treason the whole families of the Duke of York and the Earl of Salisbury. Warwick retired to Calais, taking with him his brother. When the governor sent by Queen Margaret to supplant him appeared before the town, he was repulsed, and the troops that he had brought went over to Warwick. {76} At the end of June, 1460, the earl reappeared in England; the eldest son of the Duke of York marched at his side. The battle of Northampton placed the poor king in the hands of his enemies, and the queen was compelled to fly with her son into Scotland. A mass of great Lancastrian noblemen had remained upon the field of battle. In opposition to the great warriors of the preceding centuries, Warwick, the real chief of the Yorkist party, had a maxim to spare the common people, but strike his enemies ruthlessly, taking for his victims the men of distinction. Thanks to this practice, imitated by his adversaries, all the great families of England found themselves decimated during the Wars of the Roses.

A new Parliament had been convoked at Westminster. The throne was empty in the House of Lords, when the Duke of York entered therein. He advanced at first resolutely, placed his hand upon the cloth of gold which covered the royal seat, then fell back without mounting it. He was resolved, however, to establish his rights. The Archbishop of Canterbury inquired of him whether he did not intend to pay a visit to the king, who was in the palace adjoining. "I know no one in this kingdom who should not pay me a visit first," replied the duke; and he established himself in the royal apartment, while Henry occupied that of the queen.

The peers had not responded to this indirect appeal, and on the 16th of October York despatched a message to them, formally laying claim to the crown. The Lords replied that they could not give an opinion without the advice and consent of the king. {77} Now that he was separated from the queen, who had become more and more unpopular, public feeling began to be agitated in favour of Henry, who was regarded as a saint. But the Duke of York required an answer. When the peers repaired to the captive king, he reminded them that he had received, when quite a child, a crown which had been borne with honour by his father and his grandfather; that it had reposed for forty years upon his brow, and that those even who now wished to snatch it from him, had on several occasions sworn fidelity to him. To these substantial reasons were added attacks against the hereditary rights of the Duke of York, imprudent and puerile conduct which so greatly embarrassed the peers that they called to their aid the judges, then the sergeants of the House, who knew not how to give their advice. On the 23rd the Lords presented their objections, frivolous for the most part, with the exception of the oaths taken by all the peers to the House of Lancaster. A compromise was arrived at in the matter; Warwick and York used moderation, and the crown was assured to King Henry during his lifetime. After him it was to return to Richard, duke of York, and his descendants, to the exclusion of the son of Margaret of Anjou.

The negotiators of this curious treaty had reckoned without the queen. She had quitted Scotland, and was endeavouring to assemble all her partisans and defend the rights of her son. Already the hills and valleys bristled with lances. The Lancastrians were under the sons of the noblemen killed at St. Albans: the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford were there, thirsting for revenge, notwithstanding all the treaties of pacification. {78} The Duke of York commanded his troops in person; he was as bold upon the field of battle as he was hesitating and prudent in the council. On the 30th of December, 1460, he attacked the enemy at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, with inferior forces, and was completely defeated. He remained himself among the dead, and his friend, the Earl of Salisbury, who was made prisoner in the flight, was beheaded the same day at Pontefract. The little Earl of Rutland, second son of the duke, was flying with his tutor, when he was arrested upon Wakefield Bridge by Lord Clifford. The child speechless with terror, threw himself upon his knees. "It is the son of the Duke of York," cried the priest who accompanied him. "Thy father killed mine," said the fierce baron, "I will kill thee therefore, thee and thine." And plunging his dagger into the bosom of the young prince, he despatched the chaplain to carry to his mother the fearful news. England was not yet accustomed to these scenes of slaughter, and a long cry of horror arose in the country when the news of the death of Rutland was known, and when above the gates of York was seen the disfigured head of the duke, surmounted by a crown of paper. Margaret and her partisans had become intoxicated with the cup of revenge, without thinking of the terrible reprisals which awaited them. Already the young Earl of March, the eldest son of the Duke of York, had gained, on the 1st of February at Mortimer's Cross, near Wigmore, a bloody victory, where perished a great number of royalists. All the prisoners of mark, amongst whom was Owen Tudor, father-in-law of King Henry VI., were beheaded after the battle, as though to appease the shades of the Yorkists who had fallen at Wakefield.

Assassination Of The Earl Of Rutland.

This success counterbalanced the effect of a victory gained on the 17th of February, over Warwick, by Queen Margaret, between St. Alban's and Barnet. The Earl was compelled to retreat so fast, that King Henry, forgotten in the tumult, found himself alone in his tent with his chamberlain, when his wife came to take possession of him before causing her prisoners to be executed. Five days later a proclamation of King Henry announced to his people that he had subscribed under constraint to the recent arrangements for the succession to the throne, and that he retracted them without reserve, declaring Edward, formerly Earl of March, a traitor, "it being the duty of every subject of the king to hasten against him."

The Earl of March was about to hurl back on his enemies the title of traitor and to put a price upon their heads. He had joined the Earl of Warwick, and their united forces exceeded those of the queen. London was favourable to the change of dynasty, and the cruelties practised in the country by the troops that the queen had brought from the frontiers of Scotland, rallied the peasants around the Yorkists. Their forces went on increasing, and when, on the 25th of February, they approached St. Alban's, where Queen Margaret was with her army, she found herself compelled to retreat before them. Edward, Earl of March, had none of the scruples and hesitation of his father; he was resolved to seize immediately upon the throne. Traversing St. Alban's as a conqueror and king, he advanced immediately towards London, and entered there triumphantly, to the great joy of the people, "who came every day from all the country surrounding," says the chronicler, "to see this handsome and magnificent prince, the flower of chivalry, he in whom they hoped for their joy and tranquility." {80} A grand review was held in St. John's Field, and a great multitude of citizens thronged to witness the warlike spectacle. Suddenly Lord Falconberg and the Bishop of Exeter addressed the people: "You know of the incapacity of King Henry," they said, "the injustice of the usurpation which has placed his family upon the throne, and to what extent you have been misgoverned and oppressed. Will you have this king to reign over you still?" "No, no," cried the mob. The bishop continued, depicting the valour, the talent, the activity of the Earl of March. "Will you have King Edward to reign over you, and serve, love, and honour him?" "Yes!" replied the people; "long live King Edward." On the morrow, the 2nd of March, a great council of the Lords declared that Henry of Lancaster had failed in his engagements, by uniting himself to the forces of the queen, and by retracting his oath regarding the succession to the throne. By this conduct, he had lost his rights to the crown, which belonged henceforth to the Duke of York, whose pretensions had been recognized as legitimate. The consent of the Commons was dispensed with. On the 4th of March, Edward, followed by a royal retinue, repaired to Westminster, and immediately taking possession of that throne which his father had formerly touched with a hesitating hand, he himself explained to the assembly the rights of his house. Having been several times interrupted by plaudits, he repaired to church, where he repeated his discourse. A few hours later the heralds proclaimed King Edward IV. in all the public places of London, and the people joyfully responded "Long live King Edward."

Chapter XIV. Red Rose And White Rose.

Edward IV. (1461-1483).
Edward V. (1483).
Richard III. (1483-1485).

If the throne of Henry IV. had always appeared to him unsteady, from the morrow of usurpation which had not caused a single drop of blood to be shed, that of Edward IV., based upon a transitory success of his arms, was destined to cost much bloodshed and many tears to England. The coronation rejoicings were immediately followed by a renewal of the hostilities. Scarcely had he been proclaimed when the new king left London. Queen Margaret and the Duke of Somerset had assembled their troops in the environs of York, and were preparing to march upon the capital. Edward, upon the advice of Warwick, did not allow them time for that purpose. The northern counties were in general favourably disposed towards the Red Rose, and the two armies were more considerable than ever, when they met on the 28th of March near Towton. The snow fell in abundance and blinded the combatants, but their fury knew no obstacle. The struggle lasted from nine o'clock in the morning until three, when the Lancastrians, broken up and disbanded, attempted to fly. The river Cock was a barrier wherein many of their number were drowned. The Earl of Northumberland and six barons had remained upon the field of battle; the Earls of Devonshire and Wiltshire were captured and beheaded, their heads replacing those of the Duke Richard and the Earl of Rutland upon the gates of York. {82} Thirty-eight thousand combatants, it is said, perished on this fatal day: the Hundred Years' War had not cost as much blood to England as a single battle in the civil war. Queen Margaret, her husband, and her son, accompanied by the Dukes of Somerset and Exeter, took refuge in Scotland. Edward IV., triumphant, returned to London, there to conclude the ceremony of his coronation. Formally recognized by Parliament, no allusion was made to the intellectual weakness of King Henry or to the misgovernment of the queen and her favourites: all the arguments were confined to the legitimate rights to the throne asserted by the House of York in the person of King Edward. Henry and all his family were declared usurpers, and their partisans were all included in the same sentence: those of the Lancastrian barons who had not perished upon the field of battle were condemned to death; all their property was to be confiscated and their families degraded. Edward IV. was anxious to crush his enemies by a single blow.

Betrayed by the fortune of war and abandoned by her terrified partisans. Queen Margaret knew neither discouragement nor fatigue. Closely linked to the Scotch by an old alliance which she had sealed by ceding to them the town of Berwick, she essayed, with their assistance, two or three incursions into the northern counties of England; but her mediocre success decided her to seek help in her native country, France, where she had rendered many services and retained many friends. In the month of April, 1462, she embarked at Kircudbright, and landed in Brittany. The duke presented her with twelve thousand golden crowns, and she took the road to Chinon, where the court of France was situated. {83} Charles VII. was dead, and Louis XI. had succeeded him. A cold politician, he was too shrewd to allow himself to be inveigled by the tears and the beauty of the queen into a disastrous war; he therefore at the outset refused all assistance; but when she spoke of ceding Calais as the price of his services, the monarch somewhat relaxed his sternness, gave some money to the queen, and permitted her to recruit soldiers in his kingdom. A famous knight, René de Brézé, seneschal of Normandy, ardently devoted to Margaret, placed himself at the head of the two thousand men that he had raised for her, partly at his own expense; a few vessels were equipped, and the queen started on her return to Scotland. The English exiles and a certain number of irregular border troops in a short time joined her, and three fortresses of Northumberland fell into her hands. But the Earl of Warwick was advancing with an army of twenty thousand men; the Lancastrians divided their forces in order to preserve their conquests; the queen regained her vessels. The waves were as hostile to her as the land; the ships were destroyed in a storm; the queen and Brézé arrived at Berwick in a fishing-smack; five hundred French troops, which she had left behind her to defend Holy Island, were slaughtered to a man, and the three castles were compelled to surrender after a vigorous resistance. They had however capitulated upon honourable terms. The Duke of Somerset and Sir Richard Percy made their submission to King Edward, who admitted them to mercy, while Margaret was wandering with the seneschal upon the frontiers of England, in vain endeavoring to rally her scattered and terrified adherents. {84} It was in this winter campaign, one day in December, that the queen, accompanied only by her son and a feeble following, fell into the hands of a band of brigands. She had been stripped of everything, her attendants were killed or captured, and she was attempting to fly with her son, when one of the bandits pounced upon her. Margaret turned round, and taking the little prince by the hand, she advanced resolutely towards the outlaw, "Here is the son of your king," she said; "I confide him to you." All generous feeling had not been extinguished in the soul of the brigand: he extended his protection to the mother and the child, gave them the shelter of his hut for the night, and on the morrow conducted them to the outskirts of the forest. King Henry was conveyed to Wales and placed in a fortress, while queen Margaret recrossed the sea to seek fresh assistance on the Continent. She remained there for a long while. Louis XI. rarely supported the unfortunate; the Duke Philip of Burgundy did not wish to set himself at variance with England, whose commerce was of importance to his dominions, and the poor princess, supported by a few secret gifts, royal alms which scarcely sufficed for her subsistence, took refuge in the Duchy of Bar, which still belonged to her father. There she was unceasing in her efforts to find enemies for King Edward and partisans for her husband and her son.

Meanwhile the war recommenced in England without her, struck the last blow to her hopes. The Duke of Somerset and Percy had again revolted, and in the month of April, 1464, King Henry, dragged from his peaceful retreat, was brought to the camp of his partisans. Lord Montague, the younger brother of the Earl of Warwick, assembled together the Yorkists, and on the 25th of April at Hedgley moor, and on the 15th of May, at Hexham, the two Lancastrian corps were defeated in succession. Percy died fighting; the Duke of Somerset, Lord de Rods, and Lord Hungerford were executed; Sir Ralph Grey, formerly a Yorkist, but since become a Lancastrian in consequence of a disappointment in ambition, was captured at Bamborough by the Earl of Warwick, and suffered the doom of a traitor. Animosities and vengeance were accumulating for the future, but the present seemed to smile upon King Edward; King Henry had wandered during two months in Lancashire and Westmoreland, from castle to castle, from cottage to cottage, without any one dreaming of betraying him, without meeting a heart hard enough to refuse him succor and protection. At length, in the month of July, he was seized, delivered up to his enemies and conducted to the Tower. The war had become very cruel, and the troops had grown accustomed to many crimes, but none dared to lay a hand upon "the sacred head of the peaceful usurper," as Shakspeare calls him; the halo of his fervent piety protected him against all violence. He led a peaceful life in his prison, while Edward IV. was demolishing with his own hands the throne which he had conquered at the cost of so many sufferings. The Duchess of Bedford, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, had had several children by her marriage with Sir Richard Woodville. The eldest of her daughters, Elizabeth, married at an early age to Sir John Grey, who was killed at the second battle of St. Alban's in the ranks of the Lancastrians, begged of the king the restitution of her property. {86} She was beautiful, skilful, ambitious: Edward IV. conceived an affection for her, and secretly married her on the 1st of May, 1464. It was on the 29th of September only that he dared to declare this union to his brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, and to his redoubtable ally, the Earl of Warwick, or the "Kingmaker," as he was called. Their dissatisfaction was great, but they contrived to restrain it. Elizabeth Woodville was solemnly recognized, in the month of December, at a great national council; and on the 25th of May, following she was crowned at Westminster with the usual ceremonies. Her Uncle, James of Luxembourg, had come to England upon this occasion in order to raise the family of the new queen a little. "Her father, Sir Richard, was but an esquire in our remembrance," it was said among the people. Future splendors were destined to efface the meanness of the origin. With Elizabeth, his family ascended the throne. Sir Richard was made Earl of Rivers, and soon afterwards Constable, and the queen married her sisters to the heirs of the noblest houses. Offices and honours poured down upon the Greys and Woodvilles; and the Nevils, formerly all-powerful by right of their services and their swords, saw their influence decrease day by day; the king no longer asked their advice, and did not trouble himself as to their inclination. An annoying incident raised their anger to the highest pitch.

Warwick had for some time been engaged in negotiations for the marriage of the Princess Margaret of York, sister of Edward, with a prince of the royal house of France. {87} The alliance of the princess was equally sought by the Count of Charolais, son of the Duke of Burgundy; but the "Great Earl" was opposed to this marriage, and, authorized by Edward, he repaired to France to conclude terms with King Louis XI. He resided at Rouen in the month of June 1467, beside the royal palace, and the King of France saw him at all hours of the day and night, in great intimacy, negotiating with that air of mystery which he loved to wear everywhere. Warwick was on his return to London, in the month of July, accompanied by the ambassadors of France, entrusted to conclude the royal alliance, when he learnt that the Bastard of Burgundy had been at the court for several days past under the pretext of a passage of arms, and that the marriage of Margaret of York with the Count of Charolais was almost decided upon. The last obstacle disappeared when the Duke Philip died suddenly on the 15th of July, leaving to his son vast dominions, a rich treasury, and a position in Europe superior to that of most of the crowned heads. The indignation of Warwick was not the less ardent: he complained of having been deceived, and retired to his castle of Middleham. King Edward feigned to be uneasy at the anger of the Earl: he doubled his guards as a rumor had been spread that Warwick was won over to the House of Lancaster by King Louis XI. Warwick returned for a moment at the entreaty of his brother, the Archbishop of York; but the Woodvilles remained all powerful, and the breach became wider every day: Edward with difficulty endured the haughty independence of the man who had made him king; he saw him now, supported by the Duke of Clarence, the heir presumptive to the throne (Elizabeth had daughters only), who had recently married, at Calais, Lady Isabel, the eldest daughter of Warwick. {88} An insurrection broke out almost at the same moment in Yorkshire, directed especially against the relatives of Queen Elizabeth, who were accused of oppression. Lord Montague, who was present in the North, did not oppose the movement, which however spread with such rapidity that the king, having arrived at Newark, was compelled to retreat precipitately to Nottingham. He wrote with his own hand to Calais, begging the Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Warwick to come to his aid. But before their arrival the insurgents had defeated the Earl of Pembroke at Edgecote, on the 26th of July. Being captured in the pursuit, Earl Rivers and Sir John Woodville, the father and brother of the queen, as well as the Earl of Devon, had been beheaded. It was affirmed that the rebels were acting in concert with Warwick. When he at length landed in England, the king was almost alone at Olney, and the insurgents were advancing against him, but the presence of the Earl soon caused them to retreat. As they returned to their farms and heaths, Warwick conducted Edward IV. to Middleham, the prisoner of his deliveries. England now had two kings, both captives.

Warwick did not yet think of changing the rose which he wore upon his helmet; a fresh insurrection of the partisans of Henry VI. compelled him to march against them. But the army murmuring at the captivity of the king, it was necessary to show him to the troops, and the Lancastrians being defeated, harmony appeared to be re-established between the king and the earl. Edward re-entered London; he had purchased his liberty by great gifts. The reconciliation was, however, only apparent: two or three fresh quarrels ended in a victory of the king over the insurgents of Lincolnshire, who were secretly abetted by Clarence and Warwick. {89} Edward accused them publicly of high treason. The earl did not feel himself powerful enough to struggle arms in hand; he embarked for Calais; but the news of his rebellion had preceded him there; the cannon of the town were pointed against his vessels, and the lieutenant whom he had himself chosen denied him the entrance to the port. The Duchess of Clarence brought into the world her first-born son in her ship, before the town, and it was with great difficulty that a glass of wine was obtained to restore strength to her; "which was," says Commynes, "great severity for a servant to show towards his lord."

Warwick sought a refuge with King Louis, XI. The friendly relations which he had contracted with him had never been broken off: the astute monarch received the fugitives and installed them, at first, at Valognes; he next received them at Tours and at Amboise, notwithstanding the anger of the Duke of Burgundy, several of whose vessels had been captured by Warwick. By way of reprisal, the French merchants who had repaired to the fair at Antwerp had been cast into prison by Charles the Bold. Louis XI. ridiculed this act and continued to shuffle the cards, hoping to secure the help of England against the duke, when the Kingmaker should again become all-powerful in in his country.

It was at Amboise that Warwick and Queen Margaret met secretly, through the agency of the King of France. For fifteen years past the queen had attributed all her misfortunes to Warwick; the earl had not forgotten that she had sent to the scaffold his father, his brother, and his best friends; but a common and more fervent hatred united them. {90} Margaret consented to the marriage of Prince Edward, her son, with the second daughter of the earl, who thus assured the crown to his children, should he either succeed in overthrowing Edward IV. in favour of the Lancastrians, or should he be induced to place Clarence upon the throne. Thanks to Louis XI., they contrived for the time being to amuse or to quiet the Duke of Clarence, notwithstanding all the efforts that the king, his brother, made to sever him from his allies, and Warwick shortly afterwards set sail, furnished with men and money. Charles of Burgundy had in vain placed in the Channel a fleet destined to arrest him; the earl landed on the 13th of September, 1470, upon the coast of Devonshire, and the entire population hastened under his banners. Sermons were preached in London in favour of King Henry, and Warwick turned his steps in the direction of the Trent. Edward IV. had been summoned to the North a short time before by a fresh insurrection; but the soldiers convoked under the banner of the White Rose did not respond to the appeal; those who hitherto had marched with Edward abandoned him. Warwick continued to advance; the position of King Edward became desperate. He was brave and resolute, but he took the course of flying. Two little Dutch vessels lay moored on the coast, at the mouth of the Wash: he threw himself into them with a few friends, without money and without resources, and crowded sail for the Low Countries, with great difficulty escaping the pirates who infested the seas. He landed near Alkmaar, and the governor "immediately sent tidings to the Duke of Burgundy, who would as well have liked to learn the death of the king," says Commynes, "for he was in great apprehension of the Earl of Warwick, who was his enemy and had become all-powerful in England." {91} In effect, everybody in London cried, "Long live King Henry!" Warwick had released from the Tower the poor monarch whom he himself had led there five years before. Queen Elizabeth Woodville had shut herself up in Westminster Abbey with her mother and her three daughters. It was there that she gave birth to a son, a new pretender to the throne, whom the Duke of Clarence looked upon with as much disfavour as upon the restoration of Henry VI. Louis XI. caused thanksgivings to be offered up to God in all the churches of France for the great victory gained by Henry of Lancaster, the legitimate King of England over the usurping traitor, the Earl of March. The joy of the king was the more keen inasmuch as Warwick had already returned to him a portion of the money which he had borrowed. In reality, some pirates had seized the vessel and the gold which it carried, but the good intention of the earl was evident, and Louis XI. reckoned upon receiving back his advances, while assuring the power to the enemies of his good cousin of Burgundy; the politic monarch rubbed his hands.

Meanwhile, affairs had already changed their aspect in England. As Louis XI. had assisted Warwick, the Duke of Burgundy assisted Edward: he had given him vessels and a small army corps, besides hiring for his service a certain number of pirates. It was with these feeble resources that Edward IV. disembarked on the 16th of March at Ravenspur, where Bolingbroke had landed seventy-two years before to dethrone King Richard II. {92} The reception accorded by the people was not encouraging; none planted the White Rose. Edward no longer spoke of his rights to the throne; he wished only, he said, to reclaim his title of Duke of York. But when he had crossed the Trent he found himself surrounded by his partisans: every day his forces continued to swell, the Marquis of Montague, brother of Warwick, had suffered him to pass. Before arriving at Coventry he had resumed all the royal insignia. The army of Warwick was coming to encounter him; but scarcely had the two parties found themselves face to face, when the Duke of Clarence went over, with all his troops, to the side of his brother. Thus weakened, Warwick was compelled to retreat without fighting. Edward marched upon London, where he was received with acclamations by the populace. The sermons preached from the cross at St. Paul's in favour of King Henry, and the open hospitality of the Earl of Warwick, had already been forgotten. A son had been born to King Edward who had not yet seen him, and the "wealthy merchants who had lent money to him," says Commynes, "hoped to be paid when he should have regained possession of the throne." The wives of the great citizens were accustomed to his acts of gallantry. London was merrymaking, but the Lancastrians were already in battle array on the plain of Barnet, within five leagues of the capital. Edward marched against them with the Duke of Clarence. The latter was troubled and uneasy: his wife was a daughter of Warwick, and she had great influence over him; he caused a proposal for his mediation to be made to his father-in law. "Tell your master," cried the earl in indignation, "that Warwick is faithful to his oath, and is better than the treacherous and perfidious Clarence. He has referred this to the sword, which will decide the quarrel." It was on Easter day: the morrow was awaited for the fight.

The struggle began on the 14th of April, at daybreak. Warwick always fought on horseback; but his brother, Lord Montague, who had joined him, urged him to dismount. "Charge at the head of your men-at-arms," he said. Edward IV. was present in person among his partisans, sword in hand, doing good work. It was not long before Warwick was killed as well as his brother: but the rout of the Lancastrians did not stay the slaughter: on returning from Flanders, King Edward had resolved no longer to spare as formerly, the common people; he had conceived a great hatred of the peasants, so often favourable to his enemies. The field of battle was covered with corpses, when Edward IV. re-entered into London, bringing with him the body of the Kingmaker, which was exposed during three days at Westminster, in order that all might assure themselves of his death. King Henry was reconducted to the Tower.

Edward IV., however, had not yet triumphed over his most implacable adversary. Queen Margaret, who had been detained upon the coast of France by contrary winds, landed in England on the very day of the battle of Barnet. She soon learnt that her friends had been beaten, that Warwick was killed, that King Henry was again a prisoner. She advanced, however, with her son and the auxiliaries whom she had brought from the Continent. The population was hostile to her; she found the fords and bridges of the Severn defended by her enemies, and was unable to join Lord Pembroke, who still held out in Wales. On the 4th of May, Margaret met King Edward near Tewkesbury. {94} Her troops had skilfully intrenched themselves, but the Duke of Somerset wished to make the attack in the open field; a small number of soldiers followed him, and when he attempted to fall back upon his ranks, the Duke of Gloucester had already broken through them. The queen and the prince were made prisoners. The young pretender was brought to Edward. "Who conducted you hither?" cried the king angrily. "My right and the crown of my father," said the son of Margaret proudly. Edward struck him upon the mouth with his iron gauntlet; the prince staggered, the servants of the king threw themselves upon him and slaughtered him. The great noblemen who accompanied Margaret had taken refuge in Tewkesbury church. The respect accorded to the sacred precincts had protected the wife and the children of King Edward while his enemies were all powerful in London; but no consideration divine or human could stay him: he entered the church, sword in hand. A priest, holding aloft the host, threw himself between the king and his victims: he succeeded in arresting him for a moment; an amnesty was even promised; but, two days later, all the Lancastrians who had taken refuge in Tewkesbury church were dragged forcibly therefrom, and were beheaded.

Queen Margaret had followed her conquerer: her haughty courage had resisted all defeats, all treacheries: she did not succumb beneath the last misfortune. She lived for five years a prisoner, alone and poor, first at the Tower, then at Windsor, and finally at Wallingford. King Louis XI. at length obtained her liberty: she returned to France there to live for several years more. She died in 1482. {95} The king, her husband, had not survived the battle of Tewkesbury: on the morrow of the triumphal entry of Edward IV. into London, Henry VI. was found dead in the Tower; it was said that the Duke of Gloucester had stabbed him with his own hands. Remorse for this crime perhaps pursued him: when he was king, Richard III. caused the body of Henry VI. to be removed from the abbey of Chertsey, where it had been deposited; the bones of the holy king, it was said, accomplished miracles. When Henry VII. wished to bring them back to Westminster, they could not be found.

The White Rose triumphed everywhere. The great Lancastrian noblemen were dead or prisoners; the Earl of Pembroke and some others had succeeded in taking refuge upon the Continent; the little Prince of Wales had been declared heir presumptive to the throne by the great council of the peers; but the king and his brothers could not live in peace. Clarence and Gloucester were contending with each other for the inheritance of the Earl of Warwick. Gloucester had married the Princess Anne, widow of the young Edward, assassinated at Tewkesbury. In vain had Clarence concealed her; Gloucester had pursued his prey even under the disguise of a servant, and King Edward had been compelled to divide between the two rivals the property of the "great earl," leaving his widow in veritable misery; "for," says Commynes, "among all the sovereignties in the world of which I have knowledge where public affairs are best managed, that in which there is the least violence towards the people, where there are no buildings cast down or demolished for war, is England; but misfortune and fate fall upon those who have caused the war." {96} The House of the Nevilles was ruined; the enmity between the two brothers of the king was not less on that ground: it was to bring about fresh crimes.

The internal struggles appeared to be drawing to an end. King Edward began to return to external wars; the Duke of Burgundy urged him to lend him his co-operation against Louis XI. Edward crossed the sea with a small army and went to Calais; but "before he started from Dover," writes Commynes, "he sent to the king our lord one single herald, named Jarretière, who was a native of Normandy. He brought to the king a written challenge from the King of England, in beautiful language and in a beautiful style; and I think that never had Englishman put his hand to it." Edward publicly claimed the kingdom of France as his possession, "in order that he might restore the Church, the nobles, and the people to their former liberty," he said. The king read the letter in private, then retired to his closet, "tout fin seul;" he caused the herald to be summoned thither. "Your king does not come here of his own accord," he said to Jarretière, "he is constrained by the Duke of Burgundy." And proceeding from this to make overtures of friendship to the King of England, "he gave to the said herald three hundred crowns, counting them with his own hand, and promised him a thousand of them if the arrangement should be made, and publicly caused a beautiful piece of crimson velvet, consisting of thirty ells, to be given to him."

Jarretière, thus treated, advised King Louis XI. to enter into relations with Lord Howard or Lord Stanley, favourite ministers of Edward, who were not in favour of the war. The English forces which had recently arrived in Calais were more considerable than had at first been believed in France; the King of England had concluded a truce with Scotland, and he had imposed on his vassals and the great citizens a new species of tax, under the form of free gifts, called "benevolences." Fifteen or eighteen thousand men were assembled at Calais; but the Duke of Burgundy had dissipated his resources elsewhere, and he presented himself at the place of meeting with a handful of soldiers. The discontent which this deception caused to King Edward inclined him to lend an ear to the proposals of Louis XI. The English army had been inactive at Péronne for two months, and the gold of the King of France circulated freely among the courtiers of Edward. Fifty thousand crowns had already been promised for the ransom of Queen Margaret, when the two sovereigns met at Pecquigny, on each side of a barrier, upon a bridge thrown across the Somme. "In the middle was a trellis, such as is made in the cages of lions, and there were no holes between the bars larger than to allow one's arm to be put in with ease." King Louis arrived first, having taken the precaution, on that day, to cause Commynes to be clad in the same manner as himself, "for he had long been accustomed to have somebody who dressed similarly to himself." The King of England entered, accompanied by his chamberlain. Lord Hastings: "He was a very handsome prince, and tall, but he began to grow fat, and I had formerly seen him more handsome; for I have no remembrance of ever having seen a more handsome man than he was when Lord Warwick made him fly from England. They embraced through the apertures; the King of England made a profound reverence, and the King began to speak, saying, 'My cousin, welcome; there is no man in the world whom I should so much desire to see as you, and praised be God for that we are here assembled with such good intent.' The King of England replied upon this point in pretty good French."

King Louis had invited Edward IV. to come and see him in Paris, but he was rather uneasy lest his politeness should be accepted. "He is a very handsome king," he said to Commynes, "he greatly loves the ladies; he might find one among them in Paris who might say so many fine words to him that she would make him wish to return. His predecessors have been to much in Paris and in Normandy. His company is worth nothing on this side of the sea beyond it, I am quite willing to have him for a good brother and friend." All the efforts of Louis XI. tended to conclude the treaty as soon as possible, in order to see the English return to their country; and for this purpose, he lavished the treasures amassed with so much care. A pension of fifty thousand livres was assured to King Edward; the hand of the dauphin was promised to Princess Elizabeth; the great noblemen of the English court had pensions and presents like their master, and a truce of seven years was signed. The people murmured in England; for the extent of the preparations and the importance of the sums obtained by Edward had created hopes for at least the conquest of Anjou, Maine, Normandy, and Guienne. The French noblemen despised the policy of their king, who purchased the retreat of his enemies instead of repulsing them by arms; but Edward had recrossed the sea, and Louis XI. paid the pensions regularly; he even went so far as to demand a receipt, 'and despatched Maître Pierre Clairet to Lord Hastings, the great chamberlain, to remit two thousand crowns in gold "au soleil" to him; for in no other kind was money ever given to great foreign noblemen.

Interview Between Edward IV. and Louis XI.

And the said Clairet requested that he would deliver to him a letter of three lines, informing the king how he had received them, for the said nobleman was suspicious. But the chamberlain replied, "My lord master, that which you say is very reasonable; but this gift comes of the good pleasure of the king your lord. If it please you that I take it you will place it here in my sleeve and will have no letter or acknowledgment for it, for I will not have it said, 'The great chamberlain of the King of England has been a pensioner of the King of France,' or that 'my receipts should be found in his exchequer chamber.' With which the king was much incensed, but commended and esteemed the said chamberlain for it and always paid him without a receipt."

The Duke Charles the Bold had recently perished at the battle of Nancy, in his campaign against the Duke René of Lorraine (1477). His only daughter, Mary of Burgundy, inherited his vast dominions. The Duke of Clarence, a widower since the recent death of the daughter of Warwick, at once claimed the hand of the young duchess. He was already in bad odour at court, and this act of ambition excited the jealousy of the king his brother. Clarence was violent: he complained of the injustice used towards two of his servants, who had been accused of sorcery, condemned and executed. He protested so loudly, that the king caused him to be arrested, and, accusing him of treason, ordered him to be imprisoned in the Tower. {100} The prince appeared before the peers, being prosecuted by the king in person: no baron opened his mouth for his defence; but Clarence protested his innocence at each accusation of magic, rebellion, and conspiracy. Nevertheless the peers declared him guilty, and the House of Commons insisted shortly afterwards upon the carrying out of the sentence. The trial had been public; the execution was secret: on the 18th of February, the report of the death of the duke spread through London. None knew how he had died, but it was related among the people that the Duke of Gloucester had caused him to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. The well-known tastes of the unhappy duke had no doubt brought about this supposition, for the most absolute mystery continues to reign over the fate of Clarence. Richard, duke of Gloucester, maintained the best relations with the queen, and he received of the king a large portion of the estates confiscated from Clarence, while Edward continued to lead a life of feasting and debauchery, everywhere surrounded by ladies whom he treated magnificently, causing silken tents to be set up for them "when he went to the hunting-field," says Commynes; "for no man humoured so much his inclination."

Meanwhile war had recommenced with Scotland. King James I. had fallen beneath the dagger of assassins in 1437. His son James II., whose long minority and bad government had thrown Scotland back into the disorder which his father had attempted to dispel, was killed in 1460, by the explosion of a cannon which he was testing. James III., who had succeeded him while yet a child, was gentle and timid, little fitted to reign over his turbulent barons. {101} Meanwhile the Duke of Gloucester, entrusted by his brother to support the war, had achieved no success; but the treason of the Duke of Albany, brother of James III., opened up new hopes to England in 1482. Berwick had been delivered up to Gloucester, and the King of Scotland, having advanced to repulse the English, saw his favourite Cochrane carried off by the conspirators, who hung him upon Lauder bridge and took James as their prisoner to Edinburgh. He was still detained in the castle, when the Duke of Gloucester entered the capital with the Duke of Albany. The presence of an English army opened the eyes of the Scottish barons: they came to an understanding with Albany, who returned into favour with his brother. King James was restored to liberty and the English retired, in consequence of the cession of the town of Berwick and a promise of certain sums of money. Gloucester re-entered London, where King Edward was meditating a fresh war.

The Princess Elizabeth was sixteen years of age: for ten years past she had been betrothed to the dauphin, but King Louis did not claim his daughter-in-law. A rumour was even abroad that he had entered into negotiations with the Duke Maximilian of Austria, in order to obtain the hand of the Princess Margaret, his only daughter by Mary of Burgundy, who was killed by a fall from a horse in the month of February, 1482. While all the princes of Europe were contending against each other for the heiress of the Dukes of Burgundy, Louis XI. had stealthily taken possession of a portion of her dominions, and these he claimed as a dowry to "Margot, the gentle damsel," as Margaret of Austria was called. {102} The little princess was only three years of age; but the towns of Flanders which held her in custody, accepted the French alliance rejected by Maximilian, and consigned her into the hands of Louis XI. During all these negotiations the King of France had contrived to amuse Edward IV. by purchasing the silence of Lord Howard, the ambassador at Paris; but when the marriage contract was solemnly celebrated at Paris, "with great festivals and solemnities. King Edward was much irritated therewith. Whoever had joy in this marriage, it displeased the king of England bitterly," says Commynes, "for he held it as so great a shame and mockery, and conceived so great a grief for it, as soon as he learnt the news of it, that he fell ill and died therefrom, although others say that it was a catarrh." King Edward IV. was not yet forty-one, when he expired on the 9th of April, 1483, repenting, it was said, of all the wrong that he had done, and ordering his debts to be paid to all those of whom he had extorted money; but the treasury was empty, and the injured persons were obliged to content themselves with the repentance and the good will of the dying sovereign. Cruel and suspicious, avaricious, prodigal, and debauched, King Edward IV. had no other quality than the bravery which had placed him upon the throne; he left two sons, aged thirteen and eleven years, unhappy children, confided to an imprudent and frivolous mother, and an uncle as ambitious as corrupt.

At the moment when King Edward was dying in London, his brother Richard, duke of Gloucester was upon the frontiers of Scotland, at the head of the army, and the Prince of Wales was at Ludlow Castle, the residence of his uncle, Lord Rivers. {103} While the young king was returning slowly to the capital, accompanied by a small body of troops, the Duke of Gloucester, in great mourning, repaired to York with a numerous escort, caused the Church ceremonials to be solemnly celebrated in honour of the deceased monarch, made [an] oath of fidelity to his nephew, caused all the noblemen of the environs to make it, and wrote to his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Woodville, to assure her of his loyalty, and to place himself at her disposition. Already, however, notwithstanding the reconciliation which had taken place beside the deathbed of Edward IV., suspicions and discord reigned between the party of the Queen and the old favourite of her husband. Lord Hastings, High Chamberlain of England, wrote to the Duke of Gloucester, and the the Duke of Buckingham, a prince of the royal house, a descendant of Thomas de Woodstock, the youngest son of Edward III., had received the emissaries of the crafty Richard. The young king and his uncle met on the 25th of April, at Stoney-Stratford; on the preceding evening, the Duke of Gloucester had received at Northampton the visit of the Lords Rivers and Grey, and had cordially entertained them, as well as the Duke of Buckingham, who had subsequently arrived. But scarcely did Richard find himself in the presence of the little Edward V. and holding him in his power, when he accused Lord Rivers of having endeavoured to alienate the affections of his nephew from him; and he caused him to be arrested, as well as Lord Grey and several personages of the royal house. Gloucester and Buckingham bent their knees before the young king, saluting him as their sovereign: but the sovereign was a prisoner and was taken to London, while his uncle and his servants were being conducted to Pontecraft Castle of lugubrious memory.

The rumour of these arrests had already reached the capital. Queen Elizabeth, alarmed, had retired into Westminster Abbey with her second son. Hastings, a traitor or a dupe, assured the population of the city that the two dukes were acting only in the interest of the public welfare. He set out to meet the young king, while the agents of Gloucester were spreading in London violent accusations against the queen, who had, it was said, plotted with her relatives for the death of the princes of the blood, in order to be able to govern the king at her pleasure. They were even shown the casks filled with arms which she had, it was said, amassed in order to destroy her enemies. The people began to declare that all these traitors must be hanged. The arrival of the little king was announced.

He made his entry into London on the 5th of June, magnificently dressed and mounted upon a beautiful horse. His uncle preceded him, bareheaded, with all the marks of the most affectionate respect. Edward, V. at first took up his abode in the palace of the bishop, then, upon the proposal which the Duke of Buckingham made to the council, he was transported to the Tower for greater security. The assembly of peers awarded to the Duke of Gloucester the title of Protector and Defender of the kingdom, and he installed himself in one of the royal palaces, where the crowd of his courtiers thronged. A small number of noblemen, at the head of whom was Lord Hastings, met together at the Tower. "I know everything that goes forward at the duke's," said the high chamberlain of Edward IV. to Lord Stanley, who was uneasy at the machinations of Richard. He was not aware, however, of the imminence of the danger that threatened him.

On the 12th of June Richard entered the council of the Tower with a serene countenance; he chatted gaily with the peers who surrounded him. "My lord," he said to the Bishop of Ely, "it is said that the strawberries of your garden in Holborn are excellent." "I will send and get some if it please your highness," replied the prelate. While the strawberries were being gathered, the Protector had gone out; when he returned, his face had become overcast. "What do traitors who plot for my destruction deserve?" he exclaimed on entering. "Death!" replied Lord Hastings, without hesitating. "That sorceress, the wife of my brother," replied Richard, "and that other sorceress who is always with her, Mistress Shore, have no other aim but to rid themselves of me; see how, with their enchantments, they have already destroyed and consumed my body!" And he raised his left sleeve exposing his arm, emaciated and withered to the elbow. None uttered a word; all knew that the duke had been born with his arm thus deformed. He was tall, like his brothers: his countenance was handsome, but he was hunchbacked and his features had never expressed a more bitter malignity than at the moment when, turning towards Hastings, he repeated his question. "I faith they deserve death, my lord, if they have thus plotted against you." "If!" repeated the Protector, "why do you use ifs and buts to me? I will prove upon thy body the truth of that which I say, traitor that thou art!" And he struck a heavy blow upon the table angrily; at the same instant the door opened, and a band of armed men precipitated themselves into the council-chamber. "Traitor, I arrest you!" said Richard, taking Hastings by the collar. {106} A soldier had raised his battle axe to Lord Stanley, but he had taken refuge under the table; he was seized, however, and taken to prison, as well as the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ely. "As to my lord chamberlain," said Gloucester, "let him hasten to have himself absolved, for, by St. Paul, I will not sit down to table while he has his head upon his shoulders." A few moments later the unhappy Hastings, dragged by the soldiers into the courtyard of the chapel, was beheaded upon the trunk of a tree which was there. On the same day, by order of Sir Richard Ratcliffe, who presented himself at Pontefract at the head of a body of troops. Lord Rivers, Lord Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, and Sir Thomas Hawse were executed before the castle, in public, but without their being able to address a word to the crowd which thronged around the scaffold, for "Ratcliffe had for a long time been in the confidence of the Duke," says a chronicler, "and he was a man having experience of the world, of a crafty mind and a bold tongue, as far removed from all pity as he was from the fear of God."

Meanwhile the Protector had repaired to Westminster with the Archbishop of Canterbury and several peers and noblemen, demanding that Queen Elizabeth should at once consign to him the person of the Duke of York, whose company his brother wished for and whose absence from the coronation would cause grievous and calumniatory rumours to be circulated against the Protector. The queen was defenceless; she had no party in the city, her relatives and friends were dead or prisoners; she yielded, tearfully embracing the son who yet remained to her and who was doubtless being snatched away from [her.]

Mistress Jane Shore, the favourite of Edward IV., had been condemned to do public penance for her bad conduct and sorcery; she had traversed the streets of London barefooted and in a sheet, with a taper in her hand, afterwards to take refuge, deprived of all her riches, in a humble house into which she was received in charity. It was on Sunday, the 22nd of June, when a preacher, Doctor Shaw, attracted the mob to the cross at St. Paul's, by loudly asserting that King Edward V. and his brother, the Duke of York, were not the legitimate children of Edward IV., who had already been married when he espoused their mother, "Much more," he added, "who knows even whether King Edward IV. was the son of the Duke of York? All those who have known the illustrious Duke Richard, assert that the Earl of March bore no resemblance to him; on the contrary, see!" he cried, as the Duke of Gloucester appeared at a balcony near the pulpit, "judge yourselves whether the noble Protector is not feature for feature the image of the hero whom we mourn." The mob listened aghast; acclamations and a popular proclamation of King Richard had been hoped for; but the people preserved silence, the Protector knit his eyebrows, the preacher precipitately ended his sermon and disappeared in the crowded ranks of auditors. It is asserted that he died of grief in consequence of this check.

The ice was broken, however, and on the second day afterwards the cause was entrusted to a more illustrious advocate: the Duke of Buckingham presented himself at Guildhall, and, repeating to the citizens the arguments which the preacher had expounded to the populace, he asserted that the Duke Richard was the only legitimate descendant of the Duke of York, and that the noblemen, like the commons of the North, had never vowed to obey a bastard. {108} The citizens still hesitated, no voice was raised from the crowd; the duke insisted upon having a reply; the poor people, who thronged at the door, threw their caps in the air, crying, "Long live King Richard!" On the morrow, the Duke of Buckingham succeeded in gaining over a certain number of citizens, and he was accompanied both by the peers and the Lords of the Council when he presented himself at the Protector's. The latter at first affected to refuse the audience; resistance was made, and the Duke of Buckingham, in the name of the Lords spiritual and temporal, as well as the Commons of England, implored Richard, duke of Gloucester, Protector and defender of the kingdom, to relieve England from the misfortune of being governed by a bastard, by accepting the crown himself. The Protector hesitated, speaking of his affection for his nephews. "If you refuse," cried Buckingham, "the people of England will know well where to find a king who will accept without causing himself to be entreated." Richard no longer persisted: "It was his duty," he said, "to submit to the will of the nation, and, since it was required, he accepted the royal State of the two noble kingdoms of England and France, the one to govern and direct it from this day, the other to conquer and regain it as soon as it should be possible." King Edward V. was dethroned before having reigned, and King Richard III. ascended the throne.

The Tower of London.

None protested, none objected in favour of the poor children confined in the Tower. The preparations begun for the coronation of the nephew served for the coronation of the uncle; Richard was crowned at Westminster on the 6th of June, with his wife Anne, daughter of Warwick; Lord Howard was made Duke of Norfolk, the Archbishop of York was set at liberty, Lord Stanley was received into favour. The new king travelled from county to county, administering justice, listening to the complaints of his subjects, and repeated at York the coronation ceremony. Everywhere he was received with favour, and the disaffected did not show themselves.

In London, however, an agitation began to be stirred up in favour of the young princes; secret meetings had taken place, the health of the two children had been drunk, their partisans became reconciled with their mother; the Duke of Buckingham, who had placed the crown upon the head of the usurper, and had been richly rewarded for it, had doubtless conceived some misgivings as to the ulterior intentions of Richard, for he suddenly altered his course and placed himself at the head of the confederates, who were working to create in the south of England a party for the restoration of Edward V. Appearances were favourable; already Queen Elizabeth raised her head, when suddenly the porches of the Abbey were found closed; it was forbidden to allow any one to enter or leave, and the unhappy mother learned at the same time that her cruel brother-in-law was informed of the conspiracy, and that he had baffled the object of it beforehand; the two princes no longer existed.

Assassinations almost always remain enveloped in mystery: it is related that scarcely had Richard left London when he endeavoured to corrupt Sir Robert Brackenbury, the guardian of the Tower. Finding him inflexible, he simply deposed him for twenty-four hours, consigning the office into the hands of his master of the horse, Sir John Tyrrell. The latter had it was said, entered the Tower in the evening accompanied by two robbers, and during the night they had stifled under their pillows the young princes, lying in the same bed. Then they had been interred noiselessly at the foot of the staircase, and the murderers had gone back to King Richard to receive their reward.

Great were the consternation and horror among the conspirators, but they had gone too far forward to recede; they could expect no mercy. A pretender was sought for: the Bishop of Ely proposed Henry, Earl of Richmond, grandson of Owen Tudor and Catherine of France, representing the House of Lancaster by the right of his mother, Margaret Beaufort, great grand-daughter of John of Gaunt. He lived in Brittany, exiled like all his race. He could, it was said, be made to wed Lady Elizabeth of York, eldest sister of the unhappy Edward V., and thus unite the pretensions of the two royal Houses, the struggle between which had cost England so much blood. This project was immediately adopted; the Countess of Richmond, the mother of the new pretender, had been married, for the second time, to Lord Stanley, the secret enemy of Richard III. He enter with ardour into the conspiracy, which extended every day; but the secret was so well kept that the reply of the Earl of Richmond had arrived in England, and he was preparing to depart from Saint Malo before King Richard had learnt the new danger which threatened him. {111} At the first disclosure, he convoked his army at Leicester; but he had not yet joined his troops when an insurrection took place: the Marquis of Dorset had proclaimed Henry VII. at Exeter, the Bishop of Salisbury had declared himself in his favour in Wiltshire, the gentlemen of Kent and Berkshire had taken up arms, and the Duke of Buckingham displayed his banner at Brecknock.

The time was not yet ripe for the insurrection; the Earl of Richmond had been for a long time tossed about by contrary winds, and his forces were so insufficient when he approached the coast of Devonshire that he did not dare to risk a disembarkation. The Duke of Buckingham had found the rivers swollen in Wales: having arrived at the Severn, he was compelled to retrace his steps; his soldiers disbanded without striking a blow; the duke disguised himself, endeavouring to fly; he then concealed himself in the hut of a peasant, who betrayed him. King Richard arrived at Salisbury as his former friend was being brought there; he refused to see him, and immediately caused him to be beheaded. The other insurgents had taken refuge upon the Continent; those who were captured paid with their lives for their attempt; King Richard was everywhere triumphant, without having drawn his sword from its scabbard.

For the first time, Richard convoked a Parliament; he wished to have his usurpation and vengeance ratified. Trembling before him, the Peers and Commons of England declared that King Richard III. was the sole legitimate possessor of the throne, which belonged to his descendants forever, beginning with his son Edward, Prince of Wales. At the same time, and to punish the enemies of the new sovereign, Parliament voted a bill of attainder, which deprived of their property and dignities all those who had been compromised in the last conspiracy; the Countess of Richmond alone obtained mercy through intercession of her husband, Lord Stanley, skilful in remaining on good terms with the two parties, and who had succeeded in deceiving the perfidious and suspicious Richard.

Meanwhile the exiles had assembled in Brittany, where they enjoyed the favour of the Duke Francis and the support of his minister, Pierre Landais. At the rejoicings of Christmas, 1483, Henry of Richmond assembled around him his partisans, solemnly swore to wed Elizabeth of York as soon as he should have triumphed over the usurper, and received the homage of all present. But King Richard had not renounced his vengeance: Landais was gained over, and the protection of the Duke Francis failing the exiles, they were about to be delivered up to their cruel enemy, when, warned in time, they proceeded into France and found a refuge and assistance beside King Charles VIII.

At the same time that Richard was pursuing with his hatred Henry of Richmond, he was labouring in England to deprive him of the support which alone could raise him to the throne. The Yorkists could not ally themselves with the Lancastrian prince, except in consideration of his marriage with Elizabeth of York; Richard resolved to sever from his alliance the queen and her daughter; he entered into correspondence with Elizabeth Woodville: she was weary of her voluntary prison, ambitious and frivolous; she forgot all, the usurpation, the murder of her sons, of her brother, of her most faithful friends, and, after having obtained from the king a solemn oath to treat her as well as her daughters, as good relatives, the queen quitted her retreat and appeared at the court, where the Princess Elizabeth was loaded with honours. {113} Her marriage with the Prince of Wales was already spoken of, although the latter was scarcely eleven years of age and the Princess Elizabeth was at least eighteen, when the child died suddenly at Middleham Castle. For a moment, Richard appeared to stagger under the blow, but he soon rose again; he had formed a new project. Queen Anne was ill, and at all the festivals the Princess Elizabeth appeared wearing in advance the royal robes. "When will she come to an end, then?" said Elizabeth; "she is a long time dying!" The Dowager Queen had written to her friends to abandon the Earl of Richmond, saying that she had found a better arrangement for the family. Anne died at length, but the confidants of King Richard did not approve of his project: he was accused, they said, of having poisoned his wife. The people of the northern counties maintained their fidelity to the house of Warwick; the people considered this marriage with the daughter of his brother as incestuous; Richard fell back before these objections; he felt his throne insecure. King Charles VIII. had furnished the Earl of Richmond with men and money, and he had recently embarked at Harfleur; the King of England was raising an army to defend himself; at the same time he lavished proclamations against "one Henry Tudor by name, of illegitimate descent from the side of his father as well as his mother, having no right to the crown of England, pledged to the King of France, to abandon to him for ever Normandy Guienne, Anjou, Maine and even Calais, and coming to England followed by an army of strangers, to whom he had promised the earldoms and bishoprics, the baronies and the fiefs of knights." {114} He therefore summoned all his good subjects to the defence of the country like loyal Englishmen, by providing him with soldiers and money, and he promised to spare neither his property nor his person to protect them against the common enemy.

The last remains of the popularity of Richard, in London, had disappeared before the forced loans which he had been obliged to make, and which the citizens called "malevolences." The royal banner had been raised at Nottingham and a considerable army had rallied around the king; but the coasts were ill-defended, and among the noblemen who had not replied to the appeal was Lord Stanley, ill, it was said, and detained in his bed. The king took possession of his son, Lord Strange, in the shape of a hostage and continued his march towards his rival, whose forces were not as yet very considerable. "There will not be one man in ten who will fight for Richard," asserted the Earl of Richmond, and he advanced resolutely as far as Atherston.

It is in the nature of tyrants and traitors to live in fear of treason. The House of York, so often stained with innocent blood, had never lacked courage. Richard III. had often exhibited the most brilliant valour. He was destined to give further proof of this on the morrow. It is, however, the incomparable genius of Shakspeare which has assembled so many terrible visions around the pillow of Richard III. during the night before the battle, and which has caused all the victims of his perfidy to pass before him, like so many sinister heralds, announcing his doom. When daylight dawned the king already felt himself condemned and conquered.

Henry Tudor crowned on the Battle-Field of Bosworth.

On the 22nd of August, the two adversaries met in the plain of Bosworth: the invading army was small; King Richard surveyed it with disdain while proceeding along his lines on horseback; the golden crown glittered upon his helmet. The combat began, "bitter and harsh," says a chronicler, "and harsher would it have been if the party of the king had remained staunch to him; but some joined the enemies, and the others awaited to see to which side victory would turn." By degrees, the banners which just before waved in the camp of Richard, floated beside the Earl of Richmond; gaps were being made in the royal ranks; Lord Stanley had just arrived with three thousand men, and was fighting for his son-in-law. King Richard transported himself from group to group, now in the centre, then at the wings, encouraging, directing, urging the soldiers; the Duke of Norfolk and his men alone remained resolutely faithful to him; at length the king saw himself ruined. "A horse," Shakspeare makes him exclaim, "my kingdom for a horse!" He dug his spurs into the flanks of his courser. "Treason!" he cried, and charging into the midst of his enemies, he opened up a passage for himself to confront Richmond, striking down right and left all who resisted him; already he had overthrown the standard bearer and had struck his rival, when the crowd of knights closed in around him; he fell, pierced with a hundred wounds. Lord Stanley picked up the crown smashed by the battle-axes and stained with the royal blood; and he placed it upon the head of his son-in-law. "Long live King Henry VII.!" cried he. "Long live King Henry VII.!" responded the army, and the cry was repeated in the ranks of the enemy. The faithful partisans of Richard had succumbed like himself. {116} The dead king was deprived of his arms, and was brought back to Leicester, behind a herald; his body was exposed for three days in the church, in order that the people might assure themselves of the death of the last prince of the House of York. When he was interred in the monastery of the Grey Friars, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, was king under the name of Henry VII. The wars of the Two Roses had ended and the era of the great reigns was about to begin for England.

Chapter XV.

The Tudors.

Re-establishment Of The Regular Government.

Henry VII. (1485 — 1509).

The new sovereign of England was destined to render important services to her; he was not, however, a great man. Amidst the general disorder, in view of the growing desire for peace and order, he was enabled to display a prudence and moderation which caused him to avoid the great faults, and preserved him from the terrible reverses which had attended his predecessors; but his character and his acts rarely excite our admiration or respect. His first care, on the morrow of the victory which had placed him upon the throne, was to transfer from the castle of Sheriffe-Sutton to the Tower of London, Edward Plantagenet, earl of Warwick, son of the unhappy Duke of Clarence, a child of fifteen years, who had grown up in prison since the death of his father, and who was destined there to pass the remainder of his life. He had had since a short time previously, as a companion in his captivity, Princess Elizabeth, confined at Sheriffe-Sutton, by her uncle, King Richard III., when he had been compelled to relinquish his scheme of marrying her. The Earl of Warwick was sent to the Tower, an abode fatal to the princes of his race. Lady Elizabeth was, on the contrary, loaded with honours and brought back, with a numerous retinue, to her mother, Queen Elizabeth Woodville, already willing to hail the new sovereign for and against whom she had plotted, and who at length promised her the satisfaction of her ambition.

These precautions being taken, Henry VII. made his entry into London, on the 27th of August, 1485 with much pomp, and laid upon the high altar of St. Paul's church, the three standards under which he had marched to victory, the image of St. George, the Red Dragon, and, it is not known why, a brown Cow.

The people made merry in the streets, but already among the poor a distemper manifested itself, which soon spread into all classes of society, and made great ravages. It was a species of sweating disease, which does not appear to have been known hitherto, and the attacks of which were, it is said, almost always fatal. It was necessary to wait for the amelioration of the public health before proceeding with the coronation of the new king. On the occasion of the ceremony, which took place on the 30th of October, by the Cardinal-Archbishop Bourchier, the same who, two years before, had proclaimed Richard III., the new sovereign raised his uncle, the Earl of Pembroke, to the rank of Duke of Bedford; his father-in-law, Lord Stanley, was created Earl of Derby, and Sir Edward Courtenay became Earl of Devonshire. The king at the same time took care to surround his person with a guard of robust archers; this innovation astonished and discontented the people, but Henry VII., nevertheless, kept his guard; he knew by experience the small value of moral guarantees in a time of disorder and corruption.

Parliament assembled at Westminster, on the 7th of November. The accession of King Henry VII. to the throne was due to the discontent of the nation under the sanguinary yoke of Richard III. and to the hopes which were founded upon the projected union between the two rival Houses of York and Lancaster. Henry himself attributed it to his valour upon the battle-field of Bosworth, from which he always dated the commencement of his reign; but the national weariness and the royal conquest were not sufficiently secure bases upon which to solidly found a throne, and in the speech of Henry VII. to the reassembled Commons, he urged his hereditary rights at the same time as the favour of the Most High, who had given the victory to his sword. This last clause excited some uneasiness among the great noblemen who held all their titles and property from the fallen monarch. Henry hastened to reassure them, declaring that each should retain "his estates and inheritances, with the exception of the persons whom the present Parliament should think proper to punish for their offences." Scrupulous persons for a moment experienced an agitation when they perceived that the majority of the members of the House of Commons had formerly been outlawed by the Kings Edward IV. and Richard III.; the very sovereign who had convoked this Parliament, found himself in the same position. Had the Houses the right to sit? The judges were consulted, and declared that the crown removes all disqualifications, and that the king, in ascending the throne, was, by that fact alone, relieved of all the sentences passed upon him; the members of the House of Commons being outlawed, were obliged to defer taking their seats until a law should revoke their condemnation; the act was immediately voted, and the Lancastrians, excluded by the policy of the sovereigns of the House of York, re-entered Parliament; all were weary of the struggle and the great noblemen easily obtained special ordinances which re-established them in all their rights and honours.

Such was not, however, the will of the king in all respects, he was not bloodthirsty, and did not seek to avenge himself by the execution of his enemies, but he was greedy, he wanted money, and confiscations were an easy means of enriching himself without oppressing or exasperating the people. Henry VII. therefore presented to Parliament, a law which antedated by a single day his accession to the throne, namely, the 21st of August, the eve of the battle of Bosworth; the new sovereign, who then in reality was but the Earl of Richmond, thus found himself in a position to accuse of high treason all those who had fought against him, beginning with Richard III., whom he called the Duke of Gloucester, and of whom he enumerated with good reason all the tyrannies and crimes. Richard was dead, as well as the greater number of the partisans who had remained faithful to him; others had exiled themselves; but if the Duke of Norfolk had fallen at Bosworth, if Lord Lovel had taken refuge in a church, their visible property, the riches accumulated in their castles, had not disappeared with them, and the act meekly voted by Parliament, permitted the king to seize their lands and treasures. He was not sparing of them; no sanguinary vengeance sullied the beginning of the new reign; Henry VII. contented himself with filling his coffers.

It was still to Parliament, discredited as it was by the servility which it had for so many years manifested towards the rival sovereigns who had succeeded each other upon the throne, that belonged the right of constituting the new dynasty. The provident wisdom of King Henry VII. did not seek in this solemn act to lean upon long genealogies, nor upon the Divine favour manifested by the victory; he contented himself with causing the revocation of all the acts passed in the Yorkist Parliaments against the House of Lancaster, avoiding with care any allusion to the Princess Elizabeth and her family; he simply relieved her of the stain of illegitimacy, which Richard III. had inflicted upon her to justify his usurpation; the Parliament contented itself with declaring that the inheritance and succession to the crown "should be, remain, and rest forever the portion of the royal person of the sovereign Lord, King Henry VII., and of his legitimate descendants, for ever, by the grace of God." The rights of the House of York to the throne were passed over in silence, mention was not made of the projected union with the Princess Elizabeth; Henry VII. was unwilling that it should be said that he owed the crown to a woman.

The nation, however, had not forgotten its past misfortunes; it hoped to enjoy a little peace only through the alliance of the two rival houses, and the delay of the king in celebrating his marriage, the affectation which he made of not speaking of it, caused uneasiness, not only to his Yorkist enemies, but to the whole people. When the commons came and solemnly offered the king the duties upon ships and upon woolens, now conceded for life, they accompanied their liberality by a peremptory request, asking him to take for his wife and spouse the Princess Elizabeth "which marriage," it was added, "the Lord would deign to bless with a posterity of the race of kings." {122} The Lords spiritual and temporal supported the petition of the Commons. Henry VII. understood that he had delayed enough, and on the 18th of January 1486, the two Roses were at length united upon the same stem; the hatreds and rivalries, which had cost so much blood to England, were definitely appeased by the marriage of King Henry VII., the descendant of the House of Lancaster through his ancestor, John of Gaunt, and the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King Edward IV., the direct heiress of the rights and pretensions of the House of York. All the gifts accorded by the sovereigns who had succeeded each other upon the throne of England since the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Henry VI., the period at which the war had begun to assume the character of a revolt, were revoked by Parliament; an amnesty act was proclaimed for all those who were willing to submit to the royal mercy and take the oath of allegiance; the king reinstated in his property and honours the son of the Duke of Buckingham, the last victim of the cruelty of Richard III., he loaded with favours the friends who had helped him to ascend the throne, Chandos, Sir Giles Dunbury, Sir Robert Willoughby, the Marquis of Dorset, Sir John Bourchier; he caused his authority to be confirmed by a bull of Pope Innocent III., which proclaimed all the hereditary rights of the new sovereign, wisely omitted from the English Act of Parliament, granted to Henry VII. the necessary dispensation for his marriage with the Princess Elizabeth, of whom he was a relative, then confirmed the elevation of the king to the throne, freely interpreting the Act of Parliament, and declaring that in the event that the queen should happen to die without children, or after having lost them, the crown should belong by right to the posterity of Henry VII. by a second marriage. {123} All precautions being wisely taken, and his authority solidly established, the king pronounced the dissolution of his Parliament, and began a royal tour through the northern counties, in order to secure the good will of that portion of the kingdom still attached to the House of York.

The customary prudence of the king had failed him on one point. Jealous of the supreme power, he had kept in the shade the princess whom he had been compelled to wed, and had not taken her with him upon his journey through his kingdom; discontent was everywhere manifested upon this point in the north, but the pregnancy of the queen served as an excuse for her absence; the royal journey did not proceed, however, without disquieting incidents. On the 17th of April the king was at Pontecraft, when he learnt that Lord Lovel had quitted the sanctuary at Colchester and cut off his passage with considerable forces. The nobility of the counties which Henry VII. had recently passed through assembled around him; he advanced against the rebels; Lord Lovel fled, concealed himself, and soon repaired to Flanders; his friends Humphrey and Thomas Stafford, who had prepared an insurrection in Worcestershire, took refuge in Colesham Church, near Abington; they were dragged therefrom, and the elder, Humphrey, perished on the scaffold; the younger received his pardon; and the king, on the 26th of April, entered York, one of the rare spots in England where tho memory of King Richard III. was affectionately preserved.

We have said that Henry VII. was greedy; but he could contrive, when necessary, to relax his greed; he lavished gifts and honours, reduced the fines of the City of York, caused festivals to be celebrated, and thus conquered the favour of the people, who cried in the streets, "God save King Henry! God preserve that handsome and sweet countenance!" When he resumed his march towards the south-east, Henry VII. continued, from town to town, the practice which he had established at York. He attended regularly at divine service; but after mass, every Sunday and holiday, one of the bishops who accompanied him read and expounded to the faithful the papal bull, threatening with eternal punishment all the enemies of the monarch, whose rights to the throne were therein so carefully developed. The king arrived in London, in the month of June, and received an embassy from James IV., King of Scotland, with whom he concluded a treaty of alliance, promising to cement it later on by a union between the two families; peace and mutual good feeling were equally important to the two kings, surrounded by enemies, whom they dreaded to see take refuge in the neighbouring kingdom. The little prince, whose hand Henry VII. had already promised, was born on the 20th of September, at Winchester, and was named Arthur, in memory of the hero of the old romances of King Arthur of the Round Table, whose death tradition still denied.

Usurpations engender conspiracies; no reign was to be more constantly agitated by them than that of Henry VII.; he had occupied the throne for fifteen months only, when, in the month of November, 1486, a priest and a youth of most charming countenance disembarked at Dublin. The priest announced that his young companion was no other than Edward Plantagenent, Earl of Warwick, escaped by a miracle from the Tower of London. By degrees, partisans gathered around the young man; he was handsome, intellectual, his manners were noble, he had been carefully instructed in his part, and did not experience much difficulty in deceiving minds prejudiced by hereditary attachment to the father and grandfather of the Earl of Warwick, who had both contrived to render themselves popular in their government of Ireland. Edward Plantagenet had even been born in that country, and thus possessed additional claims to the attachment of that nation. The great noblemen who might have shown themselves to be more clearsighted were, in general, little in favour of the state of affairs recently established in England, and the Earl of Kildare, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, received the Sham Warwick with open arms, presenting him to all his friends as the legitimate heir to the throne in the character of the only male descendant of Richard of York; on all sides the pretender was saluted with the title of king; messengers had already borne the news to Flanders, where the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV., held her court, and received into her good graces all the enemies of the new King of England, when the latter learnt, in London, the danger that threatened him. He immediately convoked his Council; the discontent was general, the amnesty had been ill-observed, a mass of restrictions had hindered the application of it, and the real Earl of Warwick was not the only inhabitant of the prison of the Tower. {126} The first care of the prudent king wad to proclaim a fresh amnesty, more complete and earnest than the first, and, at the same time, to produce in public, in all parts of London, the real Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who had not for a single instant left his prison. The third measure of the king appeared at variance with the clemency manifested by the amnesty; the Dowager Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, was arrested under the frivolous pretext that she had formerly broken faith with the Earl of Richmond, now King of England, because, after having promised him her daughter in marriage she had consigned her into the hands of the usurper Richard III., who wished to marry her. The real motive of the disfavour which thus suddenly attacked the intriguing widow of Edward IV. has never been known; it has been supposed that she had been compromised in the conspiracy which had caused a new pretender to the throne to spring up in Ireland; it has been said that she alone could have instructed the young man or his tutor in the private details which he related about the royal family; but these assertions remain at least doubtful; what is certain is the confiscation of the property of Elizabeth Woodville and her imprisonment in a convent near Bermondsey.

Meanwhile, the young pretender had received an unexpected support. The Earl of Lincoln, son of John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, and of Elizabeth, sister of the kings Edward IV. and Richard III., formerly designated by his uncle Richard to succeed him upon the throne, had quitted England and repaired to the residence of his aunt, the Duchess of Burgundy. She had furnished him with money and troops, and Lincoln had embarked for Ireland with Lord Lovel. {127} He could not be deceived about the imposture; he knew the Earl of Warwick, but it suited his views to adopt the cause of the pretender, and he caused him to be crowned in Dublin Cathedral. The golden crown from a statue of the Virgin was borrowed to represent the royal diadem, and the young man, being proclaimed under the name of Edward VI., was carried in triumph upon the shoulders of his new subjects, while King Henry VII. was raising troops and quietly riding about in his kingdom, selecting by preference for his visits the counties where the influence of the Earl of Lincoln was especially exercised.

The queen and the little prince were already established in the fortress of Kenilworth, when the pretender and his partisans landed at Fouldrey, at the southern extremity of Furness. A few friends of Lincoln and Lovel joined him, but the population did not rise in their favour, and the hopes of the rebels were growing faint, when, on the 16th of June, 1487, they encountered the advanced guard of the king at Stoke; the Earl of Oxford, who commanded it, carried off a brilliant victory, notwithstanding the desperate courage of the assailants. His Majesty Edward VI., or, simply, Lambert Simnel, the son of an humble baker, was made a prisoner, with his tutor, the priest Simon; but the noblemen who had embraced his cause, nearly all died upon the field of battle, the Earl of Lincoln at their head. Lord Lovel alone disappeared; but this time he concealed himself so well that, two hundred years later, the skeleton of a man was discovered in a vault in his castle of Minster-Lovel, in Oxfordshire; it is supposed that the unhappy master of the house had taken refuge therein and had there perished by some accident.

Very few executions followed the revolt and the victory, but the harvest of confiscations was abundant; the priest Simon was imprisoned, and none heard speak of him any more, "the king being fond of concealing his own dangers," says a chronicler, "Lambert Simnel was placed in the royal kitchens, ignominiously turning the spit, after having worn a crown;" he became eventually one of the falconers of the king. Henry VII. had recently made a pilgrimage to deposit his victorious banner upon the altar of Our Lady of Walsingham.

The king had too much sense and sagacity to refuse to understand the symptoms of discontent which had manifested themselves by this revolt; he knew that he had incensed the Yorkists by the jealous obscurity in which he kept the queen, and he resolved to grant her the honour of coronation, which had hitherto in vain been claimed for her; on the 20th of November, Elizabeth of York was solemnly crowned at Westminster, while her husband, hidden behind a carved screen, contemplated the ceremony at which he was not willing to be present.

For more than two years past. King Henry VII. had concentrated all his efforts upon the internal pacification of his kingdom, without making himself uneasy about the troubles of the Continent; but scarcely had he gained the victory of Stoke, when he saw an embassy arrive in England from the King of France, Charles VIII. While Henry VII. had been repulsing the pretentions to the throne of an impostor supported by rebels, his old protector, the King of France, had attacked a still older friend of his, the Duke Francis of Brittany, who had given shelter to the Duke of Orleans, subsequently Louis XII., accused of having conspired against his cousin. {129} The French army had entered Brittany, summoned by a certain number of Breton noblemen dissatisfied with the influence which the Duke of Orleans had assumed over their duke, and it had reaped important advantages, when the ambassadors of Charles VIII., fearing an English intervention in favour of the Duke of Brittany, came to expound to the wise Henry VII. the legitimacy of a war which they qualified as defensive. None made allusion to the probable annexation of the duchy of Brittany to France, either by conquest or by the marriage of the young king with the heiress of the Duke Francis; Henry VII. asked no indiscreet questions, and when the Bretons appeared, in their turn, at his court, begging assistance in men and money, the King of England piously offered his mediation "in order to acquit himself before God and men of all his duties of gratitude towards the king and the duke, for whom he was even disposed to go upon a pilgrimage." The French asked for nothing more, their army pursued the course of its victories, but the coming and going of the English negotiators from London to Paris and from Paris to Rennes, did not satisfy the Bretons, who saw themselves closely pressed. Sir Edward Woodville, one of the uncles of the queen, attempted, at his risk and peril, a little expedition in favour of the Duke Francis; but King Henry forbade any demonstration of this kind. His envoys who were then in Paris, were in great danger, it was said, at the news of the succour sent to the Bretons by the English.

The cause of Brittany was popular in England, and decided though he was not to wage war, the king took advantage of this feeling to cause Parliament to vote considerable subsidies; at the same time he secretly warned the court of France that he should perhaps be compelled to send reinforcements to the Bretons. The warning was profited by to push measures with vigour; all the factions of Bretons had now united against the common enemy; the forces of the duke were supported by the troops sent by the King of the Romans, Maximilian, and by the Count d'Albert, as well as the Englishmen of Sir Edward Woodville. The Duke Francis and his allies were defeated, however, on the 20th of July, 1488, by the Sire de la Trémoille, commander of the French army, at Saint Aubin-du-Cormier; the Duke of Orleans was made a prisoner, and the English were cut to pieces; before the public voice had been raised in England to demand vengeance, the French had taken Dinan and Saint Malo, and were threatening the Duke of Brittany as far as in Rennes; the unhappy prince had no resource other than to sign a treaty by which he undertook to summon no assistance from abroad, and never to marry his daughters without the consent of France. One month after having suffered this humiliation, he died broken hearted, and the little Duchess Anne, a child twelve years of age, remained alone with her council of regency in the presence of her enemies.

The King of France claimed the guardianship of the unhappy princess, and her barons had not yet had time to reply to this pretension, which was equivalent to the surrender of the duchy, when the French army again entered Brittany and took possession of several towns. {131} This time all the prudence of Henry VII. could not suffice to repress the indignation of his people at the aspect of this unequal war; perhaps the growth of the power of France also made him uneasy, in his policy; the King of England formed an alliance with the great sovereigns of Europe to arrest the conquests of Charles VIII. Maximilian, King of the Romans, who claimed the hand of the little Duchess Anne, and his son the Archduke Philip, the King of Spain, and the King of Portugal undertook to enter France to turn aside the forces furious for the ruin of Brittany. Henry VII. demanded fresh subsidies from Parliament to continue the war.

Well supplied with money, notwithstanding the reduction which the Commons had imposed upon his requests, Henry VII., holding two ports upon the coast of Brittany, at length sent to the assistance of the duchess six thousand archers in the spring of 1489; at the same time, a Spanish army was crossing the defile of Roncevaux, which allowed the English, under the orders of Lord Willoughby de Broke, to hold in check the French troops remaining in Brittany; another English corps seconded the attempts of the King of the Romans upon the north, and distinguished itself at the capture of Saint Omer; a treaty of peace was concluded at the end of the year without much glory for either party. The rigour with which the officers of the King of England exacted the subsidies excited an insurrection in the northern counties, and notwithstanding the prompt repression of the disturbances, the new taxes produced only the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds sterling, instead of seventy-five thousand pounds voted by Parliament; Henry VII. took advantage of it to claim, of the Duchess of Brittany, the reimbursement of all the expenditure which he had incurred to help her.

While preparations were being made for renewing the hostilities, and Parliament was voting a tax of the tenth and the fifteenth denier to support the war, one of the allies of King Henry, Maximilian, by negotiating secretly with the counsellors of the Duchess of Brittany, obtained the promise of her hand, and mysteriously married her at Rennes, through his ambassador, the Prince of Orange, in the month of April, 1491; he would have acted more wisely by going in person for the heiress of such large dominions, sought by so many suitors. Scarcely had the Sire d'Albret, a disappointed pretender, who had at one time attempted the abduction of the young princess, been assured of the object of the mission of the Prince of Orange, when he gave warning to the court of France of it, at the same time surrendering to the French, the town of Nantes. In vain did the duchess, who took the title of Queen of the Romans, demand assistance of her new spouse; he was absorbed in a revolt of his Flemish subjects: Brittany again found itself alone, confronting the whole strength of France.

But the views of the court of France towards Brittany had changed. Charles VIII. was now of age, he had shaken off the yoke of his sister, the Dame de Beaujeu; he had released from prison his cousin the Duke of Orleans, and he secretly laid claim to the hand of the Duchess Anne. Betrothed in infancy to the Princess Elizabeth of York, now Queen of England, afterwards designed by his father King Louis XI. to become the husband of Margaret of Austria, "Margot, the gentle damsel," daughter of Margaret of Burgundy, he had seen his little affianced bride, who was then eleven years of age, brought up at his court, and he still publicly announced his intention of wedding her as soon as she should be of age. {133} He carried on negotiations, however, with the lords and ladies who surrounded Anne of Brittany, and when he thought himself assured of a sufficient party among them, he frankly declared his purpose, notwithstanding the engagement with the Princess Margaret, as well as the more sacred bonds which bound the Duchess Anne to Maximilian, the father of the affianced bride of Charles VIII. All these obstacles did not arrest the King of France, and his victorious arms were a powerful argument in his favour. Maximilian did not send assistance to his wife, although the French threatened to besiege Rennes. The question lay, with Anne, between captivity and marriage: she concluded a treaty with Charles VIII., declared void the union which she had contracted with the King of the Romans, and definitively assured Brittany to the crown of France, by wedding, on the 6th of December, 1491, King Charles, in the castle of Langeais, in Touraine. The long struggles of England and France, upon Breton territory, were now forever ended.

In England the anger was great; perhaps Henry VII. had in fact been deceived: he proclaimed it very loudly, declaring that Charles VIII., disturbed the Christian world, and that in future he would no longer hesitate to march to the conquest of France, his legitimate and natural inheritance; at the same time he talked loudly of the alliances which he had concluded, and he obtained fresh subsidies from Parliament, the usual result of the warlike protestations of Henry VII. {134} The raising of troops proceeded rapidly; the names of Crecy, Agincourt, Poictiers, Verneuil, were in all mouths; the noblemen pawned their property, reserving only their horses and swords; they thought themselves certain of acquiring beautiful estates in France; an army of twenty-five thousand foot soldiers and sixteen hundred horses embarked in the month of October, 1492. It was a question of the conquest of the whole of France, an undertaking which could not fail to be long, and winter quarters could be taken up at Calais. Siege was immediately laid to Boulogne, without any attempt at resistance from the French; all the plan of the campaign was known beforehand between the two monarchs, and peace had been concluded before the commencement of the war. Eight days only had been passed before the town, without an assault being made, when letters began to circulate in the camp destroying all hope of the co-operation of the King of Spain or the King of the Romans; Henry VII. thereupon assembled his council, and submitted for its deliberation the grave question of peace with France. All the favourites of the king had been bought over in advance with French gold, and they solemnly decided for the conclusion of peace. The treaties, long since prepared, were signed at the beginning of November; by the public conditions the two kings undertook always to live in peace; mutual understanding was even to subsist for one year after the death of whichever of the sovereigns should survive the other; by the secret treaty, Charles VIII. bound himself to pay by degrees to the King of England, the sum of a hundred and forty-nine thousand pounds sterling, in discharge of all his claims upon the duchy of Brittany, and in payment of the tribute due to King Edward IV. It was thus that Henry VII. knew how to sell war to his subjects and peace to his enemies. Charles VIII. found himself at liberty to proceed with his undertakings against the kingdom of Naples, and the King of England could concentrate all his attention upon his internal affairs, which threatened to give him fresh and grave cares.

A second pretender had in fact arisen for the crown. This time, it was no longer a question, as with Lambert Simnel, of a living prince, easy to be confronted with the imposter; the new rival who had been raised up against King Henry VII. was none other, it was said, than the Duke of York, brother of the unhappy Edward V., escaped from the Tower by a miracle, wandering about the world for seven years past, and now determined to reclaim his crown. He at first presented himself in Ireland, and soon contrived to form a party there, notwithstanding the recent remembrance of Lambert Simnel. But the Earl of Kildare hesitated, and the young pretender turned his steps to France. Soldier and chivalrous as he was, Charles VIII. was not destitute of the cunning natural to the son of Louis XI. It was before the war with England, and he was well pleased to frighten Henry VII.: he received the adventurer, recognized his rights, and admitted him to his court. He was soon surrounded there by a guard of English exiles. While the treaties had remained unsigned at Etaples, Charles VIII. looked with favour upon the pretender; the peace with Henry VII. being once proclaimed, the self-styled Duke of York was compelled to quit the court of France and to take refuge beside the Duchess of Burgundy, the usual resource of the enemies of Henry VII. {136} The latter had demanded that the pretender should be delivered up to him; but Charles VIII. refused this act of treachery as unworthy of his honour. Meanwhile, the Duchess of Burgundy hesitated, or pretended to hesitate, to recognize her nephew. She interrogated him, and caused him to undergo a minute examination upon the secrets of the family. Finally, she solemnly proclaimed that he was really the Duke of York, son of her brother King Edward IV., the White Rose of England; she gave him at her court the state of a prince, furnished him with a guard, and wrote everywhere to her friends in England and on the Continent to announce the miracle which had restored her nephew. The English malcontents, and they were numerous, joyfully embraced this new hope. A delegate was secretly despatched to the court of the Duchess, to verify the pretensions of the prince; he came back as convinced as the Duchess herself. It was really, he said, the Duke of York, the legitimate heir to the crown of England, the amiable and intellectual child whose loss had been mourned. The conspiracy began to spread and to organize.

King Henry meanwhile had not remained inactive; he also had sent secret emissaries to Ireland, who asserted that the pretended Duke of York was no other than Perkin Warbeck, the son of a merchant of Tournay, a converted Jew; that he had much frequented the society of English merchants in Flanders, then had travelled in Europe in the suite of Lady Brompton, wife of an exile. Upon the faith of these instructions Henry demanded of the Archduke Philip, son of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, to deliver up or, at least, to drive from his states this audacious impostor. Philip lavished assurances of his devotion, promised to refuse all support to the pretender; but the Duchess Margaret was sovereign in her states, and none could compel her to send Perkin Warbeck away. {137} Henry VII. interdicted to his subjects all commerce with Flanders, and he had recourse to deceit to obtain that which diplomacy refused him. Sir Robert Clifford, being bribed, gave up the names of the conspirators; they were all arrested: Sir Simon Montford, Sir Robert Ratcliffe and William Daubeney were immediately executed. Among those who received their pardon "few men survived long," says the chronicler; Lord Fitzwalter, amongst others, having attempted to escape from his prison at Calais, was beheaded without any more ado. One greater than he was shortly going to pay with his life for the same suspicions.

Sir William Stanley, brother of the Lord Stanley, now Earl of Derby, who had placed Henry VII. upon the throne, and who had himself saved the life of the king at Bosworth, was accused by Clifford of having been concerned in the conspiracy. The king refused at first to believe it; but when he interrogated his chamberlain, Sir William was embarrassed in his answers, and ended by confessing to a certain degree of complicity. The judges of Westminster held the crime to be sufficient and Stanley was condemned to death. All reckoned upon his pardon; the king's aversion to blood was remembered, as well as the services which the family of the guilty man had rendered him; but the large fortune of Sir William was forgotten and he was executed and all his property was confiscated. Terror began to seize the conspirators; they distrusted each other. The position of Warbeck became difficult in Flanders; the merchants complained of the cessation of the English commerce. {138} The adventurer resolved to land unexpectedly in England, hoping that an insurrection in his favour would take place. He arrived near Deal on the 3rd of July, 1495, while the king had gone to pay a visit to his mother, in Lancashire. He was accompanied by about five hundred men, all English exiles and of desperate courage; but the population rose against the impostor, and not for him: the peasants of Kent fought with their sticks and pitchforks. The assailants were killed or made prisoners; a small number succeeded in reaching the vessels: Warbeck was at the head of these latter. The captives were all conducted to London, their hands tied together, like a flock of sheep, and they were executed in a mass in the same manner. Henry VII. lavished praises and promises upon the brave countrymen who had repulsed the enemy; he, at the same time, concluded a treaty with the Flemings, promising to restore the freedom of commerce, if the Duke Philip would undertake to prevent the Duchess Margaret from receiving Warbeck and his partisans. The adventurer was therefore compelled to quit Flanders; he presented himself in Ireland, where he was coldly received; it was to Scotland that he went to seek refuge. The king of Scotland was discontented with Henry VII.; he willingly received the pretender.

Notwithstanding numerous treaties and projects of alliance so many times concluded between the courts of England and Scotland, Henry VII. had always been concerned in the conspiracies against James III. The brother of the King of Scotland, Albany, was dead; but the barons had not become subdued; the malcontents had rallied around the young Duke of Rothsay, the eldest son of the monarch, and this unnatural war, after alternations of successes and reverses, had been terminated, on the 18th of June, 1488, by a sanguinary combat at Little Canglar, a wild heath about one league from Stirling. {139} The king had been carried off by his horse; he had fallen in a swoon. Some peasants had lifted him up without knowing him; but amidst the tumult a man approached the unhappy prince, and leaning towards him as though to succor him, he struck him two blows with a dagger. James III. was only thirty-five years of age, and his death excited in the heart of the son, who had fought and almost dethroned him, a remorse which ended only with his life. The example of revolt which he had set bore, moreover, its fruits; he lived in the midst of conspiracies and internal struggles, finding at times in his embarrassments traces of the influence of Henry VII., more often being ignorant of his complicity, but convinced, notwithstanding, that the King of England was a perfidious ally with whom it was necessary to arrive at an open rupture. Perkin Warbeck furnished him with the opportunity for it. James did not look very closely into the truth of his story; he was duped, or feigned to be so, and, shortly after the arrival of his "good cousin of York" in Scotland, amidst tournaments and rejoicings which he lavished, the King of Scotland married the adventurer, Perkin Warbeck, to Lady Catharine Gordon, the charming daughter of the Earl of Huntley, and through her mother, a near relative of the royal house.

So many favours caused uneasiness to the King of England, who kept spies amongst the great Scottish noblemen, and was thus informed exactly of the movements of Warbeck. The barons of Scotland were less favourable to him than the king, some because they had been gained over by Henry, others because they foresaw the disasters of a war undertaken in his favour. Meanwhile, the Duchess of Burgundy had caused men and money to arrive; the court of France, discontented at the obstacles which Henry VII. placed to the attempts of King Charles upon Italy, urged Warbeck to attempt an invasion of England. Henry had caused an offer to be made to the King of Scotland of a hundred thousand crowns of gold if he would deliver up the pretender to him. James IV. had rejected the proposal with indignation. "I have melted up my plate for him," he had said. "I will not betray him." Warbeck had recently published a document, skilfully conceived, in which he related his escape from the Tower and his wandering life, dwelt upon the tyranny of Henry VII., upon the exactions with which he burdened his people, and summoned the English to rise and rally round him. The King of Scotland accompanied him, solely through friendship, he said, and would retire as soon as an English army should be on foot. It was with these declarations that Warbeck crossed the frontier and entered England in 1497.

The northern counties did not trust to the disinterestedness of the Scotch, and nobody came to meet the pretender; all the cattle had been led away, the grain and fodder had been hidden, and when the Scottish troops began to pillage to compensate themselves for the cold reception which the population gave them, the self-styled Duke of York in vain sought to restrain them, saying that he would prefer to lose the throne rather than to owe it to the sufferings of the English. {141} The soldiers were dying of hunger and did not fail to take advantage of any excess. The peasants began to arm themselves. The army of invasion found itself compelled to recross the frontiers without having fought, without having even awaited the English army, as had been announced by the clever spy of Henry VII., Ramsey, Lord Bothwell, formerly a favourite of James.

The King of England meanwhile was suffering from the grave consequences of the war and the avidity which always led him to profit by it to oppress his subjects. He had obtained of Parliament a gift of two-tenths and two-fifteenths, but the people were determined not to pay taxes so oppressive. The insurrection commenced in Cornwall; the people demanded the head of Morton, archbishop of Canterbury, prime minister and friend of Henry VII., accused of having advised the new taxes. Sixteen thousand rebels entered Devonshire; they were soon joined by numerous adherents, at the head of whom marched Lord Audley and other noblemen. Each county which they traversed furnished reinforcements; they presented a formidable aspect when they arrived, on a fine day in June, at Blackheath, near London. The army of the King awaited them; the agitation was great in the city; but Lord Daubeney and the Earl of Oxford advanced against the rebels. Henry VII., had prudently remained in the rear with the reserve; he had commanded that Saturday should be awaited to give battle; it was his lucky day, he said. The 22nd of June, 1499, made no exception to the rule. The insurgents fought valiantly; but they had no cavalry nor artillery, nor experienced chiefs; a great slaughter resulted, and many of their number were made prisoners, among others Lord Audley, a lawyer named Flammock, and Joseph, a blacksmith, who had greatly contributed to excite the revolt by the violence of his speeches against the king and the archbishop. {142} They all three perished, but they perished alone; the mass of peasants were soon released. The king had caused the execution of all the desperate men captured at Deal in the following of Perkin Warbeck, because neither repentance nor gratitude could be expected of them; he amnested the rebels of Cornwall, and thus re-established tranquility in the insurrectionary provinces. Henry VII. was as wise as he was provident; he was neither vindictive nor sanguinary, and there was nothing to confiscate of the poor peasants. He had, however, flattered himself too much in reckoning upon the gratitude of the county of Cornwall. Perkin Warbeck had quitted Scotland in consequence of the treaty of peace concluded between James IV. and Henry VII. through the efforts of Don Pedro Ayala, the Spanish ambassador; the delicate cares and kindnesses of the Scottish monarch had followed him up to his embarkation. The Duke and Duchess of York, as they were still called, had put in, in the first instance, at Cork, in Ireland; but Warbeck in vain sought to urge the Irish to insurrection. He then conceived the project of disembarking in Cornwall, of which he had received favourable accounts; and on the 7th of September he landed at Whitsand Bay. His forces did not amount to a hundred and fifty men; but soon the relatives and friends of the men killed at Blackheath came and joined him. Warbeck was at the head of an army, when he appeared, on the 17th of September, before the city of Exeter, having solemnly taken the title of King of England and France, under the name of Richard IV. {143} The queen had taken refuge, for greater security, in the fortress of St. Michael. Whether prince or imposter, the pretender had contrived to gain the heart of his wife; she was devoted to his fortunes, and she awaited with anxiety the result of the campaign. Exeter was defended by the Earl of Devonshire, supported by the gentlemen and citizens. The insurgents had neither artillery nor besieging machines; they sought in vain to burst open the portal, but the cannons of the ramparts swept them down without mercy. The peasants of Devonshire were beginning to retreat in small detachments, but the men of Cornwall remained firm, and promised to die to the last man for the king whom they had chosen. An advance was made as far as Taunton. There it was necessary to confront the royal army. Warbeck reviewed his rustic troops, urging them to fight well on the morrow; but during the night he selected his fleetest horse and fled without warning any one. When the insurgents found themselves without a chief they did not try the fortune of arms, but placed themselves at the mercy of the king, who caused the leaders to be hanged, and sent back the others, half naked and dying of hunger. The best runners of the army were in pursuit of Warbeck; but he had forestalled them and took refuge in the church at Beaulieu, in the heart of the New Forest, before he could be reached. The king had caused men-at-arms to be despatched to arrest Lady Catherine Gordon, whose beauty and whose tears touched him; he confided her to the care of Queen Elizabeth, who treated her captive with much kindness.

The royal troops surrounded Beaulieu church; but Henry hesitated to violate the sanctuary; he employed about Warbeck skillful agents, who persuaded the adventurer to accept the pardon which they were commissioned to offer to him. The self-styled Duke of York therefore quitted his refuge, without having seen the king, who had privately contemplated him, being curious to examine the features of the audacious impostor. When Henry VII. re-entered London, Warbeck formed part of his retinue; he had not been ill-treated, but he had been made to pass slowly through the principal streets of the city, in order to satisfy the curiosity of the people. He was conducted as far as the Tower, and the spectators thought to have seen him for the last time; but at the end of a few hours he reappeared, still accompanied by his guards, and took the road to Westminster. There he came to the court, apparently free, but closely watched. Far from being degraded into service, like Simnel, he was surrounded with considerations and certain honours. He was several times interrogated before the secret council, but his avowals remained a mystery, "so much so that men, disappointed at that which they heard, came to imagine it was not known what, and found themselves more perplexed than ever: but the king rather preferred to mystify the curious than to light the braziers."

The conduct of King Henry VII. remained an enigma to his contemporaries, and time has not divulged the secret of it. Perkin Warbeck had lived for eight months at the court, when he contrived to escape therefrom. Being immediately pursued, he took refuge in the priory of Sheen, near Richmond. The prior obtained his pardon of the king before consenting to deliver him up, but the honours which had been assigned to him had vanished: he was placed in the stocks before the gate of Westminster, a document in hand, compelled to read his confession to the people and to suffer their insults all day.

Confession Of Peter Warbeck.

This time the prisoner avowed his humble origin, and related his whole career, cursing the ambition which had caused his imposture. After the second reading, Warbeck was shut up in the Tower, where he became the companion of the unhappy Earl of Warwick.

One year had elapsed since the attempt of Warbeck and his public humiliation. A third pretender, Ralph Wilford, had renewed the fraud of Simnel, and assumed the name of Warwick; he had been executed, and the Augustine monk who preached his, cause, had been condemned to imprisonment for life. It was in the month of July, 1499, when a rumour was spread of a plot formed by Warbeck and the real Earl of Warwick to escape together from the Tower and foment a fresh insurrection. The charm of the manners and mind of Warbeck must have been great, for he had not only seduced his companion in captivity, but he had contrived to win over all his jailors. The governor of the Tower was to be assassinated, and the freed prisoners intended to take refuge in a safe place, to proclaim King Richard IV., by summoning to their aid all the partisans of the Duke of Clarence, brother of Warwick. Such, at least, were the allegations in the indictment, for the execution of the plot had not even been begun when it was discovered. It was sufficient to explain the execution of Warbeck. He had long and cleverly played his part; but he did not retract his confessions at the supreme moment and died courageously at Tyburn, on the 23rd of November, 1499. {146} His last attempt cost the life of the unhappy Earl of Warwick; he was accused before the peers, not only with having sought to escape, but with having plotted with Warbeck to overthrow the king. The poor prince was twenty-nine years of age, but, having been a prisoner since the age of seven years, he was as ignorant of the world as a child; he confessed all the crimes with which he was accused, and having been condemned, he was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 23rd of November. With him ended the numerous attempts against the crown of Henry VII.; all the possible heirs to the throne, real or pretended, had disappeared, and political passions began to be appeased under government regular and firm, if it was at times greedy and despotic.

Relieved of any fears of internal wars, and more tranquil abroad, Henry VII. turned his views towards the settlement of his children; he had for a long time past resolved to marry his eldest daughter, Margaret, to the King of Scotland, in order to definitively attach that sovereign to him. At the beginning of the year 1500, he sent to King James one of the most clever among the ecclesiastical negotiators formed in his service, Fox, Bishop of Durham; and this skilful negotiator contrived to lead the young monarch into asking for the hand of the princess; the marriage was celebrated in London, in the month of January, 1502, but Margaret, who was then twelve years of age, was not sent to Scotland until the end of 1505, during this interval, her elder brother, Prince Arthur, heir presumptive to the throne, had married the Princess Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the able Ferdinand and the great Isabella, but he had died almost immediately after his marriage, and King Henry mooted the question with Ferdinand and with the Pope, to know whether the princess of twenty-one years of age, and widow of the elder brother, could marry the younger brother, Henry, who was but thirteen years of age. {147} The dispensation arrived and the betrothal was resolved upon, for King Ferdinand finding that matters dragged on at length, had claimed not only the princess, but the large sums paid for her dowry. Catherine lived at the court of her father-in-law, honoured and beloved by all, waiting for five years the celebration of a marriage which was to terminate so sadly.

Amidst the negotiations of alliances for his children, Henry VII. had also been occupied in marrying himself; the queen, his wife, had died shortly after having lost Prince Arthur, and the great preoccupation of the widowed monarch was to find a spouse rich enough to sensibly increase the treasures which he took so much pleasure in hoarding. His negotiations and hopes, however, did not prevent him from continuing to oppress his subjects. Avaricious passions grow with age; Archbishop Morton, whom the people had so often cursed, had died in 1500, but the nation gained nothing thereby; he had been replaced in his exactions by two leeches, "two shearers," as they were called, more bold and rapacious than Morton, less skilful than he in proving to the good English people that all was going on in a legal manner and that the province of the subjects in the State was limited to paying the taxes cheerfully. The two new agents, Empson and Dudley, were equally detested. Dudley was of good birth and knew how to set off the exactions in a suitable form; Empson, the son of a workman, triumphed coarsely over the unfortunate people whom he oppressed, and ridiculed their miseries. {148} Both were lawyers, well versed in their profession; each offence, crime, or misdemeanor became in their hands a matter for a fine, and to allow none to escape, they kept spies everywhere charged to warn them, and juries composed of wretches who decided all matters at their pleasure. "They hovered thus over all England," says the chronicler, "like tame falcons for their master and savage falcons for themselves, and they amassed great riches," while filling the royal coffers.

Notwithstanding these abuses the national prosperity went on increasing; the revival of order had sufficed to give scope to the commerce which was to found in England the middle class; the great aristocracy, decimated and ruined by the wars of the Roses, driven from power by the skillful conduct of Henry VII., remained shut up in the castles, and the younger members of the noblest houses began to devote themselves to agriculture, sometimes even to commercial enterprises, instead of recognizing no other career than arms or the Church.

The English, however, had not yet attempted the great voyages beyond the seas which were soon to render their navy so famous. Christopher Columbus had applied to Henry VII., in his efforts to find a sovereign who would entrust a few vessels to him and conquer the New World; but Bartholomew Columbus, brother of the great navigator had been shipwrecked before arriving in England; when he had at length accomplished his mission to King Henry, and had returned to Spain to announce to his brother that he was summoned to London, Isabella the Catholic, had already granted the demands of Columbus, assuring to Castile the riches of the West Indies. The English therefore had no part in the discovery of the New World, and the rumour of the treasures which were found there must more than once have made King Henry VII. pale with jealousy.

The navigators whom he had sent had brought him back neither gold nor silver. John Cabot or Cabotte, of Venetian origin, established at Bristol, and his three sons Lewis, Sebastian and Sanches, had received from King Henry VII., on the 5th of March, 1496, letters patent, authorizing them to sail with five vessels in all seas, in order there to make discoveries and take possession of them in the name of England; the prudent monarch had reserved for himself one-fifth of the profits of the enterprise; it is to the first voyage of John Cabott and his son Sebastian in 1497 that we owe the discovery of Canada; in the same year, Vasco de Gama doubling the Cape of Good Hope for the first time, in his journey towards India, opened up to commerce a new route by which all the riches of the East were to flow into Europe. Notwithstanding all the overthrows and agitations which the world was yet to suffer, the time of material force, exclusive and brutal, was beginning to pass away; peaceful intelligence and activity saw a vast field of influence and effort, open up before them.

Parliament had become the docile instrument of the king, and unresistingly voted all that he was pleased to demand, but the subsidies granted in 1504 excited great murmuring among the people. The king had claimed the feudal gifts in honour of the knighthood conferred upon Prince Henry, and the marriage of Princess Margaret; the Commons offered forty thousand pounds sterling, but the king had the moderation to accept only thirty thousand. {150} The malcontents appeared to have found a chief. Edmund de la Pole, second son of the Duke of Suffolk, and brother of the Earl of Lincoln, the protector of Simnel, who had been killed at Stoke, was an embittered and turbulent man. Henry VII. had refused to grant him his paternal inheritance, by alleging that he inherited of his brother and not of his father, and that Lord Lincoln, being declared a traitor, had had his property confiscated; Edmund had therefore been compelled to content himself with a shred of the estates of his family and the title of Earl of Suffolk. He had had the misfortune to kill a man in a quarrel; the king, still jealous of all that bore the name of Plantagenet, had taken advantage of this opportunity to accuse him of murder; Suffolk took refuge at the court of the Duchess of Burgundy; whence he hatched plots, it was said. The king caused him to be watched, charged a treacherous emissary to insinuate himself into his confidence, and according to the instructions received by this means, he suddenly caused the arrest of the men upon whom Suffolk relied most; his brother William de la Pole, Lord Courtenay, who had married one of the daughters of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, Sir James Tyrrel, accused of the murder of Edward V. and the Duke of York in the Tower, and a few other persons were secretly interrogated. Courtenay and De la Pole remained in prison, but Sir James Tyrrel confessed the crime formerly committed upon the young princes by order of Richard III., and he was executed, as well as certain accomplices of the Earl of Suffolk, although the conspiracy of the latter was in no respect proved. {151} The murmurs which he had been accused of encouraging, were stifled, and the king, until the end of his life, dispensed henceforth with having recourse to Parliament; he contented himself with collecting taxes under the name of "benevolences," his coffers overflowed with gold, and he passed for the richest monarch of Christendom.

A favourable event happened and secured the vengeance of the king upon the Earl of Suffolk; the bad weather drove upon the coasts of England the Archduke Philip the Fair and his wife Joanna, who had become Queen of Castile by the death of her mother, Isabella the Catholic. The young sovereigns were repairing from Flanders to their new dominions; their counsellors urged them to face the tempest rather than to set foot upon English soil and thus to place themselves in the hands of the skilful Henry VII. Perhaps from curiosity, perhaps from fear, the Archduke insisted upon landing. The King of England appeared to have foreseen all; the illustrious travellers were immediately received with all the honours which were due them, and it was announced that the king was coming to meet them. Philip saw that he was caught in the trap, and being in a hurry to put an end to his compulsory visit, he hastened to anticipate Henry VII. The two monarchs met near Windsor, reciprocally lavishing the most touching marks of friendship and confidence. But the wise counsellors of the King of Castile had not been deceived; before the Spanish monarchs were able to take to the sea again, Philip had been compelled to consent to deliver up the Earl of Suffolk, who was living modestly in Flanders; to promise to the King of England the hand of his sister, the Duchess of Savoy, who was a widow and very rich, and finally to affiance his first-born son, who afterwards became the Emperor Charles V., to the little Princess Mary of England. {152} After having besides granted great commercial advantages to the English in the Flemish markets, Philip the Fair was at length enabled to resume the journey to Spain. Suffolk being enticed to England, was thrown into prison, and one of the last orders which Henry VII. signed was that for his execution.

Before the negotiations for the marriage with the Duchess of Savoy were ended, Philip the Fair had died in Spain, and King Henry cast his eyes upon his widow, whom he supposed to be richer than her sister-in-law. Unfortunately Joanna was insane, hopelessly insane with grief. The health of the King of England grew more and more impaired, and it became evident to all those who approached him that it was time for him to think of death and not of marriage.

Amidst his exactions, of the harshness of which he had given proof, and the perfidy of his intrigues, Henry VII. was a religious prince, preoccupied with the future life and the salvation of his soul; the weakening of his powers warned him to think of his end, and he multiplied his alms; his complaint increasing in 1508, he for the first time lent ear to the cries of his subjects, ruined by the exactions and malversations of Empson and Dudley. The king wished to render justice, he said, and a sincere remorse for all the crimes which he had permitted appeared to have taken possession of his soul; "but Empson and Dudley, although they knew the scruples of the king, continued their practices as furiously as in the past, as though the soul of the king and his money had belonged to different places," says the chronicler.

Chapel And Tomb Of Henry VII.

The health of the king had momentarily improved, his conscience had been somewhat quieted, and the treasures which he himself held locked up in his manor of Richmond regained all their charm in his eyes. When in the springtime of 1509, a return of his cough brought him to the threshold of the tomb, he had time to make his will, recommending his successor to repair the wrongs which he had done and to restore that which he had unjustly taken. He died at Richmond in the night of the 21st of April, 1509, at the age of fifty-two. He had reigned twenty-three years over a kingdom upset by internal dissensions, impoverished by wars, and a prey to the most frightful disorder: he had gradually calmed men's passions, repressed or stifled insurrections and conspiracies, favoured commerce and industry; but he had oppressed his subjects to wrest from them the money of which he was greedy, he had lowered the authority of the Parliaments, he had struck severe blows at the great aristocracy, and he had above all shrouded his policy in so many subterfuges, and pursued his ends through so many intrigues and falsehoods, that even time has not been able to throw light upon the truth; the real and only excuse of King Henry VII. is that he belonged to the age of Louis XI., and that he had to treat with Ferdinand of Aragon.

Chapter XVI.

Henry VIII. and Wolsey (1509-1529.)

The reign of King Henry VIII. is characterized by three great facts, which have left a profound impression upon the destinies of England; religious reform, the absolute power of the crown in principle and often in practice, and the social and even political progress of the nation, notwithstanding the great outburst of tyranny on the part of the government and of servility on the part of the people. The history of this reign is naturally divided into two periods: Henry VIII. under the influence of Wolsey, his favourite, and in a short time his prime minister; Henry VIII. alone, after the disgrace and death of Wolsey. The first of these two periods extends from 1509 to 1529, the second from 1529 to 1547.

The young king ascended the throne under happy auspices and profoundly different from his father, whose shuffling policy and avaricious prudence had often exasperated his people, the extravagant tastes of Henry VIII., his playful humour, his open manners, his skill in all bodily exercises as well as the remarkable intelligence of which he gave promise, had raised very high the national hopes. He was not yet eighteen years of age; he was tall, robust, and handsome, and people loved to see him pass through the streets when starting for the hunt, where he would tire out several horses; his vices and even his minor faults did not yet manifest themselves. His marriage with the Princess Catharine of Aragon, which took place on the 3rd of June, 1509, caused keen satisfaction; the princess was twenty-five years of age, she had resided for six years past in England, of which she spoke the language well; a bull of the Pope had dissipated all doubts as to the legitimacy of the union; on the 24th of June, the king and the queen were solemnly crowned at Westminster.

The young king had surrounded himself with many of the old servants of his father, according to the advice of his grandmother, the old Countess of Richmond, whom he often consulted; but, from the first day, inspired both by a feeling of justice and by the spirit of reaction, he repudiated Empson and Dudley, making known his intention of punishing them; his counsellors identified themselves with this policy, but they would have been personally compromised if the "leeches" of the late king had been publicly accused of having sucked the blood and substance of the subjects; all the servants of Henry VII. had more or less exactions upon their consciences, and it was resolved to accuse the two lawyers of having hatched a plot to "deprive the present king of his rights and inheritance." Improbable as was the charge, the cause was judged beforehand and for peremptory reasons; Empson and Dudley were declared guilty of treason, and condemned to death. They languished one year in the Tower before the execution of their sentence; all their property was seized, and it was rumoured among the people that the queen was interceding in their favour; numerous petitions were addressed to the king demanding their death, and they were executed on Tower Hill, on the 17th of August, 1510, to the great satisfaction of the nation.

Henry VIII. was young and brilliant; he had not, like his father, learnt prudence in the hard school of exile; he thirsted for military glory; he willingly, therefore, allowed himself to be persuaded by his father-in-law, the astute Ferdinand, and by the warlike Pope, Julius II., to enter into the league which they had formed against Louis XII., formerly Duke of Orleans, now King of France, who had resumed the projects of his predecessor, Charles VIII., against Italy, adding thereto his pretensions to the Duchy of Milan, in the name of his grandmother, Valentine of Milan. A first herald from the King of England came to pledge Louis XII. to abstain from making war against the Pope, "the father of all Christians;" a second herald claimed the cession of Anjou, Maine, Normandy and Guienne, "a request which was equivalent to a declaration of war." Henry VIII. convoked his Parliament and demanded subsidies. The English had not lost their taste for invasions of France, however little glorious the last might have been: money still abounded in the coffers of the old king, notwithstanding the expenditure of three years of pleasure and merry-makings. A fine army was soon on foot, and prepared to embark from Calais, when King Ferdinand suggested the idea of first attacking Guienne: he at the same time sent his fleet, which was intended to conduct the English troops to the foot of the Pyrenees; his son-in-law accepted his proposal, and ten thousand men embarked under the orders of the Marquis of Dorset, accompanied by a multitude of volunteers belonging to the noblest families of England.

The mouth of the river Bidassoa had been reached, and Dorset desired to set foot in France, but he was awaiting the artillery which King Ferdinand had promised him; the latter was occupied in assembling considerable forces in Biscay, and as the English thought of marching to the siege of Bayonne, they learnt that it would be dangerous to leave behind them the little independent kingdom of Navarre. Ferdinand, supported by the two armies, commenced his negotiations. John d'Albret willingly consented to preserve neutrality; but the King of Spain demanded the free passage of his troops, the custody of the more important fortresses, and, as a hostage, the Prince of Viana, heir to the throne of Navarre. Upon, the refusal of the poor little sovereign, the Spanish army advanced into his territory, seized upon several towns, and the Duke of Albe, who was in command, proposed to the Marquis of Dorset to effect a junction with him in order to besiege Pampeluna. The English began to open their eyes; they refused to make war elsewhere than in France, and claimed the artillery and horses promised. "When we shall have finished," was the answer, "you shall have all that you desire." Pampeluna was taken, and Navarre joined to Spain; but the English general renewed his demands; and an offer was made to march with him against Béarn, where John d'Albret had taken refuge, instead of attacking Bayonne or Bordeaux. This was too much; Dorset refused to advance; the King of Spain despatched an ambassador to his son-in-law; but when the credulous monarch had given the order to follow the movements of the Spaniards, the English troops had retired and had loudly announced their resolution of returning to their country. {158} This was of little importance to the Spaniards; their object was accomplished. The presence of the English army upon the Bidassoa had prevented Louis XII. from sending assistance to the King of Navarre; vessels were provided for the revolted English, who returned to England towards Christmas, 1512, half naked, emaciated by the poor living which King Ferdinand had allotted them, but too numerous and too much exasperated for punishment to be inflicted upon them. This first experience, however, was not destined to suffice to open the eyes of Henry VIII. regarding the policy of his father-in-law.

The check suffered by Dorset had not discouraged the young king, and he resolved to lead his armies himself into France. Louis XII. had been driven out of Italy, his frontiers were menaced by the Holy League; he was very anxious to raise up difficulties for the King of England within his own dominions; he addressed himself to Scotland, still the faithful ally of France. King James had causes for complaint against his brother-in-law; his best commanders, Andrew and John Barton, having suffered losses at sea, the king had given them, to enable them to indemnify themselves, letters of marque, of which they made use to capture English merchant ships; Sir Edward Howard, son of Lord Surrey, fell upon them as upon pirates and defeated them; Andrew Barton received a wound, of which he died. The King of Scotland claimed reparations in this respect; he also demanded the jewels bequeathed by Henry VII. to his daughter Margaret, which her brother had kept. {159} Some attempts at negotiations on the part of Henry VIII. had little result; the young king, before setting sail for France, took the precaution of causing the fortifications of the frontier towns of Scotland to be repaired, and entrusted Lord Surrey with the duty of watching King James with a good army, while his master should proceed to the Continent to attack King Louis.

The war had already begun under fatal auspices; Sir Edward Howard with a large fleet, had appeared in the month of March, 1513, at the entry to the road of Brest, of which he had made himself master. Reckoning upon his success, he had begged the king to come himself to reap the glory of it; upon the refusal of Henry, Howard had attacked the squadron and the town of Brest; he had been repulsed, and had lost his life in an attempt at boarding, throwing into the sea his chain and gold whistle, in order that those trophies might not fall into the hands of the enemies. Another son of Lord Surrey, Lord Thomas Howard, had taken command of the fleet, and repulsed the French, when King Henry landed at Calais on the 30th of June, 1513, to the roar of the artillery of the town, and of the salutes of the vessels, true emblems of the noise and splendour so dear to the young monarch.

King Ferdinand, who had drawn his son-in-law into the league against France, had recently concluded with that country a private peace, recognizing the annexation of Navarre to Spain; but the self-love of Henry VIII. did not allow him to retreat; he had formed an alliance with the Emperor Maximilian, who promised to join him at Calais. The red rose, the favourite emblem of King Henry VIII., was about to efface by its splendour the lily of France, and while Lord Herbert was laying siege to Thérouenne, the warlike court was diverting itself at Calais with endless jousts and festivals, the organization of which were often entrusted to the almoner of the king, Wolsey, who grew every day in his master's favour.

The son of a rich butcher of Ipswich, Thomas Wolsey had been brought up with care; honoured when very young with all the degrees of the University of Oxford, he had been recommended to his master by Bishop Fox, the favourite diplomatist of Henry VII., and the king had several times employed him in delicate missions. Upon the death of the old monarch, Bishop Fox, who saw his favour on the decline, had taken care to place Wolsey near the king, and soon the chaplain had distanced all his rivals in the good graces of his master. Better educated than the young king, but too shrewd to allow this to be seen, skilful in the bodily exercises and amusements of his time, Wolsey partook of all the tastes and flattered all the passions of his master, before the period when he was destined to relieve him of the embarrassments and fatigues of the government.

Whilst the dancing and feasting were proceeding at Calais, a French army, commanded by the Duke of Longueville and the famous Chevalier Bayard, was advancing to the assistance of Thérouenne, Henry immediately hastened thither; but the French had instructions to avoid a pitched battle, and they retired, after having placed provisions and reinforcements in the towns, a service which the Count of Angoulême (subsequently Francis I.) continued to render to the besieged, in spite of the badly organized and badly commanded English forces.

Landing Henry VIII. at Calais.

They had been for six weeks before a poor little town, when the Emperor Maximilian joined his brother in arms, the great King of England, with the flower of the knights of Christendom. In his satisfaction at seeing under his orders, in the capacity of a volunteer, the Emperor of the West, Henry VIII. forgot that he had transmitted to him a hundred thousand golden crowns for raising troops, and that Maximilian had brought only a feeble escort. The reception of the emperor was magnificent; all the great English noblemen were clad in cloth of gold and silver, which suffered from the pelting rain that greeted the interview of the two monarchs. On the same day the Scottish herald-at-arms came to the camp of King Henry VIII., to transmit to him the declaration of war of his sovereign. "I have entrusted the Earl of Surrey to cope with your master," abruptly replied the King of England. Before the return of his messenger, King James had risked and lost his game.

The French had, meanwhile, decided to advance upon Thérouenne: the English troops crossed the river to give battle to them; the Emperor Maximilian, with the red rose of Lancaster upon his helmet, directed the operations; the struggle began briskly, but the French cavalry, after charging valiantly, took alarm, and turned back. They caused disorder in the battle corps; the panic became complete: the English pursued the fugitives to the cry of "St. George;" the efforts of the chiefs could not rally the soldiers, and nearly all were made prisoners. "It is a battle of spurs," the captives themselves said, when the king gaily congratulated them upon the ardour which the fugitives had contrived to inspire in their horses, and that name has remained to the engagement. {162} But King Henry delayed before Thérouenne, instead of profiting by his advantages and by the arrival in France of a Swiss army to which he had furnished money. The town capitulated at the end of August, and was razed to the ground upon the advice, and to the advantage, of Maximilian. Just as he had formerly done the work of King Ferdinand, so Henry VIII. was now doing that of the Emperor; instead of advancing into France, he laid siege to Tournay, a French town though in Flanders, that was regarded as prejudicial to the commerce of that country. Maximilian had taken care to promise the bishopric thereof to Wolsey; it was taken without any great resistance on the 22nd of September, but the Swiss had concluded an advantageous treaty with the King of France, and had withdrawn to their mountains. The King of England gave a great tournament, and amused himself for several days at Tournay. He returned to England on the 22nd of October, after having spent large sums of money, without glory or profit; but the star of Wolsey had risen, and Henry VIII. had had the pleasure of dictating to the Emperor.

In the meantime, the Earl of Surrey had justified the confidence of his master; King James crossed the frontier on the 22nd of August with a more considerable army than was usual in Scotland. He had captured several castles, when Surrey met him in the environs of Flodden, an advanced defence of the Cheviot Hills, in an advantageous situation, protected by the course of the Till, one of the tributaries of the Tweed. {163} The English immediately saw the strength of the position, and endeavoured by insulting messages to tempt King James to advance; but the Scots took no heed, and it was found necessary to make the attack. James had neglected to defend the bridge and the ford, but he descended from the mountain and advanced towards the enemy, in good order, "marching like the Germans, without speaking and without making any noise." The old chiefs of the army had advised against giving battle, but James did not listen to them. "If you are afraid of the English, you can return to your home," he said insolently to the old Earl of Angus. The old man burst into tears. "My age renders my body useless in the combat, and my counsels are despised," he cried; "but I leave my two sons and the vassals of the Douglases upon the field of battle; God grant that the prediction of the old Angus may prove false!"

It was four o'clock on the 9th of September, 1513; the guns of the two armies began to thunder; the English artillery was superior and better served than that of the Scots; the latter were the more eager to come to a hand-to-hand struggle. The Earl of Huntley and Lord Home, who commanded the left wing, attacked the English under the orders of Sir Edmund Howard; they fought furiously, and the troops of Sir Edmund, coming in great part from Cheshire, were exasperated, it is said, at finding themselves commanded by a Howard instead of a Stanley, the hereditary chief of their county. They wavered, and the Scottish corps for a long time resisted the cavalry reserve which Lord Dacre brought up. The inhabitants of the frontiers, under the orders of Lord Home, had dispersed to plunder, and refused to renew the attack. {164} "We have fought the advanced guard," they said, "and we have made them retreat; let all do as much as we have." King James was performing wonders in the centre; he had attacked the Earl of Surrey with the flower of his chivalry, and the two generals were about to meet amidst the slaughter, when confusion set in among the highlanders, who had precipitated themselves in a disorderly manner upon the left wing of the English. Half naked and maddened with rage, the mountaineers struck before them without listening to the voice of their chiefs, as though the whole victory depended "upon the heavy blows which they gave." Being soon repulsed in this irregular attack, they were slaughtered one after the other, and the whole effort of the combat was directed towards the centre, where King James continued to fight. In an instant he was crushed; the circle contracted around him; English and Scotch appeared that day to have adopted the ferocious maxim of Sir Thomas Howard, "No quarter." The Scots thronged around their sovereign, defending him with desperate valour; he fell, however, almost at the feet of Surrey; but the struggle continued around his body. He was buried under a heap of dead, who had fallen in his defence. When night at length arrested the slaughter, Surrey was not yet well assured of victory; on the morrow he was compelled to engage in several little skirmishes with detached corps; but the bulk of the Scots withdrew during the night towards the frontier, and the English did not attempt to pursue them. {165} The battle of Flodden had struck a fatal blow to Scotland; her nobility was decimated, many families had lost all their sons; but, on the other hand, the struggle had exhausted their adversaries, and Surrey intrenched himself in Berwick, and shortly afterwards disbanded the greater part of his army. He sent to Queen Catherine the corpse of King James, found upon the field of battle; she herself wrote to King Henry VIII. to announce the victory. "My Henry," she said, "that which God does is well done. Your Grace can see that I can keep my promises, for I send you for your banner the close coat of a king. I could have wished to send you the king himself, but the heart of our English people would not have permitted it." Upon his return, the king rewarded Surrey for his services, by restoring to him the title of Duke of Norfolk, lost by his father, who had fallen on the field of Bosworth. Queen Margaret of Scotland had written to her brother, imploring him to be mindful of the ties of blood, and to spare her orphan son; she was nominated regent, and peace was concluded; the Council of the King of England had for a long time been aware that it was difficult to completely subdue the Scots, and that war with that country, as poor as it was resolute, was rarely profitable to her neighbours, even after victory.

Louis XII. succeeded by his negotiations in breaking off the league formed against him. The court of Rome had received him into favour, and Maximilian became his ally by the promise of the hand of Renee of France, second daughter of the king (subsequently Duchess of Ferrara), for the prince Charles, son of Philip the Fair and Joan the Mad, destined to become better known as the Emperor Charles the Fifth. {166} The young prince had not yet attained marriageable age, but he had been betrothed from tender infancy to the Princess Mary of England, sister of Henry VIII.; the latter soon heard of the treachery which was preparing, but at the same time, and in order to appease his fury, Louis XII., who had recently lost his wife, Anne of Brittany, formerly widow of Charles VIII., proposed to marry the Princess Mary. She was sixteen years of age, and was passionately in love with Charles Brandon, viscount De Lisle, one of the handsomest noblemen, and one of the most skilful in all military exercises at the English court, who was equally devoted to her. King Louis had formerly been an accomplished chevalier; but he was fifty-three years of age, and was afflicted with the gout. When the marriage was celebrated, in spite of the sentiments of the princess, he attended in his litter the tournament at which Charles Brandon, now become Duke of Suffolk, distinguished himself by the most brilliant valour. The nuptial ceremony had taken place upon the 2nd of September, 1513; the king was delighted with his young wife, who, however, reproached him with having sent back to England all her ladies and her English household. The Duke of Suffolk had also returned to London, when, on the 1st of January, 1514, Louis XII. died in Paris, exhausted by the fatigue of his long wars, and the cares which his affairs had caused him; exhausted also, it was said, by the efforts which he had recently made to appear at the rejoicings, in order to please his young bride. His subjects mourned him; they had given him the noble surname of the "Father of his people," a fact due above all to the wise administration of Cardinal d'Amboise. {167} Two months after his death, his widow secretly married the Duke of Suffolk, who had come on behalf of the king, her brother, at the head of the embassy which was to bring her back to England. Marriages of this kind had been frequent formerly, but the royal dignity became every year more haughty, and none was more infatuated therewith than Henry VIII.; he flew into a passion against his sister, whom he would not see on her return. Soon the supplications of Mary and the good offices of Wolsey brought about interviews. Suffolk had formerly been a favourite of the king, who received him into favour. The duke and duchess reappeared at the court; Mary was more beautiful than ever, for she was now happy.

All the authority as well as all the influence in the kingdom now belonged to Cardinal Wolsey; from a plain almoner of the king he had become, in a few years, first Dean of York, then Bishop of Lincoln, at length Archbishop of York; in the year 1515, he was made Chancellor of England, cardinal, and legate of the Pope. All business passed through his hands; all favours depended upon him. An able and assiduous courtier, he contrived to flatter the tastes as well as the passions of his master; he amused him with endless pleasures; he flattered his self-love; he found money to suffice for his expenses, and the king, in return, allowed him to govern the kingdom. At home, the direction which Wolsey had contrived to give to affairs, was not without advantages; he strengthened the royal power upon the ruins of the aristocracy, encouraged commerce, secured the safety of the highways, and caused justice to be administered. {168} Abroad, his personal avidity and the ambition which impelled him towards the throne of St. Peter, imprinted upon his policy a perfidious and venal character, which impelled his country to fatal courses. During more than ten years the history of Wolsey was the history of England; his qualities and vices equally influenced the whole of the nation, of whose destinies he was the real arbiter, since the absolute monarch who then governed the country saw only through the eyes, and heard only through the ears of his minister.

In ascending the throne of France, Francis I. had hastened to confirm the alliance with England which Louis XII. had concluded by his marriage; he was desirous of assuring peace in that quarter, in order to put into execution his projects against Italy, a fatal undertaking, which seemed to afflict with madness the French monarchs one after another, and to lead them to their ruin. Francis I. had covered himself with glory at the battle of Marignan, on the 14th of September, 1515; and Ludovic Sforza had been compelled to give up to him the duchy of Milan. Jealously of so much success began to seize upon King Henry; he complained of the perfidy of the French, who had secretly sent to Scotland the Duke of Albany, the son of him whom King James III. had formerly banished. The French party immediately proposed to entrust to him the regency, at the exclusion of the queen Margaret, who had exasperated her people by marrying, less than nine months after the death of her husband, the young Earl of Angus, bold and handsome, but as ambitious as he was rash and unskilful; Albany had been born in France; he had been brought up there; his regency was necessarily unfavorable to English interests. {169} These reasons, coupled with the councils of Wolsey, who wished to please the court of Rome, from which he had recently received a cardinal's hat, persuaded Henry to conclude a fresh alliance with Maximilian, in order to drive Francis I. from Italy. An insane ambition contributed to urge the King of England into this path. The emperor, feigning to be weary of the supreme power, spoke of ceding the imperial purple to the prince who should show himself deserving of it. The vanity of Henry VIII., was aroused; he despatched two ambassadors to Germany to see how matters stood; but his negotiators were too intelligent and honest to leave him long in error. "The imperial crown is not at the disposal of the emperor," wrote Doctor Tunstall, "but certainly of the electoral princes, and the first condition is that the person elected should be a native of Germany, or at least a subject of the empire, which your Grace is not, because never, since the origin of the Christian faith, have the Kings of England been subjects; thus, I fear, that this proposal, so specious in appearance, has been made only with a view to obtain money of your Grace."

Henry VIII. was convinced, and, according to his custom, he was impelled to the other side by the reaction of his first feelings. Not being able to obtain the empire of Maximilian, he renounced his alliance. Francis I. contrived to gain over Wolsey by rich presents; he recrossed the Alps, entrusting the Constable de Bourbon to govern the duchy of Milan; a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, between France and England was concluded on the 4th of October, 1518, promising to the little dauphin the hand of the Princess Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII., then eighteen months of age. {170} Francis I. was to repurchase Tournay for the sum of six hundred thousand crowns. Wolsey had not forgotten himself in determining these conditions; he had stipulated for a pension of twelve thousand livres, destined to indemnify him for the loss of his bishopric. "The king intends shortly to confer some further gratification upon your Grace," wrote one of the English negotiators to the all-powerful cardinal. "I was asked what would please you most; I said that I knew nothing of that matter, but that some handsome plate or rich jewels appeared to me to be the most suitable."

The jealousy of King Henry towards Francis I. appeared to have given place to a violent admiration; he proposed a personal interview, between Calais and Boulogne, which was to take place in the month of July, 1519. All the preliminaries prescribed by etiquette were already determined on. Henry and Wolsey could set themselves to work to invent the splendours of costumes and arranging festivities, which were to dazzle the court of France, when, in the month of January, 1519, the Emperor Maximilian died suddenly, and the great affair of the succession to the empire absorbed all minds.

For a moment Henry VIII. himself entered the lists, but without much hope or perseverance; the two rivals for the empire were still—as they had been all their lifetime—the King of France, Francis L, and the Archduke Charles, grandson of Maximilian by his son Philip the Fair. {171} Born at Ghent, descending from the House of Austria, hereditary sovereign of the Low Countries, Charles had all the natural claims to the suffrages of the electors, which were wanting in his competitor. His military renown was already brilliant, and prodigal as King Francis might be of the rich presents for which the German princes were eager, the master of the Low Countries, Spain, the Kingdom of Naples, and the West Indies was the richer of the two. In this game, as in all others, Francis I. was to be beaten by Charles V. The King of England had at first hesitated between the two competitors, but he decided in favour of the Archduke, when the latter was definitively elected on the 28th of June. The King of France bore his check with the proud gaiety natural to his race and his country. 'In ambition as in love there should be no rancour,' he said to the Spanish ambassador; but the expenses had been enormous, and the defeat was serious. The two countries were to pay dearly for the rivalry which was thus established between their sovereigns.

Henry VIII. hastened to congratulate the new emperor by the pen of Wolsey, while the cardinal took care to explain the conduct of his master at the court of France. It was important to him, for the moment, to maintain good relations with Francis I. as well as with Charles V. The King of France claimed the performance of the promise of Henry VIII., and the latter was too well pleased to display his magnificence to decline a proposal which had, moreover, come from him in the first place. The interview was fixed for the summer of 1520, and the ambassadors of the emperor in vain made efforts to destroy the project.

The court of England was already at Canterbury, where the king was completing his splendid preparations, when he suddenly learnt that the emperor had arrived in the Channel, and desired to pay him a visit. Wolsey was less surprised than his master; he had secretly entered into negotiations with Charles, who had assured to his "very good friend the cardinal," a pension of seven thousand ducats secured by two Spanish bishoprics. Wolsey was sent by the king to meet the illustrious visitor, who, simply attired in black and scantily attended, landed amidst the magnificent preparations for the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The emperor stopped at Dover, where the King of England came shortly to meet him with great demonstrations of friendship and gratitude. They chatted together until a late hour of the night, and repaired on the morrow in state to Canterbury, the king leaving the right-hand side to the emperor throughout, and the Earl of Derby carrying before him the sword of justice. The cardinal, with all the clergy, came forward to meet the two sovereigns, who prostrated themselves together before the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket, which King Henry VIII. was shortly to profane and despoil of all its treasures. The emperor then presented his respects to his aunt, Queen Catharine, and appeared struck with admiration for the beauty of the Duchess of Suffolk, that Princess Mary to whom he had been betrothed in his childhood, and who had subsequently been rejected for reasons of state. The time for regrets had gone by, and the Emperor Charles V. had not come to England to occupy himself with the beauty of a woman. {173} He securely attached Wolsey to his interest by promising him his important support in his great affair—the election to the pontifical throne. Presents were not forgotten, and when Charles set sail again after a short visit, he had counteracted the fatal effects which the interview of the two sovereigns of France and England might have had upon his policy. No one was more fully aware than Charles V. of the value of splendour and magnificence, under certain circumstances, but none knew better how to dispense with these aids in order to go directly and simply to his end, while reckoning upon his personal influence to preserve and maintain the imperial dignity.

On the 4th of June, 1520, King Henry VIII., the queen, the cardinal, and all the court, embarked for France; the spot fixed upon for the interview was situated between Guines and Ardres; it was there that was to be established the "Field of the Cloth of Gold," which has remained famous in the history of extravagant splendour. Wolsey had been entrusted by France as well as England, with the superintendence of all the festivities; but it was in vain that Francis I. selected the cardinal for his master of the ceremonies; Charles V. had promised to make him Pope.

A palace built of timber and magnificently decorated by Flemish workmen awaited the King of England; a fountain throwing forth streams of white and red wine played constantly at the front, with this invitation to all passers-by, "make good cheer, all who please." Everywhere stood erect grim gigantic figures armed with bows and arrows, and exhibiting the device which Henry had chosen to recall the advances of the Emperor and Francis I.: "Cui adhœreo trœstat." (He whom I support prevails). {174} Precious tapestries, magnificent hangings, gold and silver plate, ornamented the interior of this temporary palace, more substantial than the magnificent pavilion erected by Francis I. The cloth of gold which formed the vault of this pavilion, the blue velvet, studded with stars, on the walls, the silken cords, mixed with Cyprian gold, were unable to resist the gusts of wind which soon arose and beat down into the mud all these splendours; and the King of France was compelled to take refuge in an old castle very near the town of Aries. The two sovereigns had scarcely been installed in their residences, when Cardinal Wolsey, accompanied by a magnificent retinue, repaired to the abode of the King of France, while a deputation of French noblemen performed the same ceremony towards Henry VIII. The visit of Wolsey was, however, not a mere court formality; the marriage treaty was confirmed between him and Francis I.; in the event of the projected union being accomplished, the King of France undertook to pay a pension of a hundred thousand crowns to Henry and his successors, so eager was he to secure the neutrality of England in the war which he foresaw. The arbitration of the affairs of Scotland was consigned to the cardinal himself, in conjunction with Louisa of Savoy, the mother of Francis I. Henry had wished to have the Scots delivered up to him without reserve, but the chivalrous spirit of the King did not permit him to abandon, even on paper, the faithful allies who had paid so cruelly for the useful diversion made in the north of England, when Louis XII. had been simultaneously attacked by the English and the Swiss.

King Henry held aloof as long as it was a question of business; when the rejoicings and ceremonies were begun, he filled the scene, almost alone. The two kings met and embraced on horseback, according to the ceremony decided upon in order to avoid delicate questions of etiquette; the most affectionate protestations were exchanged. The noblemen of the two courts mixed together amicably, the jousts were about to commence; everywhere around the lists the emblems of France and England were conjoined; for six days the combatants fought with lances, for two with swords, for two in the melee, at the barriers. Henry VIII. and Francis I. fought side by side, like two brothers in arms, facing all comers. The two kings finally essayed wrestling matches, much in vogue in England; but King Henry, more trained, was less nimble than his adversary; he was overthrown; he demanded his revenge, but the assistants interposed there had been enough combats. Banquets, balls, masquerades and theatrical representations now claimed their turn.

So many mutual diversions did not suffice to efface the old distrust born of the long wars and political rivalries; King Francis desiring one morning to commence the day with eclat, repaired alone to the quarters of the English before King Henry had risen, and touching him gaily upon the shoulder: "So you are my prisoner, my brother," he said. Henry VIII. sprang from his couch, touched by this proof of confidence, and Francis, continuing the jest, acted as valet to him, assisted him to perform his toilet, and ended by exchanging presents with him. On leaving the camp, the King, of France met one of his friends the Sire de Fleuranges. {176} "I am glad to see you again in safety, sire," said the latter; "but let me tell you, my master, that you have acted foolishly; and may the evil consequences fall upon those who advised you." "Nobody advised anything," said the king, "all came from my head and could not come from elsewhere." Henry VIII. returned the visit familarly on the marrow. But the moment for separation had arrived; the affairs of the two kingdoms claimed the attention of the two sovereigns, and the rejoicings were beginning to exhaust their purses. For years the lands of more than one nobleman were still recovering from the loans contracted to make a good appearance at the Field of the Cloth of Gold; it was said that the greater number of the French carried all their property upon their backs.

The Emperor Charles V. had forbidden his subjects to respond to the invitation addressed to all the knights in Christendom, and it was to Gravelines that King Henry VIII. went to see him; Charles reconducted him as far as Calais; but the French ambassadors were unable to learn anything of the result of their conference. Before separating Charles promised to accept his dear uncle of England as arbitrator in all the differences which might arise between the King of France and himself, a promise easy to keep for one who held arms in his hand and took care to submit to arbitration only questions of little importance. The king returned to London, "in good health, but with a light purse." says the chroniclers.

There had not been wanting among the citizens, and even among the great noblemen who had not accompanied King Henry to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, censures upon the insane expenditure of the court; none had spoken more loudly than the Duke of Buckingham, and he had gone beyond the bounds of prudence. The blood of the Plantagenets flowed in his veins; he was a descendant of a daughter of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Edward III.; he was rich, magnificent, bold, intelligent. So many qualities and advantages rendered him dangerous; Wolsey profited by the first opportunity to ruin him. It was related that an astrological monk, consulted by the duke, had affirmed that his son, young Stafford, "would go far and high," in other terms, it was concluded therefrom, that the young man would succeed, to the throne of Henry VIII. A similar ground of fear had cost the head of the Earl of Suffolk. Wolsey, who had, on several occasions, been offended by the haughtiness of the duke, caused him to be summoned to the court shortly after the king returned from France. The duke set out without any mistrust; but scarcely had he arrived in London when he found himself watched and followed with more persistency than respect. He was proceeding down the Thames in his boat, when he was arrested and conducted to the Tower, to the astonishment and indignation of the people. He was accused of having urged the monk to disloyal predictions, of having plotted with the servants of the king, uttering threats against his majesty, and the cardinal. The duke maintained that not one single fact could be brought forward against him, but he was condemned beforehand, and the Duke of Norfolk, who presided over the tribunal, burst into tears while pronouncing the sentence, which he had the cowardice to sign. {178} Buckingham replied with proud firmness, protesting to the end his innocence, and refusing to ask pardon of the king. The people wept at the sight of his execution, on the 17th of June, 1521; executions had not yet been sufficiently frequent under the new reign to harden and debase men's hearts.

The blood of Buckingham still reeked upon his scaffold, when Henry VIII. undertook to add to his glory as monarch and knight a splendour of a new kind. We have seen how the reformation was born in England, under the inspiration of Wykliffe, or rather, how it had then, for the first time, assumed a name and proclaimed doctrines. Since that time it had never ceased to grow and develope, slowly, silently, notwithstanding the martyrdom of some persons, nearly all obscure, who perished at the stake from year to year, maintaining the fire which smouldered beneath the ashes. For four years past, everything had been changed; Luther had applied the axe to the tree in Germany, and the renown of his work had penetrated throughout all England. Meanwhile external signs were not yet alarming for the Church of Rome, and less still for its doctrines; the people rose above all against the monks, then very numerous in England, whose irregularities had, several times, attracted the attention of the popes. Henry VIII. resolved to defend the Catholic faith against the attacks of Luther. On the 15th of May, Wolsey had given to the bishops orders to burn, in all the parishes of England, the dangerous books, and to cause to be affixed to the doors of all the churches a list of the heresies of Luther, in order to teach the people to beware of them. {179} On the 20th of May, King Henry had written to Louis of Bavaria, asking him to burn Luther with all his books, "for the accomplishment," he said, "of which good work, sacred and acceptable to God, we offer sincerely with all our hearts, our royal favour, our aid and assistance, and even, if necessary, our blood." But Luther had already appeared before the Diet of Worms, where, boldly maintaining his ground, he had wrested from the emperor, who was an adept in the matter, the exclamation, "Upon my soul, the monk speaks well and with marvellous courage." The monk was in safety at Wurtenburg, hidden for awhile from the fury of his enemies. King Henry had no other resource against him than "the pen of a ready writer." He applied himself to the task, and published in the summer of 1521, a Defence of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther, of which a copy, magnificently copied and bound, was, through the care of Wolsey, presented to Pope Leo X. in full consistory, in the month of October, by the English ambassador at Rome. After reading it, the Holy Father bestowed upon the royal author the name of Defender of the Faith, a glorious addition to his other titles, and one of which he was eventually to make a strange use. Luther replied to Henry VIII., refusing to believe that the treatise was the work of his pen, and then proceeded leisurely to dispose of the document. When afterwards the reformer desired to alter his judgment and effect a reconciliation with the monarch, who, in his fashion, was placing himself at the head of the religious movement in his dominions, Henry had not forgiven him for having refused the title of author to him, and was not more favourably disposed towards him for attributing to him at length the composition of a work of which he had spoken so badly. {180} The king published everywhere in his kingdom the two letters of Luther, with a reply, and a warning to the "pious author," which testified to the small liking which had always experienced for "this insane monk."

While Henry VIII. was examining the works of the Fathers of the Church, or causing them to be examined, and was writing a treatise on theology, the war had recommenced between France and Spain. Francis I. had invaded Navarre, but he had been repulsed; his attempts upon the Low Countries had not been fortunate, and Pope Leo X. had recently formed a fresh alliance with the emperor. In his embarrassments, Francis I. invoked the good offices of the King of England, who promised his arbitration, and, thereupon, despatched Wolsey to come to an understanding with the emperor upon the dismemberment of the French monarchy. The cardinal, to whom his master had consigned full powers, landed on the 30th of June at Calais, with a magnificent retinue, and held several conferences with the emissaries of the two sovereigns; but the first act of the comedy was not long, and Wolsey shortly repaired to Bruges, "in order," he said, "to incline the emperor towards peaceful measures." The negotiator was accompanied by so many noblemen, his servants were so brilliantly attired and ornamented with so many jewels, that King Christian of Denmark, who was then at Bruges, was confounded, especially when he saw the cardinal served by men of the highest rank, on their knees, a ceremony that was as yet unknown in Germany.

Cardinal Wolsey Served By Noblemen.

The daily expenses of Wolsey were enormous, but he still hoped that Pope Leo X. (his junior by several years) would be carried off by some accident; it was necessary, therefore, at any price, to secure the support of the emperor. The whole secret of the English policy at this period lay there.

On the 19th of August, Wolsey wrote from Bruges to his master. The emperor urged Henry VIII. to declare war against France; but the cardinal had said that it was necessary to await the visit of Charles to England. "He swears in the presence of Our Lady," added Wolsey, "that he holds himself bound to you for ever above all other princes;" in faith of which, the emperor promised to marry the little Princess Mary, who had been solemnly betrothed to the dauphin four years before. The preliminaries being agreed upon, Wolsey returned to Calais, where the French ambassadors contrived to preserve their gravity and to restrain from indignation, while the cardinal formally resumed the negotiations for peace. When Francis I. had rejected an unacceptable project, Wolsey, deploring his obstinacy, impartially declared, in his quality of arbitrator, that the King of France was the aggressor, and that the King of England was bound to lend his concurrence to his ally, the Emperor Charles. A treaty was therefore signed at Calais, between the Pope, the Emperor, and King Henry VIII., according to which, "in order to check the guilty ambition of France, and to hasten the moment for a general crusade against the Turks," all the covenanters were to fall at once upon King Francis I. from different sides.

Hostilities had not been relaxed during the negotiations, and the affairs of the King of France continued to progress unfavourably; he had lost nearly all his conquests in Italy, when Pope Leo X. delighted at the capture of Parma and Piacenza, the siege of which he had urged with vigour, died suddenly on the 1st of December, at the age of forty-six years, not without some suspicion of poisoning—thus justifying the hopes which the cardinal had founded upon the accidents to which Italian princes were then particularly subject. It was a great blow to the league, but none was more interested than Wolsey, who was informed of the event with prodigious rapidity, and he immediately took steps to remind the emperor of his engagements, at the same time despatching to Rome his secretary, Pace, to manage his business at the sacred college, which was very considerable then, in consequence of the numerous nominations which Leo X. had made.

For twenty-three days thirty-nine cardinals were shut up in conclave for the election of the new Pope, without being able to agree together. Cardinal Julius de Medicis, who had distinguished himself in the recent war, mustered one-third of the suffrages; but he could not contrive to overstep this number; some hesitated to give to the deceased Pope a successor from his family; the cardinals of the French party and some imperialists dreaded the Cardinal Julius. Nobody spoke of Wolsey. At length one day the Medicis, seeing that they could not pass their candidate, whose army, moreover, was awaiting him with impatience, themselves proposed, suddenly, Adrian, cardinal of Tortosa, a Flemish prelate, who had formerly been the tutor of the Emperor, and who was employed by him in his affairs in Spain. {183} No one believed in his election; gradually several cardinals deposed their votes in his favour; Cardinal Cajetan made a great speech to celebrate the virtues and merits of the new candidate, who was unknown to the greater number of his compeers. While he spoke, the disposition of the conclave changed suddenly; when the votes was counted, Adrian found himself elected by the direct and sudden inspiration of the Holy Ghost, it was affirmed. Upon his arrival in Rome, the new Pope received the compliments of Cardinal Wolsey, through the medium of his secretary, Pace; the ambition of the English minister was disappointed, but Pope Adrian VI. was old and worn out: Wolsey waited.

Francis I. had made several attempts to regain the affection of the King of England; but as they remained without result, he suspended the payment of the pension which he allowed to Henry VIII., placed an embargo on the English vessels which were in his ports, and seized the goods of the merchants. The anger of King Henry had not been satisfied with the most violent reprisals against the French people who were in his dominions, when the emperor landed at Dover. The moment was propitious for his designs; Henry VIII. promised him an army of forty thousand men, and undertook to invade the north of France. Charles V., had undertaken to indemnify the King of England for the loss of the French pension, but he began by borrowing a large sum of money, notwithstanding the financial embarrassments of the English monarch. {184} Every day, in fact, added to his distress in the matter of money, for every day brought fresh festivities and prodigalities. The emperor proceeded from magnificence to magnificence during his sojourn in England.

When he set sail, Wolsey knew not what expedient to have recourse to in order to procure the necessary funds for the equipment of the army.

King Henry VIII. had imitated the example of the last years of his father; he did not give himself the trouble to convoke Parliament. A loan of twenty thousand pounds sterling was forcibly exacted from the merchants of London, but scarcely had they paid that sum, when the principal among them were summoned before the cardinal. He declared to them that the king had chosen them to make throughout the kingdom an inquiry concerning the property of all, upon which property the king intended to raise a tenth for the defense of the kingdom. The aldermen resisted, affirming that money was not only wanting in the coffers of the king, but everywhere else; Wolsey replied, that the clergy had undertaken to give up a quarter of their wealth; finally a compromise was arrived at, and the royal treasury was once more enriched with the substance of the people. But the popularity of Wolsey was sinking beneath this ever-increasing oppression, and the results of the war were not of a nature to afford consolation to the unhappy people ruined by the preparations for the struggle. The Earl of Surrey, after bringing back the Emperor to Spain, had pillaged, on his return, the coast of Brittany. He then placed himself at the head of the army, which numbered fifteen thousand men only, of whom three thousand were volunteers, and one thousand German mercenaries; the season was late, the English traversed Artois and followed the banks of the Somme, ravaging the country, burning down villages, but avoiding the castles and fortified towns. {185} The French army had instructions not to risk a pitched battle; but it cruelly harassed the English. The rain assisting, grave distempers broke out among the troops of Surrey; in the middle of October, the English, abandoned by their foreign auxiliaries, were compelled to retreat to Bethune without having accomplished anything; the money collected with so much difficulty was expended, and the exchequer was again empty.

The King of France once more sought to obtain support in the neighbourhood of his enemies; he endeavoured to stir Ireland to revolt, and addressed himself with this object to the Earl of Desmond, who claimed a certain independence, promising him troops and money if he would act for him in enrolling his fellow countrymen; Desmond applied himself to his task, but neither French money nor soldiers were forthcoming, and the earl stood alone exposed to the vengeance of the English government. Affairs were not much better directed in Scotland. The regent Albany, still in contention with Queen Margaret, asked of his Parliament authority to repair to France to seek assistance; upon his return with a small body of troops, he found everything in confusion, and Margaret caused the regency of her second husband, the Earl of Angus, to be proclaimed. Having shortly afterwards quarrelled with him, she demanded a divorce, which King Henry VIII., who had not yet had an affair of the sort himself rigorously opposed it. {186} The disorders went on increasing in Scotland; the most violent accusations were hurled from one party to the other. Albany was recalled to power; Henry VIII. insisted that he should be dismissed as the friend of France; and upon the refusal of the Scottish Parliament, he declared war. Lord Shrewsbury, made the first attempt at an invasion which was repulsed, and the regent entered England with a numerous army. Lord Dacre, who was in command at the frontier, had scarcely any troops, but he talked so loudly of the forces that were approaching—of the anger of King Henry VIII., of the dangers which were about to befall Scotland, that Albany took alarm and obtained the promise of an armistice of one month, in order that a peace might be negotiated. The skillful guardian of the frontiers allowed the retreat of the army against which he would not have been able to contend, and the Duke of Albany set sail for France. It became necessary at length to convoke a Parliament in England; loans, taxes, benevolences were exhausted. Notwithstanding the taste of Henry VIII. for absolute power, he had a sense of necessity and knew how to submit to it. Sir Thomas More was chosen as speaker of the House of Commons; he had been drawn into the service of the court several years before; the king delighted in his brilliant and varied conversation and gave every mark of recognition to his learning and ability. Under his direction, the Commons proved less obstinate than had been anticipated; they claimed the right to inquire into affairs, and the nation supported them from without by the interest which it took in all that was said in the House, "Why do they concern themselves so much with my affairs?" the king exclaimed angrily. {187} Wolsey hoped to intimidate the Commons by presenting himself before them in person, accompanied by a numerous retinue which filled the House; the cardinal-chancellor set forth in a pompous speech that the war promised to England all that it had formerly possessed in France, and that the Commons assuredly would not hesitate to vote a tax of twenty per cent, upon property. Sir Thomas More had given the word to his colleagues; it was agreed not to discuss in the presence of the cardinal, and this exorbitant demand was listened to in silence, with downcast eyes; no reply was made. Wolsey called upon several members one after the other; all rose at his haughty voice, then sat down again without saying anything. The minister flew into a passion; More then placed one knee upon the ground, alleging as the excuse of the Commons that they were agitated by the presence of so great a personage, and that, besides, they wished to discuss amongst themselves the demand which had been made of them. Wolsey was compelled to retire, and the Commons sent a deputation to the king, asking for a reduction of the tax. Wolsey returned, more and more exasperated, endeavouring to draw the members of the House into discussion by interrogating them upon their objection. The Commons remained firm, and granted only a tax of a tenth—half of what the cardinal had demanded. He was unsuccessful also before the convocation of the clergy, and, notwithstanding his power as legate, he found himself compelled to accept, instead of the fifty per cent, which he boldly demanded at first, a gift of a tenth for five years. {188} Reduced as were the subsidies, they still exceeded all that had ever been hitherto granted to the sovereigns of England. "I pray to the Lord Almighty," wrote at this period Mr. Ellis, a member of the House of Commons, "that the subsidy may be paid to his Grace, without reserve, and without his losing the hearts and good will of his subjects, treasures which I hold more precious to a king than silver and gold; the gentle entrusted to collect the money will not, I think, have a small task." Already during the session of the Parliament, the members had been insulted in the street by the inhabitants of London, who dragged them by the sleeve, crying, "You are going to give four shillings in the pound; May our malediction accompany you even to your dwellings!" Insurrections took place in several counties; but the king threw the whole obloquy of the measure upon the cardinal, and washed his hands of it while pocketing what remained of the money after the plunderings of the tax collectors, great and small.

A fresh expedition was being prepared against France. The Duke of Suffolk had placed himself at the head of the troops in the month of August, 1523. A powerful auxiliary was counted upon at the very court of Francis I.; the Constable Bourbon offended by his master, pursued by the jealous hatred of Louise of Savoy, who had hoped to become his wife, had succumbed to his desire for vengeance; he had betrayed his country and undertaken to serve her enemies. As soon as the King of France should have crossed the Alps, in his expedition to Italy, the Constable, with seven thousand men, was to co-operate in the attacks of the English and Imperialists. {189} The plot was suspected; King Francis delayed his departure, and the Constable, who had feigned an illness, was compelled to fly into Italy. The allies entered upon the campaign alone and too late; they were moreover disconcerted in their operations by the absence of the troops of the Constable. Francis I. everywhere faced the enemy in France, while his faithful servant, Admiral Bonnivet, commanded the army of Italy.

The Duke of Suffolk was not destined for more glory than the Earl of Surrey; he delayed before St. Omer, instead of affecting a junction with the Germans who had invaded Burgundy; at length, when he desired to pass, it was too late, the French army cut off his communications; he was without provisions, his troops were suffering from grave distempers. It was necessary to fall back upon Calais. This unfortunate campaign almost cost the Duke of Suffolk his head, so great was the anger of King Henry.

Pope Adrian VI. had died (4th of September, 1523) after a pontificate of twenty months; his austere conscience had so greatly exasperated the Italians, that the physician who had attended him during his illness was styled the "Saviour of his country." The hopes of Wolsey blossomed again; he hastened to write to King Henry to assure him of the repugnance which he should experience at leaving his good master and burthening himself with so heavy a duty as the government of Christendom. Henry understood, and caused the emperor to be reminded of all his promises, commanding his ambassador at Rome also to spare nothing in order to insure the election of the minister.

This time Wolsey was among the number of the candidates; he had even brought together sufficient votes, but the Italians, the people of Rome, came almost beneath the windows of the conclave, crying out that there had been too many barbarians on the seat of St. Peter, and that they would have no more. This opposition, supported by the efforts of the French cardinals, secured the tiara to cardinal Julius de Medicis. He had had the intention of retaining his name, but he was reminded that no Pope who had done so had reigned two years, and he assumed the title of Clement VII.

Wolsey was too sagacious not to contrive to conceal his disappointment; the instructions of Henry VIII. were, moreover, to assist Cardinal de Medicis if the election of the chancellor of England was impossible; the new Pope immediately confirmed Wolsey in his office of legate, authorizing him even to suppress in England the religious houses which he should find to be corrupt. The cardinal made use of this authority with moderation, employing the property of the closed monasteries in endowing the colleges and universities, in order, he said, to instruct learned doctors "capable of refuting the ever-growing and widespread heresies of the monster, Martin Luther."

The French army, under the orders of Admiral Bonnivet, had obtained some success in Italy; but when that commander had to deal with the Constable Bourbon, placed by the emperor at the head of his troops, he suffered check after check; the loss of nearly all the towns was crowned by the death of the brave Bayard, the flower of European chivalry. {191} The invasion of France was resolved upon, and Charles V. besought Henry VIII. to make an attack in the north; but England was weary of making war without glory, and the king, who had, while advancing in years, conceived as little liking as he had little aptitude for the command of armies, refused his co-operation, promising money, however, which he did not pay. Bourbon and the Marquis of Peschiera entered France, but, contrary to the advice of the Constable, who wished to march upon Lyons, they delayed at the fruitless siege of Marseilles, and the generals, urged by the proximity of the army which Francis I. had gathered together at Avignon, re-entered Italy. To his misfortune the king of France followed them there; the struggle began before Pavia, which the French were besieging; all the forces of the empire were united there, and on the 24th of February, 1525, when the combat ceased, the French army was decimated and the king a prisoner. "All is lost, save honour!" wrote the captured monarch, who had valiantly defended himself, to his mother. He was immediately conducted to the fortress of Pizzighitone, and people rejoiced greatly in England at the victory of the emperor, as though King Henry VIII. had not been upon the point, a few months before, of separating himself from the league, in order to become reconciled with the King of France.

The victory caused the scale to incline to the side of Charles V., and Henry hastened to despatch ambassadors to him, promising to invade France in conjunction with the emperor, in order to divide that kingdom amicably. {192} As preliminaries of the treaty, the King of England proposed to ascend the throne of France, which belonged to him by right of inheritance, while Charles should content himself with the provinces formerly dependant upon the House of Burgundy. In order to accomplish this dazzling project, fresh taxes were demanded without any vote of Parliament, recent experience of the temper of that body not having been favourable; but this was too much. Insurrections broke out on all sides; placards insulting to the king and the cardinal were affixed by night upon the walls; arms were taken up against the commissioners. Wolsey perceived that it was necessary to yield, and the king, more bold in words than in deeds, speedily announced that he revoked and annulled his demands; it was also repeated very loudly that the cardinal had always been opposed to this fresh benevolence, that it was at his entreaty that the king abandoned it; but the people said, "God bless the king; as to the cardinal, we know him but too well."

The rejoicing had been neither general nor spontaneous in England after the battle of Pavia and the captivity of Francis I. "I have heard it related," wrote Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, formerly a minister of Henry VII., to the cardinal, "that the people said in several places that it would be a subject rather for weeping than for rejoicing that the King of France was a prisoner; if he could recover his liberty, and there should be a good peace, the king would no longer dream of retaking France, the conquest of which would be more burdensome to England than profitable, and the maintenance more burdensome than the conquest."

Charles V., deemed himself henceforth master of the situation, and the style of his letters changed in tone after the battle of Pavia. He was weary of the oscillations and perfidies of the English policy; he no longer wrote to his good uncle with his own hand, and his letters were signed Charles, without any reminder of the ties of kindred. He rejected the idea of invading France. "The game was in the toils," it was said; "of what use was it to chase it any longer?" Francis I. had been transferred to the Alcazar of Madrid, at his request, and was anxious to negotiate personally with the emperor, but no interview was granted him. The negotiators demanded of the captive king the renunciation of all his pretensions upon Italy, the rehabilitation of the Constable Bourbon in his rank and property, and the cession of Burgundy. Francis I. resisted this last point; he struggled for a long while, and even abdicated in favour of the dauphin. At one moment he threatened to starve himself to death, and the emperor saw himself upon the point of losing all the fruits of his victory. At length, on the 14th of January, 1526, after eleven months' captivity, the King of France signed the treaty of Madrid, taking care, however, to protest before a priest, a notary, and some friends, against the constraint placed upon him; then springing upon his Barbary-horse, brought for him to the frontier, he galloped back to his territory, crying, "I am king once more." All the conditions of the treaty were already trodden under foot.

During the captivity of Francis I., Henry VIII. had concluded a close and advantageous alliance with Louise of Savoy, regent of the kingdom; a sum of two millions of crowns had been promised him, as well as a pension of a hundred thousand crowns. The cardinal received thirty thousand crowns for the cession of the bishopric of Tournay, and a hundred thousand crowns as a reward for his services to France. The Dowager Queen of France, Mary, duchess of Suffolk, was to have her dowry liquidated. It was moreover forbidden the Duke of Albany to re-enter Scotland during the minority of James V.

As soon as he had arrived in Paris, Francis I. ratified the engagements made by his mother, assuring the emissaries of Henry VIII. that he cared for nothing when once he was in good and faithful friendship with his Grace, the King of England. The league formerly concluded against the King of France, was reformed against the emperor; the Pope absolved Francis I. of his oaths, and allied himself with the Kings of France and England, with the republics of Florence and Venice, and with the Duke of Milan, with a view to recommence hostilities.

A coldness had arisen since the preceding year (1525) between King Henry and his all-powerful minister; the king had found, it was said, that the cardinal abused the authority which had been confided to him by the Pope, and that he had driven too many monks from their monasteries. The rumour of this disagreement reached Germany, and it was upon this point that Luther wrote to Henry VIII., attributing to Wolsey all the evil which had been wrought in England, and congratulating the king on his having rejected "this monster and abomination to God and man, the ruin of the kingdom, and the blight of all England." The compliments of Luther were premature; the king and the cardinal had become reconciled, and Henry answered the reformer with emphatic encomiums upon Wolsey, and bitter reproaches directed against Luther for his marriage with Catherine of Bora.

The two sovereigns of France and England did not keep their promises to the Pope better than those made to the emperor. All the weight of the war fell upon Clement VII., who was soon compelled to throw himself upon the mercy of Charles V. A treaty was signed between them, but less than a month afterwards the Spaniards entered Rome by surprise, and the Pope was compelled to take refuge in the castle of St. Angelo. Passing from convention to convention, from perfidy to perfidy, with alternations of successes and reverses, Clement VII. found himself at length in the month of May, 1527, besieged in Rome by the Constable Bourbon, who was killed in the assault of the 5th of May, at the moment when his ferocious soldiers were taking possession of the city, which they gave up to fire and sword. Not even from the Gauls and the Goths had the Eternal City suffered so much. Notwithstanding the corruption of the Roman Church and the secret indignation which was felt against her, a cry of horror was raised from one end to the other of Christendom. Wolsey wrote to Henry VIII. to remind him of his title of Defender of the Faith, and to ask him to act in favour of the papal authority; but the king was absorbed in matters which were destined to undermine all his old devotion to Rome. He followed the example of King Francis I., and both monarchs abandoned to his unhappy fate the ally whom they had involved in an unequal struggle.

The King of England had recently, in fact, entered upon a course which was in the end to lead him further and to change his policy more than he had foreseen. An inconsistent and faithless husband, he had caused his wife, Queen Catharine of Aragon, many sorrows, which she had borne with grave dignity and a somewhat rigid meekness. He had, nevertheless, retained a certain respect for her; the queen was generally beloved and esteemed, but Henry VIII. had made the acquaintance of a young maid of honour of her court—beautiful, intellectual, graceful, brought up in France, whither, when yet quite a child, she had accompanied the Princess Mary, when she went there to espouse Louis XII., and Anne Boleyn had awakened a violent passion in the heart of the king. Did she from the first lay claim to the position of her royal mistress. Did she resist the love of the king from virtue or from ambition? None can say. She was of good birth; her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, had been several times employed in diplomatic missions by the king and the cardinal; her mother was the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. She lived constantly at the court, and the queen could not have been ignorant of an intrigue which, since 1527, had formed a subject of conversation among all the courtiers.

In order to marry Anne Boleyn, it was necessary to annul the marriage with Catharine of Aragon. King Henry VIII., after seventeen years of union found himself smitten with scruples as to the legitimacy of his marriage with the widow of his brother; he found proof of the wrath of God in the numerous losses which had been sustained by his family. {197} The queen had given him six children, but had lost all save her eldest daughter, the Princess Mary. He very ostentatiously displayed his affection for Catharine, but the delicacy of his conscience did not permit him to live in peace with her. He began to experience a desire to surround himself with learned doctors able to throw light upon the laws divine and human which he might have involuntarily violated. Various secret motives favoured the passion of the king. Notwithstanding the declarations of Henry VIII. with regard to the impossibility of the Lutheran heresies taking root in the soil of England, the doctrines of the Reformation had silently made great progress; the partisans of the new doctrine knew Queen Catherine to be ardently and sincerely a Catholic; there was no support to be expected from her. On the other hand, Wolsey, the faithful servant of the Church of Rome, was exasperated against the emperor, the nephew of Catharine, who had failed him in the pontifical elections, and he wished to strengthen the alliance which united his master to France, by inducing him to marry Renee, the second daughter of Louis XII. The cardinal did not foresee any serious obstacles to his project from the affair of Anne Boleyn, but the divorce served his policy. Negotiations were then in progress for the marriage of the Princess Mary with the Duke of Orleans, son of the King of France, and the ambassadors of Francis I. were enabled to assure themselves personally of the truth of the rumours which attributed to the King an insane love for Anne Boleyn. He danced with her all night at the masquerade given in their honor. {198} Wolsey soon afterwards proceeded to France, magnificently escorted in his embassy, like Thomas a Becket in former times. When he came back, the alliance between the two crowns was closer than ever, and he had himself assured Louise of Savoy that she would soon see a princess of her blood seated upon [the] throne of England; but the king had spent the time during his absence in seeking in Leviticus and in St. Thomas Aquinas arguments against his marriage with Catharine, and the first news which saluted the cardinal upon his return was the announcement, made by the king, of his fixed determination to make Anne Boleyn Queen of England. Wolsey fell upon his knees; his policy and principles, such as they were, revolted at this marriage. In earlier times the Kings of England had frequently married their female subjects; but that period was gone by, and the regal dignity was too exalted to be brought so low. At the first remonstrance, the minister perceived that discussion was useless; he bowed his head, and resolved to serve his master according to his will and pleasure. He did not, however, infuse any ardour into the business: Anne Boleyn soon perceived this, and conceived thenceforth an enmity against the cardinal which was destined to bring about his ruin.

The task of examining the Treatise upon the divorce was assigned to Sir Thomas More, but the learned jurist felt the danger of such a trust, and consulted several bishops; the greater number hesitated: all referred to the Pope the decision of so great an affair. A scruple analogous to that which had so suddenly arisen in the mind of the king had preoccupied many people at the time of the marriage. The bull of the Pope had satisfied all minds, and it was thought hard to find the question resuscitated after so many years of agreement. It was absolutely necessary to take the matter before Clement VII.

The emperor had foreseen the blow, and had prepared to avert it. Considering the projected divorce as an insult to his family, he had been careful, before negotiating with the Pope, besieged by the imperialists in the castle of St. Angelo, to forewarn him against the intentions of the King of England, and to make mention of them in conversation. Clement VII., however, had escaped, and from his refuge at Orvieto, he awaited the approach of the French army under the orders of Lautrec. Instead of the soldiers that he expected, he was attacked by the agents of King Henry, who demanded authorization for the Cardinal Legate in England to decide the question of the divorce, with the assistance of a second legate, sent from Rome. The Pope was greatly embarrassed; the army upon which he counted was partly maintained by English gold. He signed the authorization, thus letting the weight of the decision fall again upon Wolsey. The matter of the bull of Julius II. was referred to a commission which was competent to revoke it if the dispensation had been obtained by means of false representations. Out of consideration for the Princess Mary, she was to be legitimated in case of the divorce of her mother. Such was the result of the negotiations which were prolonged, with various alternations, from the end of the year 1527 to the beginning of the year 1528.

This decision, which fully satisfied Henry VIII. greatly troubled the cardinal; he demanded that Cardinal Campeggio should be sent to him from Rome to share the dreaded responsibility which was imposed upon him; he gently suggested to the king the doubts and difficulties which several bishops had expressed to him. The king flew into a passion, forgetting in his fury the long services of his minister. Wolsey tremblingly yielded, and caused the Pope to be implored to sign the decretal bull which was to approve his decision by anticipation. The Pope signed, at the same time charging Cardinal Campeggio to keep the bull secret and to produce it only in case of absolute necessity.

An epidemic, known as the sweating sickness, which caused the death of many persons, and even placed Anne Boleyn in danger, arrested, for a while, the progress of affairs; terrified by this visitation, the king became reconciled with Queen Catherine, zealously resumed all the practices of religion, and appeared to forget Anne Boleyn, who was in the country, suffering from illness. But with the danger the good resolutions of Henry disappeared, and the great noblemen of the court received an order to present themselves at the levee of the favorite as at that of the queen. Cardinal Campeggio had just arrived in England, and it was expected that the legates would at once convoke the commission. But affairs in Italy once more changed aspect; the emperor was again assuming the ascendant in that country, and the Italian legate was too crafty to set the Pope at variance with a conqueror, who might perhaps shortly be imposing laws. Lautrec, who for a while had appeared victorious, was besieged by the imperialists within his camp, near Naples, where he died on the 15th of August, from grief as much as from sickness. {201} The unhappy remains of his army were compelled to capitulate, and the Pope opened up secret negotiations with the emperor. Campeggio continued to procrastinate; it was necessary to gain time at any price. For a moment the Pope had been thought to be dying, and Wolsey had appeared to be very near the height of his ambition; but Clement recovered his health, and the King of France himself was negotiating with the emperor. Henry VIII. despatched, under the great seal, the formal order to the two legates to assemble their commission, and to proceed to the inquiry into the divorce. The court met in the great Hall of the Black Friars, on the 13th of May, 1529.

The king and queen had been summoned; when his name was called, Henry replied without hesitating, "Present," Catherine, accompanied by four bishops, instructed to plead her cause, did not respond to the summons; but she arose, and, crossing the hall, threw herself at the feet of the king, imploring him in most touching terms, with affecting dignity and sweetness, to have pity on her, to remember the duties which she had rendered him, and not to inflict upon her a dishonor which she did not deserve. She rose amidst the involuntary emotion of all present, and left the hall whilst the king was protesting his attachment to her, and attributing all these persecutions to the scruples of his conscience. "It was not," he said, "my lord cardinal who had suggested the idea of the divorce, as the queen asserted; but the Bishop of Lincoln, his confessor, and several other prelates, had enjoined him to address himself to the Pope."

Catherine had refused to be present henceforth at the sittings; the inquiry therefore proceeded without her. The advocates of the king, who alone spoke, proved, or pretended to prove, all the facts which they had advanced; they, concluded by pronouncing the invalidity of the marriage. The king urged Wolsey, and Wolsey pressed Campeggio to deliver the judgment; but the affairs of the Pope had been arranged; he had concluded, on the 29th of June, an advantageous treaty with the emperor, and no longer feared the anger of the king. Again, on the 23rd of July, when the advocates of the king demanded a definitive reply, "I have not come here," said Campeggio, "to satisfy a man from fear or from hope of a reward, be he king or potentate. I am old, sick, and infirm, and every day I expect death. Of what avail would it be therefore, to me to place my soul in danger of perdition for the favour of a prince? In the doubt and difficulties which shroud this affair, wherein the defendant will not plead her cause, I defer the decision until we shall have had the advice of the Pope and other experienced persons of his council. I adjourn the tribunal until the month of October."

As he finished speaking, the Duke of Suffolk, brother-in-law of King Henry, struck his fist upon the table, exclaiming, "Never has a cardinal done any good for England." Wolsey took this reproach upon himself, and, turning towards Suffolk, he reminded him angrily of the services he had rendered him. "Without me," he said, "cardinal as I am, you would not at this hour possess a head upon your shoulders, or a tongue to insult us with. We are here only as deputies charged to examine an important matter, and we cannot proceed without the decision of our supreme chief. Be calm, my lord, remember what you owe me, and what I thought never to reveal to living man for your dishonor and my glory."

The court assembled no more; but it was soon known that, a fortnight previously, the Pope had revoked the mission of the legates, and that he had received the appeal of Queen Catherine. Campeggio was preparing to quit England, and Henry VIII. was able to control his resentment so far as to take leave of him with courtesy, even offering him presents; but at Dover, at the moment when the aged legate was about to embark, a troop of men-at-arms penetrated into his apartment, and searched all his coffers, pretending to seek a treasure belonging to Wolsey, but doubtless, in quest of the decretal bull signed by the Pope, of which the cardinal was known to be the bearer. Nothing, however, was found, and Campeggio set sail, leaving his compeer of the sacred college to bear alone the whole weight of his master's anger.

As long as Anne Boleyn had not been assured of the favour of the king, she had sought the good graces of Wolsey; but for a long time since then she had sworn to destroy him. All the great noblemen, weary of the yoke which weighed upon them, and ashamed of having been so long governed by the son of a butcher, united themselves to her who was about to become their queen, in order to precipitate the ruin of the minister. {204} The king lent ear to all the statements against Wolsey; he was above all seduced by the hope of confiscation; for the fortune of Wolsey was enormous. The court made a short journey, and the cardinal was not invited to take part in it. However, when he contrived to meet the king at Grafton, in Northamptonshire, Henry received him so affectionately, that the conspirators were greatly discouraged. The influence of the beautiful mistress Anne Boleyn, restored the position of affairs. On the morrow, Wolsey received orders to return to London; He was never again to see the face of his master.

It was the period of the opening of the courts of justice; Wolsey took his seat in the court of chancery, but none of the servants of the king hastened any longer to do honour to him; the hour of disgrace had come; and on the same day, Hales, the attorney-general, accused him of having illegally exercised in England the office of papal legate. None knew better than Wolsey the worth of the laws in the eyes of his master; they had together made and violated many, but Wolsey also knew that his ruin had been resolved upon, and all his courage disappeared under this conviction. He confessed all; the crimes that he had committed as well as those which he had not committed; he admitted all the counts of the indictment, and placed himself solely at the mercy of the king. On condition of retaining his rank and ecclesiastical property, he voluntarily deprived himself of all that he was possessed of in favour of his royal master, saying that he held all through his favour. But so much haste could not disarm his enemies; the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk ordered him to retire to his mansion at Esher, as the king counted upon installing himself in his palace of York Place (since known as Whitehall). {205} The cardinal made no resistance; but when the emissaries demanded the great seal, Wolsey drew himself up: "The great seal of England was consigned to me by my sovereign," he said, "I hold it for life in virtue of his letters patent, and I cannot deliver it up upon a simple word from your mouth." He held out notwithstanding their insults, and only resigned the great seal on the morrow, upon the order signed by the king. "I am grieved to think that your Grace is about to be taken to the Tower," said his treasurer, Sir William Gascoyne, whom he was commissioning to remit to the king an inventory of his wealth. "It is a cowardly falsehood!" cried Wolsey angrily; "I have done nothing to deserve to be arrested; it simply pleases the king's grace to take possession at once of this residence," and he embarked for Esher. The people gathered in crowds on both banks of the Thames, expecting to see the fallen minister take that "traitor's" highway, which was rarely traversed a second time; their expectations were disappointed; the boat glided along softly as far as Putney. As the cardinal was mounting his mule to proceed to Esher, one of the chamberlains of the king, Sir John Norris, presented himself before him, and consigned to him a ring which the king had sent with some words of consolation. "Take courage," added Sir John, "and we shall see you higher than ever." Wolsey dismounted, knelt in the dust at the side of the road, returned thanks to God for the return of favour which the king manifested towards him; and then rising, "I have no longer anything to give," he said, "and your news would deserve half a kingdom." {206} He offered, however, to Sir John Norris, a small golden chain accompanied by a crucifix. "Yet," he added, "if I could send to my sovereign at least a token of my gratitude—" and as he was seeking about him, his looks fell upon his jester: "Take him," he said, "for the amusement of a noble master; he is well worth a thousand pounds."

The gleam of favour from the king was destined to be transitory. He felt difficulty in separating himself completely from a friend of twenty years' standing, who had flattered, amused, served, and governed him for such a long time past; but the cabal was more powerful than past services, and Wolsey, lonely and cast down, soon fell ill. "Nothing that he had told me excited so much compassion in me as his appearance," wrote the French ambassador, who had been to see him; "his countenance has fallen away by one half. He is ready to give everything, even to the gown which he wears, provided the displeasure of the king be withdrawn from him." The fallen minister in vain besieged the monarch with the most humble epistles. No token of the royal favour came back to lighten his darkness until the moment when his life was actually in danger. Henry VIII. then relented; he sent his physician to the sick prelate, saying that he would not lose him for twenty thousand pounds, and this mark of remembrance did more than all the remedies for the cure of the cardinal. He had been condemned in the Court of King's Bench, and an indictment had been presented to the Parliament which Henry VIII. had recently convoked; but the indictment was rejected, and the king extended his protection to his old servant. {207} At the same time, he took possession of all his ecclesiastical benefices, so that Wolsey found himself deprived of everything, and in want of the necessaries of life. Henry VIII. granted his pardon, and caused some articles of furniture and a little money to be remitted to him; but orders were given to him to reside henceforth in his diocese. Slowly and regretfully, Wolsey set out for York, forsaking that court where he had passed his life, and where his heart still lingered. Having arrived at the seat of the duties which yet remained to him, he embraced them with unexpected ardour. The fallen minister appeared to comprehend the importance of his episcopal office, and to seek from God the consolations which men refused him. His clergy, delighted, became more and more attached to him, and wished to formally celebrate his enthronization. Wolsey consented, on condition that no great display should be made; but on the day fixed for the ceremony, as the cardinal was at table, it was announced that the Earl of Northumberland was coming. Wolsey rose to receive him; the earl had been brought up in the cardinal's house, and no doubt he brought good tidings from the king. Northumberland appeared agitated; he hesitated; at length, placing his hand upon the shoulder of the old man, "My lord cardinal," he said, "I arrest you on a charge of high treason." Wolsey remained dumb and motionless; when he recovered his speech it was to burst into sobs and lamentations. His enemies had discovered a correspondence which he still carried on with the Pope and the King of France; they had persuaded Henry that it tended to prevent his marriage with Anne Boleyn. The prelate was doomed this time to be lodged in the Tower.

He was, however, not destined to travel so far. The fatal blow had been struck. The population of his diocese was attached to him, and would have willingly attempted to rescue him; but the cardinal made no resistance; he followed Northumberland like a condemned man marching to his execution. On the way, he was attacked by a violent indisposition, and was compelled to stay for a fortnight at the residence of the Earl of Shrewsbury. When he resumed his journey, he was so weak that it was found necessary to support him upon his mule. He arrived in the evening at Leicester Abbey; on entering this refuge he said to the abbot, "My father, I have come to lay my bones among you." The monks carried him to his bed; he was never to rise from it again. Swoon followed upon swoon; his servants, who were passionately devoted to him, saw that he was dying; they summoned Kingston, the Lieutenant of the Tower, who was entrusted with his keeping, and whom Wolsey had asked for. "Remember me humbly to his Majesty," said the cardinal in a feeble voice; "beg him, in my name, to retrace in his recollection what has passed between him and me from the beginning, particularly with regard to Queen Catharine, and let him say himself whether I have offended him or not. He is a prince of royal heart and marvellous courage, for rather than renounce the smallest part of his will, he would risk one half of his kingdom. I have often begged him upon my knees, for three hours, to forego his resolution; but I have not been able to succeed therein. {209} And I will tell you, Master Kingston, that if I had served God as diligently as I have served my king, He would not have abandoned me in my old age; it is my just reward; I have not considered my duties towards God, but only my duty towards my prince." Shortly after these words, which were to be repeated a hundred and fifty years later by Colbert, dying in the service of Louis XIV., Cardinal Wolsey expired, on the 29th of November, 1529, in his sixtieth year, and was buried without pomp, at midnight, in the Chapel of Our Lady, in the same monastery.

Cavendish, the chamberlain of the cardinal, who had been present during his last moments, himself came to announce to the king the death of his master. Henry was at Hampton Court, a magnificent palace built by Wolsey, who had offered it to the king. He was shooting with a bow when the messenger presented himself before him: a momentary emotion appeared upon his countenance, then he added quickly, "I know that the cardinal had hidden in a certain place the sum of fifteen hundred pounds; do you know it?" The sum had been consigned to a priest, whom Cavendish indicated. The king caused the assertion to be repeated. "Hold your tongue about that," he said, "it is a matter between you and me; three keep a secret easily when two are cut off: if my cap knew what I think, I would cast it into the fire. If I hear a word of this spoken I shall know who has revealed it." The king sent the chamberlain away with some praises for his fidelity towards his old master. The conscience of the sovereign acquitted him, no doubt, of all excess of kindness towards his old servant.

Henry VIII.

Chapter XVII.

The Royal Reform.

Personal Government Of Henry VIII.
(1529 — 1547).

The fall of Wolsey was mainly due to the ascendancy of Anne Boleyn, the first victim, and the precursor of many other ruined fortunes, that were to spring from the guilty passions of Henry VIII. The new ministers that surrounded him were the great noblemen who had overthrown the cardinal; the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and Sir Thomas Boleyn, now become Viscount Rochford, and subsequently Earl of Wiltshire. Sir Thomas More had with regret accepted the onerous duties of chancellor, perhaps in the hope of serving the public welfare, perhaps through a weakness which he was to pay dearly for. All questions then resolved themselves into that of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon; all politics turned upon this pivot. The king had consulted all the universities of Europe, the theologians and lawyers; Oxford and Cambridge had taken sides, and opinions were there keenly discussed from each point of view; but the king had gained ground among the prelates; his agents were skilful and numerous. Cranmer, formerly a tutor in a wealthy family, now a chaplain to Henry VIII., had recently published a learned treatise in favour of the divorce, insisting that the word of God alone should decide the question without any appeal to the Pope, and maintaining that the Bible, interpreted by the Fathers of the Church, interdicted marriage with the widow of a brother. {211} The opinion of the two English universities in favour of the divorce was obtained. The Italian universities, Bologna, Padua, Ferrara, declared themselves for King Henry; it was a question of money. The Germans had still more fear of the Emperor than taste for English gold; they were all opposed to the divorce—the Protestant theologians were as outspoken as the Catholics. "It were better that the King of England should have two wives than be divorced from Catherine to marry another," said Luther. The Pope published, in the month of March, 1530, a brief, which formally forbade the King of England to conclude a second marriage, under pain of excommunication. A few days later, the Earl of Wiltshire presented himself at Bologna, where the Pope and the Emperor were at that time; people were shocked to see the father of Anne Boleyn employed in this mission. "Let your colleagues speak, my lord," said Charles V. to him, "for you are a party to this matter." The assurance of the earl, and his offers of money, completed the exasperation of the Emperor. "I will not sell the honour of my good aunt Catherine!" he exclaimed angrily. The embassy retired without having obtained anything, and the Earl of Wiltshire was compelled to confine his intrigues to the French universities, from which he contrived to secure several favourable opinions. But of what use were all the decisions of the faculties when the Pope refused his assent?

This assent was of supreme importance, for the time had come when the bonds which held the crown of England to Rome were about to be broken abruptly for bad and shameful reasons, but not without a certain assent from the mass of the people. {212} None among the prelates who surrounded the king had dared to advise him to brave the will of the Pope; Cranmer himself, who had secretly married the daughter of a German pastor, was too timid to break his lance in the face of the court of Rome; it was a servant of Wolsey, who had become a servant of the king, Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith at Putney, a man as bold as he was corrupt and skilful, who struck the great blow and opened up to Henry VIII. the path in which he was henceforth to walk. The king was troubled by the obstinate resistance of the Pope; he had hoped to obtain the divorce without great difficulty; he hesitated, and a rumour of the disgrace of Anne Boleyn was already circulated among the courtiers, when Cromwell approached his royal master. "The embarrassments of your Grace arise from the timidity of your ministers," he said; and he explained that with the favourable opinions of all the universities, and the assent of the English Parliament, which it was not difficult, to procure, it was easy to proceed without troubling the Pope. "The king could even," he added, "follow the example of the German princes, who had shaken off the yoke of the court of Rome, and declare himself purely and simply the head of the Church of England. The clergy thus depending solely upon the king, he would become the absolute master of his kingdom, instead of being only half king."

This bold conception was designed to please King Henry VIII.; his vanity, his taste for power, and his avidity alike found satisfaction in it. Neither his conscience (such as it was), nor his convictions ever belonged to the new faith. Internally and by doctrine he remained a Catholic, but his policy and interest, like his passion impelled him in another direction; he accomplished in his country a religious reform—governmental as well as liberal, aristocratic and popular—the effects of which were immense and profoundly advantageous to England; but he accomplished all this without religious faith and without general principles, for the sake of his personal desires and with selfish aim. It was to God, through the hands of Henry VIII., that England owed this great step in her history; she has no obligation to be grateful to the despotic and corrupt monarch who severed his connexion with Rome in order to repudiate his wife and to dispose of the ecclesiastical benefices at his pleasure.

The door, however, had been opened, and Parliament, being at once convoked, received a communication detailing all the proceedings of the king for the purpose of surrounding himself with learned authorities upon the question of the legitimacy of his marriage. At the same time the clergy were assembled. Very uneasy at a royal act which involved them all in a common disgrace as guilty of having seconded and supported Cardinal Wolsey, by admitting his authority as legate—an authority which had been confirmed by Henry himself—the prelates, accustomed to the demands of the king, immediately offered a hundred thousand pounds sterling in order to appease his anger. Henry VIII. accepted the offering, but announced that he would grant the pardon only on condition of a vote of the ecclesiastical convention which should recognize him as "the protector and supreme head of the Church and the clergy of England." {214} Three days were occupied in discussion; the opposition was powerful and numerous, but timidity gained the ascendant; there was a disposition to admit the supremacy of the king, with this reservation: Quantum per legem Christi liceat (as much as it is permitted by the law of Christ).

"I will have neither tantum nor quantam," replied the king, when Cromwell came to tell him how matters stood; "return to them, and let the vote be given without quantums or tantums." The reservation was, however, maintained, and the king consoled himself with his hundred thousand pounds sterling, augmented by a small gift of the clergy of the north.

After the prorogation of Parliament Henry VIII. endeavoured to intimidate Catherine, and to compel her to accept the decision of four prelates and four lay peers. She steadily refused; being transferred from Greenwich to Windsor, and from Windsor to Hertfordshire, she was at length sent to Ampthill, where she fixed her residence. "To whatever place I may be made to go, I remain the legitimate wife of the king," she said. In the main the nation was of her opinion, and no one was more convinced of it than the chancellor. Sir Thomas More; weary of serving as an instrument of a policy of which he disapproved, but which he could not modify, he asked permission to retire, and on the 16th of May, 1532, he returned peaceably to his mansion at Chelsea, delivered of a burden which had weighed him down, and free to devote himself to the learned studies which constituted the charm of his life.

The Pope had made some overtures of reconciliation; but as the first condition was the dismissal of Lady Anne, and the recall of queen Catherine, they necessarily remained without result. The brief which excommunicated at the same time the king and Anne Boleyn, was signed on the 15th of November, but without being immediately promulgated, Henry VIII. had drawn closer his alliance with Francis I. during an interview which they had at Calais, and the King of France had undertaken to intercede with the Pope for his ally; but Anne Boleyn had not waited so long to seal her victory. On the 25th of January, 1533, one of the chaplains of the king, Dr. Lee, was summoned to celebrate mass in a small chamber in Whitehall Palace; there he found the king, Anne Boleyn, two noblemen, and a lady. Henry commanded the astonished prelate to celebrate his marriage. It is related that the chaplain hesitated; but the king asserted that he had in his closet the authorization of the Pope. The ceremony being completed, the party dispersed in silence; the court of France alone was informed of the marriage, which Henry promised to keep secret until the month of May, in order to give time to Francis I. to use his influence with the Pope.

Meanwhile the Parliament, under the influence of Cromwell, had suppressed the "annats" or first-fruits, a considerable portion of the revenues paid to the Pope in Catholic countries; the authority of the clergy in convocation had been abolished and conferred upon the crown; Cranmer, with strange inconsistency, had recently accepted the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, not only of the king, but of the Pope, who had signed, on the 22nd of February, 1533, the bull which confirmed his election, and had sent him the pallium. {216} The prelate had therefore made an oath of obedience to the pontiff which he counted upon violating, since he had been raised to this dignity with another object. The question of the divorce immediately took another flight; Parliament being assembled, voted the "Statute of Appeals," forbidding all recourse and appeal to Rome. At the same time, and by another act, the title of Queen of England was withdrawn from Catherine, who henceforth was to be called the Dowager Princess of Wales, in the character of widow of Prince Arthur. A court of the bishops was convoked on the 8th of May, at Dunstable, near Ampthill, where Catherine resided; she was called upon to appear there; but it was carefully concealed from her that the judgement was to be definitive. The queen did not appear, and was declared contumacious; during a fortnight the summons was repeated, then, on the 23rd of May, Cranmer solemnly declared the nullity of the marriage. On the 28th of May, he proclaimed the union already contracted between King Henry VIII. and the Lady Anne Boleyn, who was crowned at Westminster, with great pomp, on the 1st of June. The task was accomplished and the king had secured his wishes; he had worked unceasingly for this object during six years past.

The consequences were not long in manifesting themselves; on the 11th of June, the Pope annulled the sentence of Cranmer, and published the excommunication of Henry and Anne, not without contriving another possibility of reconciliation; the decree was only to be definitive in the month of September; in the interval an interview was being prepared between Clement VII. and Francis I. at Marseilles. But the conduct of Henry VIII. was hesitating and inconsistent; the English ambassadors admitted to the conference at Marseilles, had no power to negotiate. Francis I. demanded that the question of the divorce should be again laid before a consistory, from which the Imperialist cardinals should be excluded; but an emissary of the king of England, Bonner, who arrived on the day upon which the term fixed by Clement expired, solemnly appealed from the Pope to a general council. The negotiations were interrupted, and the interview had no other result than the fatal treaty of marriage between the Duke of Orleans, the son of the King of France, and Catherine of Medicis, the niece of the Pope. Being renewed for a moment at the instance of Francis I., but by a new turn of the wishes of King Henry, the relations were definitively broken off on the 23rd of May, 1534, by the solemn declaration of the Sacred College assembled in consistory, loudly affirming the validity of the marriage of Henry VIII. with Catherine of Aragon. The king was requested to recall to his court his legitimate wife. The daughter of Anne Boleyn, she who was one day to be Queen Elizabeth, was already six months old; she had been born on the 7th of September, to the great disappointment of her father, who upon the prophecies of all the astrologers had hoped for a son.

While the Pope was hurling from the Vatican his spiritual thunders, and before the news could have arrived in London, Parliament had completed the severing of the bonds which for so long a time had connected England with the court of Rome. All payments as well as all appeals to the Pope were interdicted; the king was recognized as the Supreme Head of the Church, he alone being entrusted to bestow the bishoprics or to decide ecclesiastical questions. The royal assent was given on the 30th of March to these acts, as well as to that which excluded from the succession to the throne, the Princess Mary, the daughter of Catharine of Aragon, as illegitimate, in favour of the children of Queen Anne. All the subjects of the crown of the age of discretion were to take the oath in favour of the new order of things; every word, deed, or pamphlet against the second marriage was placed among acts of high treason.

All these precautions and prohibitions did not prevent public opinion from being favourable to the repudiated wife. Two monks of the order of the Observants even dared to reprimand the king publicly; the popular movement encouraged the revelations of a young prophetess, Elizabeth Barton, who was called the "Holy maid of Kent," and who had hitherto predicted future events without danger to her person or her friends. She had numerous partisans, dupes or intriguers, and her rhapsodies soon bore upon State matters. She had been much opposed to the divorce, declaring that if the king should repudiate Catharine, he would die within seven months a shameful death, and would be replaced upon the throne by the Princess Mary. The prophecies were printed and published; Elizabeth Barton and a certain number of her partisans were arrested and compelled to confess their imposture, on a Sunday in November, 1533, at St. Paul's Cross. {219} Since then they had remained in prison: but on the 25th of April, 1534, by order of Parliament, the holy maid of Kent, her confessor, and five other persons compromised in her cause, were executed and quartered at Tyburn. "I was but a poor woman without knowledge," said Elizabeth Barton while proceeding to execution, "but people persuaded me that I spoke through the Holy Ghost, which drew me into vanity and confusion of mind, for my ruin and that of the persons who are going to suffer with me."

These obscure victims did not suffice for the absolute power and despotic tyranny of Henry VIII. Everything had bent before his will, and the isolated opposition which he encountered in two illustrious persons astonished as much as it exasperated him. Sir Thomas More, formerly chancellor of England, and Fisher, bishop of Rochester, were called upon to take the oath of allegiance to the children born and to be born of Queen Anne. Neither had any objection to the political part of the oath; they willingly recognized the Princess Elizabeth as heiress to the the throne, to the exclusion of Mary; but neither one nor the other could consent to declare unlawful the marriage of Catharine of Aragon, nor to legitimatize that of Anne Boleyn. Both refused the oath, explaining their reasons with more or less tact and humility, and both were sent to the Tower. Fisher was seventy-five years of age; he was ill; he was denied medical assistance and clothing. Sir Thomas More was not alone in the world like the old prelate; his daughter, mistress Margaret Roper, ministered to his wants, while all classes of society, rich or poor, humble or great, frightened at the fate which awaited the two prisoners, unhesitatingly made the required oath, as modified by the king, and rendered more than ever adverse to the previous instructions of the clergy. {220} At the same time, and as though for compensation, Henry VIII. caused the trial of "those people who are vulgarly called heretics," sending to the stake with indifference the Lollards, Lutherans, and Anabaptists, melancholy witnesses of the royal orthodoxy. Some monks who had refused to take the oath of supremacy were executed and quartered at Tyburn. Acts of Parliament succeeded each other, tending to make the king a kind of lay Pope, whose office it was to define and prosecute heresies, and assigning to the crown all the revenues formally collected by the court of Rome, while entrusting to the royal wisdom the care of foundling and supporting the ecclesiastical government which should seem suitable to him. Amidst the general adulation, Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher were shortly to suffer for their courageous resistance.

The old prelate was accused of having "maliciously and treasonably affirmed that in spiritual matters the king could not be the Head of the Church." The new Pope, Paul III., had recently sent him a cardinal's hat. "Ah!" cried Henry, angrily, "I will take care that he shall not have a head to wear it," and the bishop, being condemned as a traitor, was beheaded on the 22nd of June, 1535. His head was placed upon London Bridge, turned in the direction of the diocese where he left so many to regret his loss, and his body, being first exposed to the sight of the people, was thrown without a coffin into an obscure grave. {221} The trial of Sir Thomas More, more prolonged, produced the same result. Often timid, sometimes inconsistent in his conduct, More had arrived at a point at which a man of honour, and a Christian no longer listens to aught but to the voice of his conscience. The long months of his captivity had ruined his health, whitened his hair, and bent his form; but his soul remained firm, and his eloquence before the servile tribunal appointed to try him still caused the docile instrument of the king to shudder. More had been deprived of all his books; the means of writing had been taken from him; his farewell to his daughter was traced with a piece of charcoal upon a paper which he had secretly procured; but before losing his pen, he had written this touching proof of gentle firmness: "I am the faithful subject of the king, and every day his interceder. I pray for his Majesty, for his, and for all the kingdom. I do no wrong, I say no wrong, I think no wrong; if that is not sufficient to preserve the life of a man, I have no wish to live. I have been dying since I came to this place; I have several times been at the point of death; and thanks be to our Lord, I did not regret it, but rather I grieved to see my suffering abate. Thus my poor body is at the mercy of the king. Might it please God that my death should do him some good!" Before the council, More replied to offers of pardon by the assurance that he had done nothing against the marriage with Anne Boleyn. Although he disapproved of the step he had never spoken of it but to the king himself; he had even contented himself with preserving silence upon the new title of the king as Supreme Head of the Church; now silence did not constitute treason. {222} His accusers desired to produce witnesses to the contrary, but they failed in their undertaking, and the judges were compelled to declare silence to be treason. More, was condemned. He no longer persevered in silence, and loudly declared that the new oath of supremacy was unlawful. He was led from the hall with the edge of the axe turned towards him; his son threw himself in his path, to ask for his blessing. On approaching the Tower, he perceived his well-beloved daughter, Margaret Roper; she opened up a passage for herself between the guards, and threw herself upon his neck, weeping. Twice she retraced her steps, and could not possibly be driven from that loved father whose head she afterwards carried away from the coffin. The bitterness of death had passed for Sir Thomas More after this separation; upon the scaffold he appeared to have regained something of that caustic gaiety which had formerly placed him in favour with the king. When he learnt that Henry VIII., had commuted the horrible sentence of traitors into the penalty of decapitation, he smiled sweetly. "May God preserve all my friends from royal favours," he exclaimed. He tottered upon the steps of the scaffold. "Assist me to ascend, Master Lieutenant," he said, "I shall easily descend without aid." He was not permitted to speak to those present. "I die a faithful subject and a true Catholic," he said simply; then thrusting aside his beard, he said to the executioner, "My beard has not committed any treason." His head fell on the 6th of July, 1535, to the indignation of all Europe. {223} "I learn that your master has put to death his faithful servant, his good and wise councillor, Sir Thomas More," said the emperor to Sir Thomas Elliot, the English ambassador. "I have not heard it, sire," replied Elliot. "It is true, nevertheless," replied Charles V., "and let me tell you that if we had been master of such a servant, of whose merit we have had experience for so many years past, we would rather have lost our best city than so worthy a councillor."

The King of France was both grieved and shocked. The pens of the greatest writers of the time celebrated the virtues of More; Erasmus with whom he had been connected, has related the life and death of his friend; but no one has more eloquently celebrated the virtues of the former chancellor of England, no one has better exposed to public contempt the cruelty of his persecutor than a relative of Henry VIII. himself, Reginald Pole, grandson of the Duke of Clarence, educated partly at the expense of the crown, so much had the king been charmed by the intelligence and talents of his cousin. But Pole had a conscience as intractable as that of Sir Thomas More; he refused to support the cause of the divorce, and thus voluntarily renounced the ecclesiastical dignities which the king intended for him. He had retired into the north of Italy, and it was from there that he made all Europe familiar with the infamy of the murder of Sir Thomas More, while at the same time he published his great work upon The Union of the Church, in which he freely unveiled the base conduct and ignoble motives of Henry VIII. No attack more profoundly exasperated the tyrant, henceforth carried away by the dangerous intoxication of absolute power.

Indignation was nowhere more violent than at Rome, and the councillors of the Pope urged him to issue a bull summoning Henry VIII. to appear at Rome within ninety days, in person or by deputies. If he should fail to respond to this appeal, he was declared to have forfeited his crown; his children by Anne Boleyn, and the children of his children, were incapable of succeeding; his subjects were relieved of their oaths of allegiance, and were to take arms against him; all priests were to quit his dominions: treaties of alliance with foreign princes were dissolved, and all monarchs called upon to fight against him, until he should have submitted to the Church. The bull being drawn up, the Pope did not consider the time opportune for sending it forth, and the thunderbolt still slept in the arsenal of the Vatican; but its terms were known in England, which increased the exasperation of the king. Henry VIII. opened up negotiations with the Protestant princes of Germany, endeavouring to draw the King of France and the young King of Scotland into the same alliances. The functions of Supreme Head of the Church involved Henry VIII., in so much business, that he created a commission specially entrusted to provide for it; at the head of this new council he placed the secretary of state, Cromwell, to the secret indignation of the clergy, who were little accustomed to see themselves governed by a layman; but the Vicar-General, as he called himself, taking, in this capacity, precedence of all the great noblemen of the kingdom, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, did not falter in the accomplishment of his duties, for the day had come for executing his promises and for filling the coffers of the king. {225} No one knew better than Cromwell the needs of the royal treasury, for he was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as Vicar-General in the Church. A great number of monks had refused the oath of supremacy; this opportunity was seized upon in order to decide upon the reform of all the monasteries. Complaints were made of the morals of the monks, of their avidity; Cromwell organized a series of domiciliary visits, intended, it was said, to discover all abuses; servants, neighbours, and enemies of the religious houses were interrogated; an absolute renunciation of the authority of the Pope was demanded of the monks; finally, an inventory of the riches of each house was made, and the commissaries retired, carrying on their tablets the condemnation of the monastery. Many abbots and priors, in alarm, offered considerable sums in the hope of purchasing exemption from ruin; the money was taken, but the names were not effaced from the fatal list. The vicar-general had expected to see many monks anxious to re-enter the world, but seven small monasteries alone voluntarily opened their gates. The report prepared by Parliament especially condemned the houses of little importance, and those of which the abbots did not take rank among the peers of the kingdom; it was there, it was said, that the disorder was intolerable. The twenty-seven abbots of the great religious houses, did not defend their brothers who were threatened. All seemed smitten with stupor; some superiors prudently resigned before the crash; the royal commissioners continued their work, and when Parliament voted the bill proposed by Cromwell, three hundred and eighty religious houses found themselves included in the act which gave to the king and his descendants all the monasteries of which the net revenue did not exceed two-hundred pounds sterling, to dispose of them according to his good pleasure, upon the one condition, that those he should endow, should maintain an honest residence there, and cultivate every year the extent of land tilled by the monks. {226} A revenue of thirty-two thousand pounds sterling was thus assigned to the crown; the money and plate of the suppressed monasteries were valued at more than a hundred thousand pounds sterling. After this last proof of submission, Parliament, which had modified the succession to the throne, voted the separation of England from the Holy See, and doubled the prerogatives, found itself dissolved at the end of six years of servile existence, without having even secured the good graces of the king, for the House of Commons had hesitated for some time to pronounce the suppression of the monasteries. It is related that the king sent for the principal leaders, warning them that he would have either the law or their heads; the bill was then voted. Commissioners were entrusted to proceed with the suppression of the monasteries; a hundred obtained compromises, and, crippled and impoverished, were founded afresh by letters patent of Henry VIII.; the others were invaded by the royal commissioners; monks under twenty-four years of age were sent into the world to earn their livelihood: the others were divided into two classes; those who elected for a monastic existence were dispersed in the great monasteries; it was promised that occupation should be found for the others. {227} The nuns were abandoned to their own resources; the royal charity allowed only a secular gown when they were driven from their retreats and cast into a world of which they were ignorant. The first act of the drama had been played; the turn of the great houses had yet to come.

While this violent and arbitrary work was being accomplished, under a specious veil of reform, Queen Catherine was dying in her retirement. She had obstinately refused to leave England, notwithstanding the entreaties of the emperor; she would do nothing which would be prejudicial to the interests of her daughter, whose rehabilitation she still hoped for. She had also refused, for the same reason, to accept the title of Princess of Wales, which degraded her as a woman. She lived a sad and lonely life, separated from her daughter, who might, it was said, become imbued with her principles. Even the approach of death could not obtain for her the favour of seeing her again. The last words of the unhappy queen were, however, words of forgiveness to that cruel husband who had afflicted her with so many evils. "I forgive you all," she said, "and I ask God to do likewise; I recommend our daughter Mary to you, begging you to be a good father to her, as I have always desired. I vow to you that my eyes long for you beyond all things." It is said that the king shed a tear upon this touching message, and that he entrusted the Spanish ambassador to assure the dying queen of his affection; but Catherine had already breathed her last. She died on the 8th of January, 1536, and was interred with honour, at Peterborough. {228} Her husband went into mourning, but Anne Boleyn appeared before the court in a yellow silk gown. "Now I am queen," she said on learning the death of her whom she had outraged and overcome.

The day of retribution, however, was approaching; the same passions which had raised her to the throne in defiance of all laws, human and divine, were about to hurl her from it. Henry had already cast his eyes upon Jane Seymour, a maid of honour of Anne Boleyn, as Anne had formerly been the maid of honour of Catherine. She was the daughter of a Wiltshire gentleman; was beautiful, amiable, and of great gentleness of character. It is related that the queen perceived the great familiarity which already existed between Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour and the grief which she experienced therefrom was so violent that she brought into the world, prematurely, a still-born child; it was a son, and the vexation of the king was no less violent than his disappointment. Anne now felt that she was ruined; the king left her suddenly amidst a grand fete which she gave in Greenwich Park, and returned to London. On the morrow, the 2nd of May, she was arrested at Greenwich as she was sailing down the river; she was accused of adultery and immediately taken to the Tower. At the first word of accusation against her Anne fell upon her knees, exclaiming aloud, "Lord, my God, help me, as I am innocent of this crime!" Her brother. Lord Rochford, three noblemen of the king's household and a musician were imprisoned at the same time.

Grief and anxiety appeared to have impaired the reason of the unhappy Anne; at times she would appeal for Divine mercy, at others, amidst outbursts of laughter, mingled with tears, she would exclaim, "Why am I here? My mother will die of grief; I shall perish without obtaining justice." The Lieutenant of the Tower assured her that justice was administered to the poorest of the subjects of the king; Anne laughed bitterly; she knew better than any one else what royal justice was worth.

She had been conducted to the same apartment in which she had formerly slept on the eve of her coronation, when the king and his courtiers were equally eager to do her honour; women had been placed around her, charged to listen to all her words; being excited by the misfortune which had befallen her, Anne spoke a great deal; all that she said was reported to the king, and that contributed to her ruin. She was accused of the most degrading corruption of morals and conduct; in vain did she defend herself; the lightness of her manners, the familiar tone which she had learnt, it was said, at the court of France, attested against her more than all the depositions and interrogatories of the trial. On the 6th of May, she wrote a touching letter to the king, the authenticity of which has been contested, perhaps without reason, reminding him of the affection which he had manifested towards her, protesting her innocence, and demanding a lawful trial.

"But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death but an infamous slander must bring you the joying of your desired happiness, then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin herein, and likewise my enemies the instruments thereof; and that He will not call you to a straight account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me at His general judgment-seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear, and in whose judgment, I doubt not (whatsoever the world may think of me), mine innocence shall be openly known and sufficiently cleared. {230} My last and only request shall be that myself may only bear the burden of your grace's displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen who, as I understand, are likewise in straight imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found favour in your sight—if ever the name of Anne Bullen have been pleasing in your ears—then let me obtain this request; and so I will leave to trouble your grace any further, with mine earnest prayer to the Trinity to have your Grace in His good keeping and to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the Tower, your loyal and faithful wife,

"Ann Bulen."

In vain did Anne demand justice for herself and mercy for her companions in misfortune; she had been condemned beforehand, and her dishonour was the price of her condemnation. Within four months Henry had received the forgiveness of his two wives; one the irreproachable victim of his guilty passions; the other, who had been his accomplice, and who was suffering for her crime the most terrible reverses. The documents of the proceedings are no longer in existence, and it is now impossible to determine the question of the guilt of the unhappy Anne; she was condemned and died because the king her husband desired to marry Jane Seymour; that is what appears clearly from the facts transmitted to us by history. {231} On the 15th of May, the sentence upon the queen was pronounced; her brother, Lord Rochford, and the four other accused persons, had been condemned since the 13th of May. A crowning affliction awaited Anne Boleyn before her supreme agony: Cranmer was compelled to declare the nullity of the marriage which he himself had formerly supported, and the Princess Elizabeth was stigmatized with illegitimacy like her sister Mary. The day on which the archbishop in agony of soul thus yielded tremblingly to the royal will, the accomplices or companions of the unhappy queen suffered their punishment on Tower Hill. The musician Smeaton was hanged; Lord Rochford and the three noblemen were beheaded; all had constantly protested their innocence, with the exception of the musician, who failed however to purchase his life by his confessions or falsehoods.

On the 19th of May, in the morning, less than three weeks after the day on which she had reigned triumphant over the festivities at Greenwich, Anne Boleyn was led out upon the Tower Green. The spectators were crowded together in the narrow space. Anne had, on the previous evening, entrusted one of the women among her attendants to go on her behalf and kneel before the Princess Mary, to beg her forgiveness. She walked courageously to her death. "I have a little neck," she said to the Lieutenant of the Tower; "it is said that the executioner is skillful; he will not have much trouble." She said a few words to those who came to see her die, without bitterness towards her judges, and full of affection and respect for the king who sent her to the scaffold. {232} "Christ have mercy on my soul! Jesus receive my soul!" she repeated on placing her beautiful head up on the block. Three years had elapsed since Henry had married Anne Boleyn, moving heaven and earth to place her upon the throne, when a blow from the axe of the executioner ended her life on Tower Green. The king waited impatiently for the signal which was to announce to him the execution of the sentence. "It is done," he exclaimed, on hearing the cannon; "that is an end of the matter. Unleash the dogs, and let us follow the stag!" He returned gaily in the evening from Epping Forest, and on the morrow morning married Jane Seymour. He had not rendered to the unhappy Anne the honour which his conscience had compelled him to pay to the virtuous Catherine: no mourning garments saddened the court of the new queen. Henry VIII. was clad in white on the day of his marriage, and on the 29th of May, Jane appeared at the court decked with the royal ornaments, but she did not obtain the favour of solemnly receiving the crown; after Anne Boleyn, none of the wives of King Henry was deemed worthy of that ceremony. The Princess Mary had been received into favour by her father, not without having reluctantly signed a humiliating letter; she obtained a suitable establishment, and even appears to have been entrusted with the care of her sister, the little Princess Elizabeth. Not content with assuring the succession to the children of Jane Seymour, the king caused an act to be passed by Parliament which authorized him to dispose of his crown according to his own good will and pleasure. This exorbitant measure was destined to favour the Duke of Richmond, an illegitimate son of the king, eighteen years of age, whom he passionately loved. {233} The young duke died before the act had received the royal sanction, and the king to his great grief, found himself deprived of male children, and with two daughters whom he had himself branded with the stigma of illegitimacy.

Meanwhile the dissolution of the monasteries had inundated the country with the poor people whom they had formerly relieved; the disaffection was great, especially in the northern counties, which were particularly attached to the old faith, from which the king was separating himself more and more. The irritation, however, was not exclusively concentrated in the lower classes; the great noblemen and gentlemen, former patrons of the monasteries, considered that the property of which they had been deprived should be returned to the families which had formerly bestowed it upon them, rather, than to the royal treasury; but it was the people of Lincolnshire who first set the example of insurrection. The king sent some forces against the insurgents, under the orders of the Duke of Suffolk. The latter found the insurrection so serious, that he determined to try negotiations. The Men of Lincoln presented six requests, complaining particularly of the sudden destruction of the monasteries, so prejudicial, they said, to the poor of the entire country; of the excessive taxes, of the vesting of the annats and tithes in the crown, and of the agitation which certain bishops, designated by their names, had brought about in the Church of Christ by altering the faith. Upon which they prayed the king to dismiss the treacherous counsellors who thought of nothing but enriching themselves at the expense of the poor people.

Time had been gained by listening to the grievances of the insurgents. Discord began to penetrate into their ranks; the king was enabled, without danger, to reply to them with the haughtiness which was natural to him when his supreme will was opposed. He rejected all the requests of the insurgents, demanding that a hundred of the more important among them should be delivered to him, in order that he might make an example of them. No fighting had taken place; a sufficiently large number of the insurgents still remained united; a second letter from the king commanded them to lay down their arms in the market-place at Lincoln, if they did not wish to bring down a terrible vengeance upon their wives and children. Before the rebels of Lincolnshire had returned home, about the 30th of October, a violent insurrection had broken out on the other side of the Trent, and this movement was spreading over the whole of Yorkshire, as well as in Durham, Northumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire; while the fifteen hostages of the insurgents of Lincolnshire were being executed, as well as some inhabitants of the environs of London, accused of having countenanced them, the rebels of the north wanted but a chief in order to stir up a veritable civil war. They marched in the name of God, they said, for the love of Jesus Christ, of the faith and the Holy Church, to the destruction of the heretics; they assumed the name of Pilgrims of Grace, and carried a crucifix upon their standard; nearly all obeyed the orders of a gentleman of Yorkshire, Robert Aske, who was wanting neither in ability nor character. {235} The Duke of Norfolk was entrusted to march against him; the Duke of Suffolk and the Earl of Shrewsbury watched over other positions; the towns of Hull, York, and Pontefract had opened their gates to the Pilgrims of Grace before the arrival of the royal troops, and a certain number of gentlemen had joined them, when the Duke of Norfolk checked their progress before Doncaster. Negotiations were entered into at the outset as in Lincolnshire; the demands of the insurgents were almost the same, though more precise and detailed. They demanded the destruction of the heresies of Wycliffe, Huss, Luther and Melancthon, the restitution of the Pope to the religious supremacy, the rehabilitation of the Princess Mary, and the re-establishment of Parliament in all its ancient privileges. The king treated with contempt such of these requests as he deigned to answer. "You are very bold," he said, "to think that after having reigned so long I do not know better than you what laws are agreeable to the commoners. The affairs of the Church do not concern you, and it is strange that you should prefer to see some few villains fatten in the monasteries, rather than allow your prince to have them, in discharge of all the expenses which he has undertaken in order to defend you." Henry promised no other concession but the pardon of the rebels, with the exception of the ten leaders, who were to be delivered up to him immediately. The insurgents rejected without hesitation the offers of the royal clemency, and the Duke of Norfolk, who was not sufficiently powerful to fight, found himself compelled to retreat to the southern bank of the Trent, fortifying and defending all the passes in his rear. Time was being lost; the winter was approaching, the temperature and the suspension of agricultural labour were counted upon for dispersing the insurgents.

At length the king authorized the Duke of Norfolk to make overtures to the two principal chiefs of the rebels, Lord Darcy and Robert Aske; he even expressed a desire to see them. They did not respond to this gracious invitation, but the idea of betraying their partisans began to enter their minds. The soldiers perceived this; everywhere this proclamation was seen: "Commons, be of good cheer and remain faithful to your cause; the gentlemen betray you, but you will not want leaders, if there is need of them." In the month of February the numbers assembled were still very great, but the royal army had received reinforcements, the insurgent forces collapsed before the castles and towns which they were besieging; discouragement began to creep into their ranks. Lord Darcy, Robert Aske, and the greater number of the leaders were captured and sent to London, where they were executed, notwithstanding the good disposition they had manifested. The rebels now formed only scattered bodies, and martial law was proclaimed in the northern counties. Upon the express order of the king, a great number of the inhabitants of each town, borough, and village that had taken part in the revolt were hanged or quartered, in the public squares, and their bodies affixed to trees, in order to terrify the remainder of the population. The monks, who had ardently embraced the cause of the insurrection, were treated with especial rigour; the insurgent counties were everywhere strewn with bloody heads and disfigured corpses. {237} When the amnesty was at length proclaimed and peace re-established, visitations of the religious houses still continued; nearly all the monasteries of the north were destined to be closed, and to have their property confiscated, before the royal vengeance and avidity could be satisfied. The anger of Henry had increased when he had learnt that Reginald Pole, installed a short time since in Rome upon the urgent solicitations of Pope Paul III., and against the advice of his relatives in England, had been nominated cardinal and legate beyond the Alps. The aim of the Pope was, no doubt, to take advantage of the insurrection of the Catholic counties in order to influence the king and bring him back into the bosom of the Church; but Francis I. and Charles V. deemed the moment ill-chosen; the cardinal was unable to see the king of France while crossing his kingdom, and the Emperor did not even allow him to enter his dominions. Pole learnt at the same time that a price had been placed upon his head by Henry; Cromwell asserted that the cardinal would be brought thereby to break his heart with grief. Pending this happy result, for the bringing about of which the master and the minister were not to spare their efforts, the legate was compelled to return to Rome, without having been able to accomplish his mission of sending money and encouragement to the rebels of England; the insurrection had been stifled before Pole had set foot in Flanders.

Jane Seymour had, on the 12th of October, 1537, given birth to a son, and had died shortly afterwards thus escaping the sad fate of the wives of Henry VIII. Grief for his loss had scarcely weighed in the scale against satisfaction at the birth of a male heir to the throne; the little Edward immediately received the title of Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester; the national rejoicing was mingled with the lamentations of the monks on all sides, driven from their refuges under the pretext of complicity in the recent insurrection. When nothing remained but the great abbeys, the king caused their destruction to be voted by the Parliament, notwithstanding some feeble efforts of the abbots who sat in the House of Lords. A few only escaped the wreck, at the entreaty of the population, or were consigned to the descendants of their founders. The work of spoliation was accomplished; the rich chapels, the gothic monuments, the learned libraries, the delicate sculptures, everything was delivered up to the destructive hands of the royal agents; none dared to intervene, and treasures of science, marvels of art, were for ever lost to posterity. The lands were divided among the courtiers; the valuables were nearly all reserved for the king, who contrived to remain poor notwithstanding so great an accession of riches. He was not content with plundering the living, he even went so far as to plunder the dead. From a singular animosity against the memory of Thomas Becket—of that inflexible man who would have resisted him to the death, as he had resisted Henry II.—Henry VIII. had conceived a violent dislike to his shrine at Canterbury; but he did not rest here. Becket was summoned to appear at Westminster to answer for his rebellions, and the tomb of the martyr was broken for this purpose, as though to open the prison which confined him. {239} In presence of the silent sepulchre, the king carried on his ghastly comedy; the attorney-general spoke against the dead saint, to whom an advocate had been granted. Becket, being judged by default, was deprived of his riches and honours; two large coffers, filled with jewels deposited upon his altar, were sent to London; festivals and pilgrimages celebrated in his honour were solemnly forbidden, the portraits of the saint were destroyed, and a royal proclamation commanded the people to believe henceforth that Thomas Becket had been killed in a quarrel caused by his own obstinacy, that he had been canonized by the Bishop of Rome as the champion of an usurped authority, but that he was but a rebel and a traitor to his king, and that the faithful servants of his Majesty were to guard themselves against honouring him as a saint. Thomas Becket thus twice had the notable honour of bringing down all the royal fury; even in his tomb he was proclaimed defender of the liberties of the Church for whose sake he had yielded up his life.

So vast an amount of wealth diverted from the pious objects to which it had been originally consecrated troubled the conscience of Cranmer, feeble and vacillating in his conduct, but honest and sincere, notwithstanding his numerous backslidings. He endeavoured to found in his diocese some pious establishments to replace those which had been so abruptly destroyed; but the diocese was poor, he had not profited by the spoils of St. Thomas Becket, and the hospitals, the asylums for the poor and travelers, the schools for children which were formerly afforded by the convents, left a void from which the unfortunate suffered painfully. The public cry reached the king. {240} The treasures of the monasteries had melted in his prodigal hands; he addressed himself to Parliament, boldly demanding subsidies to indemnify him for the expenses which he had incurred for the Reformation. The two tenths and the two fifteenths which were granted him did not suffice for his requirements, still less for those of the new bishoprics, deaneries, and colleges which Parliament had decreed. These establishments should have been endowed with the ecclesiastical property, but there was no longer any property. Six bishoprics were founded, so poorly provided for that the prelates scarcely had sufficient to live upon. A certain number of abbeys became cathedral churches; but the king was careful before appointing the dean and chapter to confiscate a portion of the lands, so that the new dignitaries of the Church ran no risk of allowing themselves to be drawn into effeminacy by the temptations of opulence. The plain parish priests, deprived of their livings, led such a miserable existence that none would any longer enter the Church. "We have ten thousand students less in the universities than there were formerly," wrote Latimer, when asking assistance for the university of Cambridge; and it was found necessary to seek for a priest to preach from St. Paul's Cross, an honour formerly sought after by the highest dignitaries.

When the entire kingdom thus remained silent and was suffering, Henry VIII. occupied his leisure in interrogating and judging a poor schoolmaster, named John Lambert, who had adopted the views of the German reformers upon the doctrine of the real presence. All the arguments of the royal theologian, reinforced by those of the bishops whom he had called to his aid, could not shake the conviction of Lambert. {241} "Resign thy soul to God," said Henry angrily. "I resign my soul to God," said the accused man, "and my body to the mercy of your Grace." "Thou shalt die then," exclaimed the king, "for I am not the patron of heretics," and Lambert was burned alive, on the 20th of November, 1538. Henry VIII. alone had found a means of combining the twofold persecution of the Roman Catholics and the reformers; he plundered and closed the convents while he burnt the heretics. Cranmer shared in the main, the opinions of the unhappy Lambert, but he dared not protest, and contented himself with favouring the translation of the Bible into English, a task which had just been accomplished by Miles Coverdale; the price of the book was, unhappily, very high, and the circulation consequently somewhat limited.

Henry meanwhile was uneasy; the Emperor and King Francis I. had recently concluded at Nice, under the auspices of the Pope, a truce for ten years; hence the alliance of England lost the value which had often attracted the advances of the two great rivals; Paul III. again threatened to promulgate the bull so long prepared, and he sought to unite against King Henry the forces of the empire and of France. Cardinal Pole had been employed in this negotiation; it remained without result, but the distrust and jealousy of the despot had been aroused, and the fate which the family of the cardinal had so long dreaded at length overtook them. In the month of December, 1538, Lord Montacute and Sir Geoffrey Pole, brother of the cardinal, as well as the Marquis of Exeter, grandson of King Edward IV., through his daughter Catherine, were arrested and conducted to the Tower. {242} Some months later the Countess of Salisbury, mother of the cardinal, the Marchioness of Exeter, and the son of Lord Montacute were impeached in their turn. All were condemned, and all perished, with the exception of Sir Geoffrey Pole, who betrayed his kinsmen. The old countess remained for a long time in Prison, as though to experience all the horrors of her situation. When she was finally led to the scaffold, at the age of seventy-two, she refused to place her head upon the block. "No," she said; "my head has committed no treason; if you want it, come and take it." It was found necessary to seize her by force, and she resisted until the last moment.

While bathing his hands in blood. King Henry was much occupied in instructing his people in sound doctrine; he had entered seriously upon his duties as supreme head of the Church, and was carefully preparing the articles of faith which were to form the basis of the popular belief; woe to him who should not adhere to the six articles which the king sent to the convocation of the clergy. In the main, the doctrines expounded by the king were those of the Roman Catholic Church, with the exception of the supremacy of the Pope; the efforts which Cranmer made to bring about, by discussion with the German theologians, some modifications in the ideas of Henry, remained without result. {243} The emissaries of the reformed Churches in vain maintained the doctrine of communion of the two kinds, the marriage of priests, and other important points in doctrine and in practise; the king thanked them for the trouble which they had taken in coming to his kingdom; he assured them of the esteem in which he held their erudition and virtues, but he sent to the Parliament of 1539 an act recapitulating the obligatory articles of faith, entirely in conformity with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, and threatening the most severe penalties against whosoever should reject these doctrines, or should fail to conform his life thereto. The influence of Cranmer was once more defeated, and that of Bishop Gardiner, who had constantly remained faithful to the old Church, was again triumphant. The star of Cromwell was on the wane; the first instigator of the religious rivalry of Henry VIII. with the Pope, was about in his turn to succumb beneath the jealous despotism which he had contributed to raise.

The two great parties which had been formed in the Church of England after the reformation continued to share power under the king. The bishops favourable to Protestantism had for a time prevailed, when Henry alarmed by the alliance of the Catholic powers, sent a mission to Germany to the Protestant princes, and authorized the journey of the German theologians to England. The prelates attached to the Catholic Church triumphed when Gardiner was recalled from his retirement, and the king accepted his revision of the religious edict submitted to Parliament. Several of the reforming bishops had already resigned or had been deprived of their dignities, when Cromwell, still favourable to the new party, desired to furnish it with an important support by uniting the king with a Protestant queen. {244} For several months past, Henry had in vain looked for a consort among the European princesses; the Dowager Duchess of Milan replied that if she had two heads, she might have thought of that alliance, but that, having but one, she declined the honour which his Majesty wished to do her. He solicited the hand of Mary of Guise, Duchess of Longueville, but she was betrothed to his nephew, James V., king of Scotland, who had lost his first wife, Madeleine of France, a few months after their marriage. King Francis I. had refused to send to Calais the two sisters of Mary of Guise, whom Henry wished to see. Cromwell proposed the Princess Anne of Cleves, sister of the reigning duke, whose beauty, gentleness, and virtue were much extolled. Henry VIII. despatched to Germany his favourite painter, Holbein, to bring him back a portrait of the princess; it was contained in a rose of ivory admirably carved; the casket and the contents pleased the king; he asked for the hand of Anne of Cleves, to the great joy of Cromwell. The unfortunate man had never seen the princess.

She arrived in England on the 31st of December, 1539; notwithstanding his gout, and his inconvenient stoutness, the king repaired to Rochester, in order to see secretly the princess who came courageously to share with him the fatal throne. He started back in dread and anger. Anne was tall and muscular, as he had been informed, and as he wished; her features were regular, but coarse; her complexion, which was fresh, bore traces of small-pox; her figure was massive, her walk awkward, and, above all, the worthy German lady was clad in the fashion of her country, without elegance or grace. {245} The voluptuous and debilitated monarch experienced an indignation that did not permit him to show himself at first. When at length he consented to see the princess, he said but a few words to her: Anne of Cleves spoke German, the king did not know that language. He sent her a present of some furs, and returned to London to convoke his council. On perceiving Cromwell, he reproached him, in violent terms, for having married him to a great Flemish nag, uncouth and awkward, ill-fitted to inspire her love; he then commanded him to find some pretext for breaking off this odious union. Cromwell was politic, he trembled for his favour and, perhaps his life; he was compelled to remind the king that, in the situation of his affairs in Germany, it would be dangerous to displease the German princes. "There is no remedy then? I must place my head in the halter?" exclaimed Henry piteously. He yielded, and the marriage was celebrated at Greenwich on the 5th of January. But the burden of this union became every day more insupportable to the king; he was not accustomed to find himself thwarted; the objections of Cromwell to the divorce rankled in his breast. A theological quarrel of a dependent of the minister with Bishop Gardiner completed the exasperation of the king against his vicar-general; the heterodoxy of Barnes called in question the orthodoxy of Cromwell, who had employed him in the fatal negotiations for the marriage of Anne of Cleves. The king still continued his resentment. {246} Cromwell opened Parliament as usual, entrusted with the royal message, which related solely to the religious questions yet in litigation; he obtained from the Houses enormous subsidies, dispensed court favours, threatened with the royal displeasure the chiefs of the Catholic party, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Bishops of Durham, Winchester, and Bath; then, on the 10th of June, 1540, he was arrested in the very council-chamber, for high treason. Four days afterwards, he was condemned by a bill of attainder, a process which he himself contributed to establish, and on the 28th of June, he suffered his sentence as a traitor to the Head of the Church and a pestilent heretic. The king was compelled, in order to replace Cromwell, whose activity was indefatigable, to summon to his side two secretaries of State, of whom one, Wriothesley, afterwards became his chancellor.

The ill-starred marriage with Anne of Cleves and the theological errors of Barnes were not the sole causes of the ruin of Cromwell; the beautiful face of Lady Catherine Howard, niece of the Duke of Norfolk, had played a part in the overthrow of the condemned minister. Before Cromwell perished upon the scaffold, Henry VIII. had married Catherine Howard. Anne of Sleeves had at first swooned on learning the intentions of the king towards her, but recovering her senses, she had no doubt, returned thanks to God for having preserved her from the melancholy fate of the wives of Henry VIII., and had accepted without a murmur the title of "adopted sister" of the king, which was bestowed upon her by that gracious sovereign. A suitable establishment was granted to her in England, and the Duke of Suffolk, entrusted with the letters of the princess for her brother, started for Cleves, in order to explain to the duke the scruples concerning a former contract of the princess with the Duke of Lorraine, which had led the king to break off the marriage, while assuring him of the happy condition and full consent of the dethroned queen.

Anger of Henry VIII on his First View of Anne of Cleves.

By way of celebrating his fifth nuptials Henry sent to the stake Dr. Barnes, the maladroit dependent of Cromwell, in company with two or three other heretics, while certain Catholics were quartered for having refused to take the oath of supremacy. The punishment alone was different: Catholics and Protestants were dragged to Smithfield upon the same hurdle, bound together, to the common indignation of both parties. "How do folks manage to live here?" exclaimed a Frenchman, "the Papists are hanged and the Anti-Papists are burned." In the following month, the Prior of Doncaster and six of his monks were hanged for having defended monastic institutions; all crimes became equally grave in the eyes of the despot, from the moment they thwarted his supreme will.

The triumph of Catherine Howard was destined to be of short duration, and to cost her dearly. The king was much attached to her, and had taken her with him on a royal tour of inspection, during the summer of 1541, but when he returned to London, in the month of August, Cranmer revealed to him a grievous discovery, made in his absence, by his servants, with regard to the conduct of the queen before her marriage, during her sojourn with her great aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Jealous and suspicious, Henry VIII. did not demand proofs before losing all confidence in the virtue of his wife; but he wished nevertheless to have the witnesses examined, and they were all arrested and put to the torture. {248} The queen herself, it is said, confessed her transgressions, as did the man accused of complicity with her—her cousin, Francis Dereham. The guilt of Lady Catherine Howard did not suffice, however, to ruin the queen; she positively affirmed her conjugal fidelity, and the king, whose whole love appeared to have been changed to aversion, set every means to work in order to assure himself of her alleged offence towards him. The old Duchess of Norfolk, her daughter, Lady Bridgewater, and her son, Lord William Howard, were placed in the Tower charged with having favoured the bad conduct of the queen; every species of ill-treatment, every ruse, every falsehood was employed in order to extract the truth, or at least to obtain avowals capable of ruining Catherine Howard. All was in vain; "the mother and the daughter are equally stubborn," say the records of the council, and both rejected with indignation the idea of any complicity in the crimes of which the queen was accused. The two gentlemen accused, Dereham and Culpepper, were tried and condemned, and were executed at Tyburn, on the 10th of December, while the Duke of Cleves was hastening to send an ambassador to King Henry, in order to induce him to take again the Princess Anne, his sister, as his wife. The proposal was rejected by Cranmer, the emissary not even being admitted into the presence of the king; Anne of Cleves remained the good sister of his Majesty, and the trial of Catherine Howard continued, without any one protesting in favour of the unhappy woman, deprived of all means of defence, and delivered over, bound hand and foot, to her accusers. {249} Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, had abandoned her, as he had formerly done in the case of his other niece, Anne Boleyn, protesting to his Majesty "the grief occasioned to him by the abominable actions of two kinswomen towards his Grace, who might in consequence hold even himself in abhorrence." Search was being made meanwhile, in the coffers and hiding-places of all the accused persons, and his Majesty had already collected in this manner large sums, when the council condemned them all to imprisonment for life, with the confiscation of all their property, simply recommending that some consolations should be accorded to them in their captivity, and that certain of their friends should be admitted to them in the Tower. The king took care to cut short this indulgence, and on the same evening he caused a council to be assembled to forbid any modification in the treatment inflicted upon the prisoners, "for great and important reasons," added the conscientious monarch. The trial had established nothing except that the old Duchess of Norfolk and her children had been informed of the reciprocal love of Francis Dereham and Catherine before the marriage of the latter.

The severity which was employed towards her relatives should have enlightened the unhappy queen if she had been able for one moment to believe the promise of her life which the king had transmitted to her through Cranmer. Parliament on the 16th of January addressed an humble petition to the sovereign, asking permission to proceed against Lady Catherine Howard by a bill of attainder, in order to spare his Majesty the grief of hearing the crimes of his wife recapitulated. {250} Henry graciously consented to this delicate request, and on the 11th of February the queen was condemned by Parliament together with Lady Rochford, sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn, who had formerly given evidence against her husband and her sister. She was accused of having been an accomplice in the crimes of Catherine since her marriage. The queen and Lady Rochford were executed on the 13th of February, within the precincts of the Tower; Catherine protested even on the scaffold that she had always been faithful to her spouse, "whatever might have been the faults of her past life." The bill of attainder against Catherine Howard made it incumbent on any woman whom the king might admit to the honour of a union with his sacred person, to make a full confession before marriage. "The king had better marry a widow," it was said among the people. Henry appeared for the moment disgusted with marriage; he was absorbed in theology, that second passion of his life, which he treated almost as despotically as his spouses.

The death of Catherine Howard had not, as might have been expected, thrown the king back upon the party of the Reformation; in the month of April, 1542, he retracted the encouragements which he had given to the reading of the Holy Scriptures; he prohibited the use of the old version of Tyndal as heretical, while ordering that the new and authorized translation, without notes or commentary, should be used exclusively; above all, he forbade the reading of the Bible in public even by the orthodox, only permitting the use of the Holy Scriptures in families of the nobility and gentry. {251} People of the inferior class were to be liable to a month's imprisonment if they dared to open the sacred volume. At the same time the revision of the Institution of a Christian Man, formerly published by the bishops by order of the king, was completed. The new work, which appeared in 1543, differed essentially upon several points from the first one; it was entitled The necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man: the people named it the King's Book, and the king imposed it in fact as a model of faith upon his subjects, without troubling himself about the changes which his own mind had undergone since he had caused the Bishop's Book to be drawn up. The King's Book inclined more and more towards the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Like the first catechism, it insisted upon transubstantiation, oral confession, and the celibacy of the clergy; it also maintained the uselessness of communion in both kinds for the faithful, and recommended masses for the dead. The new Symbol was adopted by the two convocations of the clergy; all the books which were not in conformity with it were forbidden, and the primate, Cranmer, who saw the condemnation of his most cherished convictions, and the affirmation of the dogmas which he rejected, was charged with the duty of watching over the execution of the royal orders. Henry VIII. was accustomed to be obeyed; Cranmer had sent his wife and children away to Germany, since the celibacy of the priests had become legally obligatory.

The servile obedience which the king exacted from his subjects in England was not everywhere exacted with the same rigour; Henry VIII. had furnished proof of skill and foresight by his government of the almost independent principalities ranged under his sceptre. {252} In 1536 he had definitively annexed Wales to England, subjecting the whole territory to English laws, which hitherto had only ruled in a portion of that country. The Welsh counties had been admitted to the privilege of sending members to Parliament, as well as the Palatinate of Chester, hitherto administered according to local customs. But the most important reform which King Henry VIII. effected in this respect was the elevation of Ireland from the rank of a seigniory to that of a kingdom. From generation to generation the hereditary struggle of the Butlers under their chiefs, the Earls of Ormond and Ossory, with the Fitzgeralds, at the head of whom was the Earl of Kildare, had kept the country in a continual state of agitation; by dint of political reverses, treasons, acts of perfidy, executions, and murders, the great Irish Houses had wearied and destroyed each other, and the government had never failed to interpose to further the work. In 1541 the king, wishing to secure the attachment of the more powerful of the Irish chiefs, elevated a number of them to the honours of the peerage. The eagerness of the chiefs was extreme: the great noblemen swore fidelity to the king, undertook military service, and accepted houses at Dublin, whither they were to repair to sit as members of the Parliament of Ireland. The king had granted letters patent to them for their property, which removed their former fears of seeing the English sovereigns one day confiscate all their estates. The appropriation of the ecclesiastical property to the crown was accomplished with prudence; "Do not press them too vigorously," said the instructions of Henry VIII.; "but persuade them discreetly that the Church lands are my legitimate inheritance." {253} The Catholic fervour of the Irish had some difficulty in accepting this mode of succession, but the work proceeded, though slowly, and did not prevent the progress of English authority in Ireland from being real and important under the reign of Henry VIII.

Scotland still remained in a body attached to the old faith. King James distrusted the treacherous manœuvres of his uncle; he had sought the hereditary alliances of his House, and his marriage with Mary of Guise, and the influence which Cardinal David Beaton exercised over him, had drawn closer the bonds which united him to France, as well as to the Church of Rome. All the attempts of the King of England to bring his nephew over to his opinions, and to induce him to follow the English example by the destruction of the monasteries, had completely failed. Cardinal Beaton set out for Rome with secret instructions, a fact which troubled Henry. Hostilities broke out in the month of August, 1542; an English army crossed the frontier; they were vigorously repulsed; but the Duke of Norfolk was advancing with considerable forces; he received the reinforcements of the Earl of Angus, the father-in-law of the young king, who had come with all the members of his family, and who marched, like himself, under the English banners. The duke had scarcely advanced a few steps into Scotland when the king reassembled his forces in order to meet him. But the great noblemen were nearly all disaffected; some were secretly in favour of the Reformation; they wished to enrich themselves at the expense of the monasteries; others were bound by old friendship to the Douglases, and would not fight against them; nearly all regretted the war with England, and wished to remain upon the defensive. {254} Norfolk having been compelled to beat a retreat, in consequence of the bad weather and the want of provisions, the king was anxious to pursue him beyond the frontiers; but his troops refused to follow him to a second battle of Flodden: one after another the barons withdrew with their vassals; the king had now no more than ten thousand men, whom he placed under the command of Lord Maxwell. This faithful little army suddenly entered England. As they were crossing the frontier, the favourite of the king, Oliver Sinclair, produced a warrant which placed him at the head of the troops. All the noblemen refused to obey his command; disorder set in among the soldiers; the English fell upon the Scottish army, made a great slaughter, captured many prisoners of high rank, and put all the rest to flight. The troops, vanquished without a struggle, rejoined the king at Carlaverock Castle, where he awaited the result of the expedition. The blow struck home; the monarch returned in sadness of heart to Edinburgh, and took refuge in his castle of Falkland, where he spent long hours, with his head in his hands, plunged in melancholy thoughts, without uttering a word. He was thirty-one years of age, his constitution had always been vigorous, but he was dying of a broken heart. His wife, Mary of Guise, had borne him two sons, who had both died in infancy; the birth of a daughter, the celebrated and unfortunate Mary Stuart, was announced to James V.; the sadness of the king only became greater. {255} "It came through a daughter," he said, remembering the daughter of Bruce, who had brought the throne to his family, "and it will return through a daughter." A week afterwards, on the 14th of December, 1542, James V. expired, leaving his kingdom rent asunder by political factions and religious dissensions, a prey to all the evils of a long minority and the prospect of the reign of a woman. If he had been able to foresee the future, the last moments of the unhappy king would have been still more gloomy.

Scarcely had King Henry learned the death of his nephew, when he conceived the project of uniting the little queen, who had just opened her eyes to the light, with his son Edward, who was not yet six years of age. The alliance might have been serviceable to the two countries, but Henry claimed to take immediate possession of Scotland in the name of the future sovereigns, and his greedy selfishness caused all his designs to miscarry. He had enrolled in his cause not only all the Douglases, but the Scottish noblemen made prisoners at the rout of Solway Moss; they returned to their country determined to betray its most cherished interests. Cardinal Beaton had claimed the regency, according to a presumed will of the king, but the Earl of Arran, the heir presumptive to the throne and chief of the Protestant party, had been powerful enough to dispossess the cardinal; he held him imprisoned in Blackness Castle. The influence of the Catholic clergy over the common people and a certain portion of the nobility was considerable; the churches were closed, worship suspended, and the clergy worked ardently against the regent, who lent for support upon the Douglases and their friends, who had come back into favour with him. {256} The public voice accused the noblemen of treason and perfidy; the King of England urged them to perform their engagements. He claimed the right to hold in his hands Cardinal Beaton, and demanded the surrender of the fortresses. The truce was only to last until the month of June, and the English troops were already assembling in the northern counties; but public opinion in Scotland was aroused, and Sir George Douglas, the most active of the conspirators in the interest of England, assured King Henry that it would be impossible to lay claim on his behalf to the government of Scotland. "There would be no boys so little that they would not throw stones," he said, "nor a woman who would not raise her spindle. The commoners would willingly give their lives; many noblemen and all the clergy would do likewise rather than consent to it." The Catholic party, uniting the cause of religious liberty with that of the State, opposed both the reading of the New Testament by the common people and the alliance with England. The restoration to liberty of the cardinal was also claimed. All the noblemen repaired to Parliament, and the question of the marriage was there proposed without any opposition; but none dared to speak of the conditions attached by the King of England to this union so much desired by all, and Parliament, while approving of the project of marriage, strongly recommended that care should be taken not to send the little queen to England, at the same time taking the most jealous precautions for the maintenance of the national independence.

The anger of King Henry equalled his aspirations; he heaped the most violent reproaches upon his Scottish allies, at the same time endeavouring to attach them once more to his service by new promises. They protested their good will, but pleaded their powerlessness. Cardinal Beaton had regained his liberty, and opposed to the Earl of Arran the Earl of Lennox, an ally of the royal family, who had served with Francis I. in the wars in Italy. The treaties were renewed; the hand of the little queen was promised to Prince Edward; she was to be left in Scotland, until the age of ten years; an English nobleman and his family were to form part of her household. But besides these open and reasonable conditions there was "a secret understanding;" all the conspirators engaged in the service of Henry promised in case of need to take up arms in his interest and to fight for him until he should have obtained "the things agreed upon," or at least dominion over this side of the Firth, that is to say, over all the southern portion of Scotland.

The treaty was scarcely concluded when Cardinal Beaton raised an army in the north, and employed it from the first to carry off the queen and her mother, in order to place them in safety in Stirling Castle. After having signed the conditions with England, he suddenly changed his party, became reconciled with Beaton, abjured his errors, and returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church. France had sent reinforcements, and notwithstanding the assistance of Lennox, who had abandoned the patriots, the conspirators found themselves once more baffled in their attempts by the national movement brought about by Beaton.

The assistance rendered to the Scots by the King of France, excited the anger of Henry VIII.; he nourished an old grievance against that prince, for whom he had no liking, notwithstanding their frequent alliances, and he resolved to throw himself once more into the arms of the Emperor. Without effacing the stain of illegitimacy which he himself had imprinted upon his daughters, he caused both Mary and Elizabeth to be reinstated in their civil rights by an act of Parliament, restoring to them also their title to the throne. Charles V. contented himself with this concession, and concluded an alliance with England. Emissaries were sent to the King of France, with a mass of claims, to which Francis I. would not even listen, and great preparations were begun for the invasion of the French territory. Henry had recently married for the sixth time: he had espoused Lady Catharine Parr, the widow of Lord Latimer. She was beautiful, intelligent and ardently devoted to the Protestant party; the latter fact, however, did not prevent the execution, a fortnight after the royal marriage, of three sacramentarians, burned alive at Smithfield.

The first detachment sent to France under the command of Sir John Wallop in 1540, had completely failed in their attempt, when the king came in person at the head of an army of thirty thousand men, to lay siege to Boulogne. The two allied monarchs had agreed to march directly upon Paris, but sieges had an irresistible attraction for Henry VIII., and he had not yet made his entry into the town, which delayed him for two months, when the Emperor entered into negotiations with Francis I. at Crespy-en-Valois. {259} Thus they left the King of England, who had scornfully rejected the proposals of peace, free to return to his dominions after his conquest of Boulogne, exhausted by the efforts which he had had to make to raise his army and to maintain at the same time the forces which were carrying on the war in Scotland.

Intrigue upon intrigue, treachery upon treachery succeeded each other amongst the Scottish factions: sometimes the Catholics and Protestants became reconciled through their hatred of England; at others some deed of violence estranged them again. Beaton, more bold and skilful than his rivals, nearly always preserved his ascendancy, but his cruel persecution of the reformers incensed a considerable part of the nation. The English had made several irruptions into Scotland, under the orders of Lord Hertford and his lieutenants; they committed great cruelties, and finally found themselves shamefully repulsed in the environs of Ancrum. The secret manœuvres of Henry VIII., the relations which he still maintained with the nobility, and the perfidy of a certain number of great barons prevented the Scots, however, from profiting by their advantages and by the reinforcements sent by Francis I.; the southern counties of Scotland were again ravaged by the Earl of Hertford; a fatal manifestation of the fanaticism of Cardinal Beaton occurred to add strength to the English arms and intrigues. A reformed preacher, George Wishart, celebrated among his party and passionately loved by the people, was pursued, seized, and burned alive at St. Andrew's, amidst great public indignation. {260} For a long time past the assassination of Cardinal Beaton, whom Henry VIII. regarded as the principle obstacle to his projects against Scotland, was meditated; the moment appeared favourable, and, on the 28th of May, 1546, two gentlemen of the name of Lesley, with whom the cardinal had had great personal quarrels, accompanied by some friends, took Beaton by surprise in the castle of St. Andrews, and stabbed him in his bed. Norman Lesley hung the corpse on the wall, as the inhabitants of the town were advancing to the help of the legate. "There is your God," he said, "now you should be content; return to your homes." All the assassins received pensions from abroad, and hastened to claim the reward of their crime. King Henry had been mistaken in his hopes; the Church of Rome in Scotland had received a fatal blow, but the national independence remained erect. The embarrassments of the finances were increasing in England; Boulogne was closely pressed by the French. Henry VIII. was now suffering from ill-health; he concluded a treaty at Campes with King Francis I., and the Scots were included therein, to the great vexation of their implacable foe. Francis I. promised money; the sum once paid, England was to surrender Boulogne, which town had been fortified at great expense since its capture. It was the end of the campaigns of King Henry VIII., which had almost uniformly proved ruinous, and without any substantial results; and which had rarely been otherwise when the monarch placed himself personally at the head of his troops. The hostile armies did not allow themselves to be conquered as easily as England allowed itself to be oppressed.

So many checks abroad, together with the constant pecuniary embarrassments entailed by his prodigalities at home, completed the embitterment of the terrible character of the despot, who was now slowly dying in his palace at Whitehall. Addicted from the earliest time to the pleasures of the table, he had acquired an enormous corpulence, which rendered the least movements difficult to him. He had a difficulty in signing his name, and could not take a step without the assistance of his attendants. He suffered from an ulcer in the leg, and his morose disposition had completely metamorphosed his court, formerly so brilliant. None dared to raise his voice in favour of the most innocent victims. A lady who had access to the court, Anne Askew, young, beautiful, and learned, passionately attached to the doctrines of the Reformation, had left her husband and children to come to London to preach the Gospel; she was arrested and conducted before Bishop Bonner, who caused her to sign a confession of faith in conformity with the doctrines of the Catholic Church. But the zeal of Anne did not abate; she continued to preach: being again arrested, she was tried and condemned as a heretic. Her prosecutors were anxious to make her avow the means which she had made use of in order to spread the forbidden books amongst the ladies of the queen, and they put her to the torture to compel her to denounce her friends. "I have no friends at court," she repeated; "I have never been supported by any member of the council." The courage of Anne Askew remained firm at the stake as under the torture of the "wooden horse;" she died praising God in company with a gentleman of the King's household, named Lascelles, and two others equally dangerous heretics, who would not except [accept?] the doctrine of transubstantiation. {262} While he was ordering these executions, King Henry VIII. was delivering his last discourse to Parliament, grieving at the lack of brotherly love amongst his subjects: "Charity was never so faint amongst you, and virtuous and godly living was never less used, nor God Himself among Christians was never less reverenced, honoured, or served. Therefore be in charity one with another, like brother and brother; love, dread, and serve God; to the which, as your supreme Head and Sovereign Lord, I exhort and require you."

Perhaps Queen Catherine Parr suspected that the king needed upon his own account those religious exhortations which he had always so liberally bestowed upon his people, for she attempted, it is said, to discuss with him certain points in theology which she had studied in the heretical books, probably those very publications which Anne Askew had caused to be introduced into the royal household—a dangerous experiment which she had occasion to repent. The king flew into a violent passion. "A good hearing this," he exclaimed, "when women become such clerks, and a thing much to my comfort, to come in my old age to be taught by my wife!" The sword which had threatened Catherine so long was on the point of falling. Gardiner and Wriothesley, the new chancellor, ardent Roman Catholics, received the order to prepare the impeachment of the queen. She was warned in time; she was intelligent and skilful.

Catherine Discussing Theology With The King.

When in the eventide the conversation turned again upon religious questions, the king appeared to urge her to speak; she began to laugh, "I am not so foolish as not to know what I can understand," she said, "when I possess the favour of having for a master and a spouse a prince so learned in holy matters." "By St. Mary!" exclaimed the king, "it is not so, Kate; thou hast become a doctor." The queen continued to laugh. "I thought I noticed," she said, "that that conversation diverted your Grace's attention from your sufferings, and I ventured to discuss with you in the hope of making you forget your present infirmity." "Is it so, sweetheart?" replied the king, "then we are friends again, and it doth me more good than if I had received a hundred thousand pounds." The orders given to the chancellor had not been revoked; he arrived on the morrow with forty men of his guard to arrest Catherine, but the king sent him away angrily. Catherine Parr henceforth left theology in peace.

A few more executions were wanting to light up the dismal valley of death into which the king felt himself descending; the jealousies of the political chiefs of the great factions which divided the country were about to furnish matter for the last deeds of violence of the dying monarch. The ancient and illustrious house of the Howards and its chief, the Duke of Norfolk, had observed with vexation the growing power and influence of the Earl of Hertford and of the family of the Seymours. The wealth, as well as the past renown of the Howards, had nothing to fear from the new rival who had sprung up beside them; but Lord Hertford was uncle to the heir to the throne, which gave him much power in the future, he wished to secure himself against any fatal mishap by striking his enemies beforehand. {264} The distrust and jealousy of King Henry VIII. were easily excited; the old Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, were arrested on the 12th of December, 1546, and taken to the Tower. At the same time, in the presence of several witnesses, the king erased their names from the list of his testamentary executors. The precautions had been well taken. Advantage had been taken of the bad terms which had for a long time existed between the Duke of Norfolk and his wife, between the Earl of Surrey and his sister, the Duchess of Richmond, to search the papers and coffers of the family, in order to discover some tokens of treason. The ladies had even been arrested, and had been severely interrogated; but all that could be alleged in the impeachment was that Lord Surrey had quartered with his own arms the royal arms of Edward the Confessor. The old Duke of Norfolk had, it was said, been guilty of seditious utterances regarding the death of the king while manifesting his dissatisfaction at the reforms of the Church. His trial had not commenced when Lord Surrey was brought to Guildhall to reply to his accusers. He was young, handsome, valiant; he was learned and cultivated; his poems are still famous. He defended himself with as much intelligence as courage, proving that he was authorized by the decisions of the heralds-at-arms to bear the arms of Edward the Confessor, which he had constantly displayed in the presence of the king without his Majesty having discovered anything to find fault with. The court declared, however, that this simple matter of royal arms betrayed pretensions to the throne; Surrey was condemned, and on the 19th of January the flower of English chivalry perished upon the scaffold, while King Henry VIII. was already at the point of death.

Norfolk had in vain demanded to be confronted with his accusers; he had written to the king, and his letters had remained without a reply. Henry VIII. when dying, had not forgotten the convenient arm which he had wielded so long; the old duke, alarmed and wearied, had even gone so far as to make a gift of all his property to the sovereign, begging him to secure them for Prince Edward. The experienced politician knew that it would be easier for his posterity to regain some day the riches concentrated in the hands of the sovereign, than to snatch them from the hands of the greedy courtiers, who were already in expectation sharing them amongst themselves; but this manœuvre was not successful in saving him; the confession which preceded his donation served as a basis for the bill of attainder, which was voted by the House of Commons on the 20th of January, 1547. The king was no longer able to sign. On the 27th the Chancellor Wriothesley informed the two Houses that his Majesty had chosen delegates to ratify the condemnation, and the order was despatched to the Lieutenant of the Tower to execute the Duke of Norfolk on the 28th, early in the morning. On the same night Henry VIII. expired, after a reign of thirty-seven years. On the last day only had the bolder of his courtiers dared to suggest to him the possibility of a near end, and proposed to bring a priest to him. "No other than Archbishop Cranmer," he said, "but not yet; when I shall have rested." When the archbishop was at length asked for, the king could no longer speak; Cranmer reminded him of the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, and Henry grasped the hand of the prelate with his remaining strength; a moment afterwards he was no more.

For some years past, endeavours have been made to place the memory of King Henry VIII. in a more favourable light. No one has laboured in this direction with more zeal and ability than Mr. Froude; but no party passions can annihilate the facts of history; the personal character of the king must still be regarded as corrupt and cruel; relations with him were fatal to all who approached him, wives and ministers. A despotic and arbitrary, violent and unjust monarch, he was at the same time a capricious and perfidious ally, a vain and harsh pedant. The reform which he undertook in England was the work of his private interest and his tyrannical pride, not of a settled and sincere conviction. In his heart he still remained a Catholic and only wished to rid himself of the supremacy of the Pope, who thwarted him and of the monasteries, the spoliation of which enriched him. Illegalities and abuses of all kinds were increasing with the servility of Parliament, the long duration of the reign and the development of the vices of the king. At the period of his death no one in England dared any longer to raise his head.

Notwithstanding so many crimes, oppressions and errors, England had grown under the reign of Henry VIII.; the king had overwhelmed his people with taxes, but he had maintained public order, and favoured the development of commerce; he had persecuted Catholics and Protestants, but by separating violently from the court of Rome, he had implanted in English soil the germ of that religious liberty which was destined never to perish: he had laboured to construct a strange structure, mingled with strange contradictions and he had called it the Church of England in order to place himself at its head as the supreme chief, but he had imprinted upon English reform its peculiar character, at once governmental and liberal, aristocratic and popular. {267} He infamously plundered the monasteries, but he thereby involved in the party of reform the great noblemen enriched by the spoils; he shed upon the scaffold the noblest blood of England, but he followed the policy of his father, in elevating to the summit obscure men drawn from that growing middle class which was one day to constitute the greatness and strength of his country. Without brilliant military genius, without great political talents, he had contrived to maintain himself abroad as the respected arbiter of the greatest sovereigns of Europe, causing the scale to incline to the side to which his capricious vanity impelled him. The royal coffers were full at the death of Henry VII.; they were empty at the death of his son, notwithstanding the enormous exactions which had filled them so many times; but sixty years of comparative peace had enriched the nation, so long crushed under the weight of civil and foreign wars; it had regained its breath. In vain had Henry VIII. oppressed it; in vain had he reduced Parliament to servile dependence; the new spirit inspired by the reformation had done its work; in spite of the stake, religious sects were already multiplying; the day of the Puritans was about to dawn; the obstinate resistance of weakness under a powerful oppression was already preparing. Protestant England had sprung into existence.

Chapter XVIII

The Reformation.
Edward VI. (1547-1553).

The oppressive tyranny of Henry VIII. had ceased, and the child who succeeded him was destined to reign without attaining manhood. The ambitions and animosities of the great, as well as the sincere passions and intrigues of the theologians were about to occupy the scene, to divide and agitate all minds; but the work which was to make England Protestant and free had begun, and was continuing silently, and in obscurity; Henry VIII. had thought to regulate the religious movement in England as he had shaken off the supremacy of the Pope, but all his despotism could not arrest the effects of the new convictions, powerful especially among the lower clergy and the inhabitants of the towns. It was there that the Reformation numbered every day more numerous and more zealous adherents; it was there that the changes soon brought about by Cranmer in the organization of the Church met with the most ardent sympathy, and it was there that the persecution set on foot by the fanatic zeal of Queen Mary was to find the firmest resistance and the most heroic martyrs. Henry VIII. had accomplished the royal reform in order to satisfy his passions and his personal animosities; the English people, under the reign of his son, accomplished noiselessly and without proclamation a reform in a far different way, solid and profound. {269} The country districts were still Catholic and long remained so; a portion of the bishops and the high clergy refused to admit the new doctrines, but the religious reform progressed none the less; it was no longer in the power of man to arrest the work begun in the heart and conscience of a mass of people as obscure as they were sincere. The young king, moreover, never had a desire to do so. During the short reign of Edward VI., through the weaknesses and vacillations natural to childhood, the prince was seen to pass from one to the other of the great noblemen who were contending together for power; never did he change in opinion or in religious tendency, and his influence always weighed on the side of the Reformation. Edward VI. was destined for a long while yet, to remain the most Protestant of English sovereigns.

Henry VIII. had scarcely been dead four days, his obsequies had not yet been celebrated, and already all that he had wished and ordained for the government of England during the minority of his son was destroyed. Formerly the House of Lords possessed the privilege of designating the regent and the members of the council of regency; Parliament had granted this power to the king by the Act which had allowed him to dispose at his pleasure of the succession to the throne. Henry had accordingly made use of this right in designating in his will sixteen persons to constitute the privy council, and to be entrusted with the executive power. A second commission of twelve members was to be consulted in grave cases; the two bodies united composed the council of regency. {270} Among the more important members of the privy council were the names of Cranmer, Chancellor Wriothesley, Lord Hertford, Lord Lisle; but the Earl of Hertford did not limit his ambition to his seat in a council. He had taken his steps and secured partisans among the testamentary executors of the king; at the first meeting, he contrived to accomplish his project. It was proposed to select a president. Wriothesley violently opposed this, saying that the will placed all the councillors in the same rank; he counted, no doubt, upon taking possession of the principal part of the power; he found himself alone upon his side, and finally gave way. When the Lords reassembled, on the 1st of February, the young king heard the list of the members of the two councils read, Wriothesley added that the executors had resolved to place at their head the Earl of Hertford as Protector of the kingdom and governor of the royal person; on condition, however, that he would take no steps in any matter without the assent of a majority of the members of the council. All the peers spiritual and temporal applauded this amendment and the last wishes of Henry VIII. were violated with no more ado.

Some intentions were attributed to the late king, however, which met with more respect; a clause of the will commanded the executors to accomplish all the promises which he might have made; it was even asserted that he had repeated this injunction to those who surrounded his deathbed. {271} The royal promises might be of great extent and entail grave consequences; inquiries were promptly made; according to the statement of Sir William Paget secretary of state, Sir Anthony Denny and Sir Fulke Herbert, gentlemen of the bedchamber, to whom the king had spoken on the subject, it was a question of a promotion to the peerage and a distribution of legacies in money among the testamentary executors. Lord Hertford was to be made Duke of Somerset; the Earl of Essex to become Marquis of Northampton; Lord Lisle, Earl of Warwick; Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton; Sir Thomas Seymour, brother of Lord Hertford, Baron Seymour and Lord High Admiral; all were to receive from the ecclesiastical property still at the disposition of the crown, revenues proportioned to their new dignities. The servants of the new king rewarded themselves in advance, and with their own hands, for the services which they were to render him. Public opinion was shocked at this; people went as far as to call in question the alleged intentions of the late king as they had been reported by Sir John Paget. The elevation of Somerset was received with great joy among the Protestants, to whom he was favourable; the Catholics counted upon Wriothesley, who had become Lord Southampton, but he committed the imprudence of charging four delegates, under the great seal, to attend in his absence to the affairs of the chancellorship, without having previously consulted his colleagues; this act was declared illegal, and the omission being grave enough to deprive the chancellor of his office and his seat in the privy council, he gave in his resignation and was kept a prisoner in his house, until the council had decided the amount of the fine which he was to pay. {272} Henceforth Somerset found himself without a rival; none protested when he caused all the executive powers to be conferred upon himself, abolishing the two councils, and confounding all the testamentary executors under the common title of councillors of the king. Matters were arranged; an amnesty had been proclaimed for all state offenders, with the exception of the Duke of Norfolk and Cardinal Pole, and the Protector was preparing to sign the treaty of alliance between France and England, renewed in London on the occasion of the accession of Edward VI., when he learnt the death of Francis I. That monarch had been painfully affected by the decease of the King of England; he was convinced, it was said, that he would survive him a short time. In effect, he had died at Rambouillet, on the 31st of March; the Protestant interests received a fatal blow in Germany and in Scotland; in Germany, because the Emperor Charles V., delivered of his rival, was becoming master of the country; in Scotland, because the Guises, the brothers of the dowager queen, were all-powerful with the new King of France, and because the latter immediately concluded a close alliance with the Earl of Arran, now placed at the head of the Catholic party. At the same time, Henry II. refused to sign the treaty of London, and sent ships to Scotland to assist the regent in the siege of the Castle of St. Andrew, which the assassins of Cardinal Beaton had contrived to retain. The latter had demanded help in England, promising to support the marriage of the little Queen Mary with the young King of England; but before the Protector had been able to assemble his forces, the castle had been captured, razed to the ground, and all its defenders conveyed to France. {273} Five weeks elapsed before the English troops were able to cross the frontier. It was on the 10th of September that the two armies met, not far from Musselburgh. Arran was there encamped behind the river Esk, with considerable forces; nearly all the great Scottish noblemen had joined him, notwithstanding party rivalries. The first challenge which the English received was that of Lord Huntley, who proposed to the Protector to fight him man to man, or with the assistance of ten knights on each side, after the fashion of Horatii and Curiatii. Somerset smiled. "Tell your master," he replied to the herald, "that it is a want of judgment on his part to make such a proposal to me, who, by the grace of God, am entrusted with so precious a jewel as the person of a king and the protection of his kingdom." Warwick wished to accept the challenge of Huntley, but the duke did not permit it. "Let them come to us upon the field of battle," he said, "and they shall have blows enough."

The Scots, eager to come to close quarters, committed the imprudence of quitting the advantageous position which they occupied, to advance and meet the enemy. The combat began by a charge of Scottish cavalry, taken in flank as they were crossing the bridge of the Esk, by a broadside from the English vessels drawn up along the coast. The English had found time to take possession of the hill upon which was situated St. Michael's church; the fray soon became general. The English wavered at first before the long lances of the Scots; but the ardour of the latter led them so far forward in the pursuit that, in reforming, they found themselves involved in the hostile ranks; the arrows of the English archers who were drawn up on an eminence, thinned the ranks of the Scottish men-at-arms; the firing from the vessels was incessant; the knights at length moved and took to flight. {274} The pursuit was vigorous and the massacre horrible; quarter was given only to the great noblemen capable of paying a heavy ransom; the Esk rolled down a shoal of corpses; eight thousand Scots, it is said, remained upon the battle-field of Pinkey, as it was called, from the name of a neighbouring mansion belonging to the Douglases. The Earl of Huntley, Lord Yester, Lord Wemyss, and several other persons of distinction were made prisoners.

For four days the victors continued their work of pillage at Leith and in the environs. People expected to see them march upon Edinburgh, but Somerset suddenly ordered a retreat, without any one being able to explain, in Scotland, this unexpected deliverance. Grave interests recalled him to the court of the young king.

Lord Seymour, brother of the Protector, and Lord High Admiral of England, was as ambitious as his elder brother, and more courageous and enterprising; he had been deeply offended by the unequal partition of the power, and during the absence of Somerset he had laboured to establish his influence with the little king. He married, in the month of June, 1547, Catherine Parr, the widow of the king, who had always loved him, it was said, notwithstanding the two other unions which she had contracted, and finding himself thus brought nearer to the person of the king, who often saw his step-mother, and being enriched by the fortune which Catherine had amassed as queen of England, he took care to win the good graces of Edward VI. by supplying him with the funds which he wanted for pocket-money and charities, liberalities which the Protector did not encourage.

Death Of Anne Askew.

Seymour had also gained the favour of the household of the king, by distributing many gifts among them. In the month of November, 1547, the admiral persuaded the young king to address a letter to Parliament, demanding that the office of guardian of the royal person should be conferred upon his uncle, Lord Seymour. The project became known and steps were taken; the admiral was threatened with the Tower, and a reconciliation was effected between the two brothers; Seymour shortly afterwards received a fresh dotation.

The ambition of the admiral could not be satisfied with money; Catherine Parr had recently died in childbed, and the rumour was circulated that she had been poisoned. Her husband had already turned his views higher; he was paying his addresses to the Princess Elizabeth, whose guardian he had completely gained over; he did not aspire to a secret marriage, which, according to the will of Henry VIII., would have impaired the right of succession, but he patronized all the members of the council, endeavouring to arouse among them sufficient disaffection to secure the approval of his union with the princess. The Protector resolved to rid himself of so dangerous a rival. The opportunity was propitious; Sharington, the director of the mint at Bristol, was accused of having enriched himself by means of numerous malversations. {276} The admiral defended him vigorously, but Sharington, to save his life, suddenly betrayed his advocate; he stated that he had promised to coin money for Lord Seymour, and that the latter could count upon an army of ten thousand men, with whom he hoped to change the aspect of the State. Less than this was needed to send the Lord High Admiral to the Tower. His courage was not cast down, and he demanded to be confronted with his accusers. Somerset had been brought up in the school of Henry VIII.; he knew how to use bills of attainder: the little king, terrified, had abandoned his uncle Seymour; when the House of Commons made some opposition, demanding that the accused should be heard, a royal message silenced the objectors, and the bill was voted without further difficulty; Lord Seymour was executed on the 20th of March, 1549, protesting his innocence to the last. Two letters had been seized, it was said, written from the Tower to the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, to incite them to jealousy towards their brother. The Protector had given to the young king a terrible example of cold barbarity, by being the first to sign the death-warrant of his brother.

The war continued in Scotland, with alternations of successes and reverses, but its principal aim, the marriage of King Edward VI. with the little queen, had been thwarted by Henry II., king of France, who destined her for the Dauphin. Parliament even consented to send the child to France, there to receive her education in safety. Mary of Guise remained in Scotland; but the little queen, Mary Stuart, arrived at Brest in French vessels, and was conducted to St. Germain-en-Laye, to be solemnly betrothed to the Dauphin. {277} The warfare continued upon the frontiers, but the thoughts of the government were elsewhere; a great popular insurrection, which had taken its rise in the south, had gained the eastern counties; a portion of England was in flames. Various causes had contributed towards the insurrection; the alteration of the currency under the reign of Henry VIII. had brought about an excessive rise in the nominal price of commodities, but labour was not remunerated in proportion; workmen were, on the contrary, less employed and less paid than in the past. A great quantity of arable land had been transformed into pasture-ground, in consequence of a considerable increase in the price of wools. The monasteries no longer took in intelligent peasants to make monks of them; the monastic charities no longer relieved the misery of the poor; the vast spaces belonging to the parishes, where the villagers were wont to let their cattle graze, had been, by degrees, swallowed up by the neighbouring proprietors, who had enclosed all the waste lands, thus depriving the poor, at a time of great distress, of a resource to which they were accustomed. Vagrancy had increased in such a manner, that in the first year of the reign of Edward VI. a barbarous law had been voted by Parliament, delivering up to the first comer, in the capacity of a slave, any individual without a fixed residence, sojourning for three days in any place. Being declared a vagabond, he was to be branded upon the chest with a red-hot iron; his master had the right to compel him to work by every possible punishment; he could chain him up, let him out to hire, or sell him; a veritable slave-market being thus suddenly instituted for a few years in that free England, which, three centuries later, was to be the first to put its hand to work to destroy slavery in the whole world. {278} These rigours did not suffice; the vagabonds were not the only unhappy or exasperated persons; the religious feelings of the Catholic populations were galled by the rapid progress of the Reformation; the insurrection was so grave that the Protector, always greedy of popularity, vainly endeavoured to appease it by a hurried measure, forbidding the enclosure of all waste lands accessable to the peasants, and ordering that they should everywhere be restored to their former uses. This concession only served to put arms in the hands of the peasantry, some to beat down the fences, others to defend them; the government was everywhere obliged to send troops. But for the auxiliaries raised in Italy, Spain, and Germany, for the war with Scotland, the Protector might have found himself much embarrassed.

The demands of the insurgents and the aim of the insurrection were of a very different nature, according to the various parts of the country in which they were found. The south almost everywhere claimed the re-establishment of the old religion; the men of Devonshire, at the head of whom marched Humphrey Arundel, were secretly urged by the priests; they laid siege to Exeter, and Lord Russell, badly provided with men and supplies, could not effectually succour the town. The proclamations of the young king in vain succeeded each other in answer to the inquisitions of the insurgents. {279} Exeter was closely pressed for five weeks, and famine was already in the city, when Lord Russell, having received troops and money, at length defeated the rebels and caused the siege to be raised; the insurrection was drowned in blood, and the soldiers ravaged the country. Arundel and some of the chiefs were taken to London, where they were executed.

The insurrection in Norfolk had a more political character; it had begun in like manner by the question of the enclosures; a tanner of Norwich, named Ket, had placed himself at the head of the insurgents, and had established his camp upon a little elevation called Moushold Hill, at the gates of Norwich. There, surrounded by malcontents from the environs, to the number of twenty thousand, it is said, he declaimed against the oppression of the commoners by the nobles, and against the new religious service, asserting that he had only taken arms with the object of placing around the king honest councillors, favourable to the wishes of the people. A first attack upon the rebels, directed by the Marquis of Northampton, completely failed; they had been allowed time to assemble: they pillaged at their ease in the environs; then they gathered together again under the Reformation Tree, as they called an oak in the centre of their camp, bringing with them the noblemen whom they had made prisoners. It was only on the 25th of August, when the disorder had already lasted for nearly two months, that the Earl of Warwick, detained several days in Norwich for want of men and supplies, was able, on the arrival of some reinforcements, to attack the camp of Ket. The rebels were completely defeated, and the massacre was terrible. {280} Ket and his brother, being sent to London, to be tried, were hanged, one from the belfry of Wymondham, the other in the citadel of Norwich, and nine of the principal leaders were suspended from the nine branches of the Reformation Tree. The revolt in Norfolk was at an end, and the insurrection which manifested itself shortly afterwards in Yorkshire having been stifled, tranquillity was restored in the country; it was not so at the court.

The checks which the policy as well as the arms of England had suffered in Scotland, the progress of King Henry II. in all the territory surrounding Calais and Boulogne, the proposals of Somerset to the Emperor to deliver the latter town to him, had slowly undermined the influence of the Protector, although he still remained popular with the lower classes, who called him the good duke; but the nobility were discontented, incensed at the arrogant tone of the Duke of "Somerset by the grace of God," as he styled himself. Indignation was aroused at the palace which he had raised in the Strand, at the cost of a church and three episcopal dwellings, and public opinion began to award him a rival, who, owing to the animosity of the former chancellor, Wriothesley, had for a long time been destined to accomplish the ruin of his enemy. Lord Warwick, equally ambitious, equally vain, but more bold and enterprising than Somerset, had already acquired a great military reputation, which was increased by his recent services in Norfolk. The two rivals had nearly come to blows in the month of October, 1549. Twenty members of the council joined Warwick in London, and the Protector, who remained at Hampton Court with the young king, began to assemble forces.

Edward VI. Writing His Journal.

Edward VI. has related in his journal the negotiations between the Protector and the malcontents, the alternations of resolution and weakness of Somerset, the decision of the noblemen congregated around Warwick. The overtures of the Protector, though more and more moderate, were all rejected; the trouble of answering him was no longer taken, when he at length convoked the counsel at Windsor. All the nobility repaired thither, and decreed without hesitation the arrest of Somerset; on the 14th of October he was conducted to the Tower, accused of high treason, and the young king was taken back to Hampton Court. Warwick was henceforth master. Southampton had in vain hoped to share the power with him; he was not even re-established in the office of chancellor, and the earl, who had hitherto appeared to be in favour of the Roman Catholic party, abandoned it completely to turn towards the Reformers. The wind blew from this quarter, and the principles of Warwick never impeded in anything the pursuit of his interests.

The Duke of Somerset was, at first, treated gently; he had shrunk from no humiliation in order to secure the mercy of the king, and had confessed all that had been desired, upon his knees, before the council. Deprived of all his offices, and smitten with a heavy fine, he appeared to accept his downfall meekly, remaining at court and behaving so modestly that he was again admitted into the privy council. The eldest son of Warwick, Lord Lisle, even married, on the 3rd of June, 1550, Lady Anne Seymour, the daughter of the Duke of Somerset. {282} But secret intrigues increased every day; notwithstanding solemn reconciliations, the hostility of the two rivals remained unaltered. Warwick had taken the precaution of causing himself to be nominated Warden of the Scottish frontiers, in order to cut off the retreat towards the north of the Duke of Somerset, and the latter contemplated raising a civil war; he was at the same time ambitious of equalling him in rank, and caused himself to be styled the Duke of Northumberland; his friend, the Marquis of Dorset, became the Duke of Suffolk, and a few days after this promotion it suddenly became known that the Duke of Somerset had been arrested and conducted to the Tower, as guilty of conspiracy and high treason; the duchess was also arrested as well as a certain number of the friends of the duke.

The charges against Somerset were grave and numerous; he had plotted, it was said, the assassination of the principal noblemen of the council, Northumberland, Northampton, Pembroke, and others; a revolt was at the same time to be fomented in London, and the duke was to take possession of the person of the king. This time the prisoner was publicly conducted to Westminster Hall, to be tried by his peers, that is to say, by the councillors of the king, whom he was accused of having intended to assassinate; but he was not confronted with the witnesses against him. The prosecutors contented themselves with reading their depositions. He confessed the scheme of assassination with regard to his powerful enemies, but he had abandoned it, he said, and he absolutely denied any intention of rebellion or insurrection. He was accordingly acquitted upon the count of treason, but the count of felony was proved, and this sufficed to ruin him. {283} The people, who thronged in the hall and the streets, did not understand the sentence; the axe, which had been borne before him as long as he was accused of high treason, had disappeared from the retinue; they cried out that the good duke had been acquitted, and the favour of the population of London did not incline Northumberland to show mercy. On the 22nd of January, 1552, six weeks after his condemnation, less than five years after the day on which he had taken possession of the supreme power, the former Protector of England was conducted to that scaffold so often bathed in the most illustrious blood. He died with more resolution than he had shown during his life; his young nephew, convinced, it is said, of his crime, having made no effort to show mercy. Somerset, no doubt, called to mind on Tower Hill the brother whom he formerly condemned to the same fate. Four of his friends were executed in like manner, protesting their innocence. "Every time the Duke of Northumberland places his head upon his pillow, he will find it wet with our blood," exclaimed Sir Ralph Vane, addressing the people. They listened in silence, without much emotion; the nation was growing accustomed to see the high nobility fall beneath the axe of the executioner instead of perishing, as formerly, bravely, sword in hand, upon the field of battle.

Boulogne had been definitively restored to France by a treaty of peace in which Scotland was included; the seal of the new alliance was to be the marriage of Edward VI.; but the health of the young monarch had been declining for some months past, and the ambitious Northumberland had already entered upon the manœuvres which were destined to bring about his ruin. {284} He had married his fourth son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, the eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, and grand-daughter, by her mother's side, of Mary, formerly Queen of France, and sister of Henry VIII.; he thus united his family to the royal blood, while he caused his other children to contract powerful alliances. His aim was no other than to exclude from the succession to the throne the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, who had never been reinstated in their birthright, for the benefit of the Duchess of Suffolk, the mother of Lady Jane Grey, who was disposed to renounce her rights in favour of her eldest daughter. The duke counted upon being supported in his undertaking by the Protestant party, uneasy, with just cause, at the probable accession to the throne of Princess Mary. He urged the same argument upon the young King Edward: it was, in truth, the only one which could operate upon him. The dying youth had, naturally, never played a political part; he even appears not to have taken much interest in public life, but he was sincerely pious and attached to the Protestant faith. The work of the Reformation had been the great preoccupation of a mind of a precocious gravity, and he had it in heart to protect the new religion after his death; he knew himself to be in most precarious health, and he consented without difficulty to the proposals which Northumberland made to him upon this subject. Perhaps he thought, moreover, that he had the right of using the same privilege as his father had claimed of designating his successor to the throne. {285} The poor lad did not perceive into what new troubles and dangers he was about to plunge his kingdom by exposing it once more to the misfortunes of a contested succession and the rivalries of a powerful nobility.

Three social forces, meanwhile, had made immense progress in England—regard for public order, the idea of the royal legitimacy, and the spirit of the Reformation. This last power which Northumberland thought to enroll in his service, had taught men to govern themselves, to judge their own affairs freely and rationally, and all the terrors of an ardently Roman Catholic reign were unable to turn them aside from the path of justice. United, the three motives frustrated the ambitious designs,—the plots of the great nobles. Subsequently, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the same influences were destined to place Protestantism in England on a settled basis. The reformed faith had made rapid strides since the death of Henry VIII. The silent struggle between the progressive and the retrogressive parties had continued; Cranmer and Gardiner had continued to confront each other, but Cranmer now had the upper hand. Gardiner had at first been placed by Henry VIII. in the list of the privy council, then his name had been effaced from it from motives of prudence; the Archbishop of Canterbury had all the members of the council at his disposal, with the exception of the Chancellor Wriothesley and the Bishop of Durham, Tunstall. It has been seen how Wriothesley was driven from power. Tunstall was relegated to his diocese. Cranmer, therefore, found the coast clear, but he was determined to proceed with more moderation, for fear of arousing a fresh pilgrimage of grace; he did not completely succeed in averting the discontent which his innovations caused among the populations remaining Catholic.

The first care of the archbishop was to establish in each diocese royal visitors, half lay, half ecclesiastical. Wherever they presented themselves, their authority was supreme; they established in all churches the use of a selection of homilies intended to be read every week, and composed, in great part, by Cranmer; none could preach without the authorization of the Protector or the Metropolitan. This prudent prohibition, intended to favour the extension of the new doctrines, did not escape attention; Gardiner immediately protested against the homilies and the paraphrase of the New Testament by Erasmus, introduced into the Church service in each parish. The reactionary bishop demanded that neither the doctrine nor the practice established by the late king should be interfered with until the majority of the young Edward VI. The intervention of Gardiner was not successful; he was arrested and held in prison during the continuance of the Parliamentary session.

The property which the religious communities, churches and colleges, yet possessed, had been placed at the disposal of the king by Parliament, as a trust-fund for the endowment of schools and livings. Cranmer opposed this fresh spoliation without success, foreseeing that it would turn to the profit of the courtiers; but the measures voted by the two Houses were of a consoling nature; the law against the Lollards, the prohibition against reading the Scriptures and the statutes of the six articles of faith were revoked; marriage was allowed to the clergy; communion of two kinds was granted to the faithful, and soon the order was given for celebrating the service in the English language, without any modification of the mass being yet made in the text itself.

The Corpse Passed Under Her Windows.

Such were the changes already accomplished a year after the death of Henry VIII. The royal power had at the same time extended itself and gathered strength; the election of the bishops had been withdrawn from the deans and chapters, and made to depend solely upon the king, and it was by a simple royal decree that the bishops were invited to suppress in their dioceses certain Catholic observances, while taking care to destroy all images that might be extant. In the month of January, 1549, appeared the great work which the Archbishop of Canterbury had been preparing for some time, the catechism and the prayer book of the Church of England. This latter production, skilfully composed by a commission of bishops and theologians, had for a basis the Catholic missals and breviaries which had been both deprived of all that might clash with the Protestant faith, and carefully adapted to the convictions and sentiments of the Catholics. It was a work of conciliation effected with skill and with the most praiseworthy intentions; but the archbishop did not deceive himself regarding the repugnance which it encountered among the population, and he took care to surround it with an efficatious protection; from Whitsuntide, the use of any other book was prohibited, for Divine service, under severe penalties. The insurrections which shortly afterwards supervened, proved that Cranmer had not been mistaken; the new service was especially the object of the complaints of the rebels of Devonshire. {288} Cranmer soon perceived that it was necessary to attack those prelates who were hostile to the innovations; they were numerous, but the majority were timid and contented themselves with proceeding slowly to adopt the reforms ordained by government; some few were bolder; it was towards these that the efforts of Cranmer were directed.

For two years past already, Gardiner had been confined in the Tower, in consequence of a sermon declared to be seditious, and had not been brought to trial. The Bishop of London, Bonner, reprimanded for his want of zeal, was commissioned by the council to preach at St. Paul's Cross; his text had been chosen, and all the divisions of his discourse settled beforehand, when he appeared before the crowd; he was to overwhelm with ecclesiastical thunders the rebels of Devonshire and Norfolk, to refer to the king and his religious authority, and to point out that, the rights and power of the sovereign not depending upon his age, King Edward VI. was as competent to decide questions of faith as he could be in later years. Bonner completely omitted this last point of the sermon, and was immediately summoned before the council. He excused himself upon the ground of the weakness of his memory, affirmed that he had lost his notes, declaring at the same time that he was prosecuted not for a trifling act of forgetfulness, but because he had firmly maintained the Roman Catholic doctrine of the real presence. Bonner was condemned, deprived of his see and sent to prison. {289} Ridley, bishop of Rochester, was summoned to London in his place; but the bishopric was despoiled of a portion of its possessions, as well as those which soon became vacant by successive deprivations. The court profited by the conscientious obstinacy of the bishops.

Gardiner was more skilful than Bonner, and quite as resolute; he embarrassed his enemies by his self-possession and his intellectual resources, and he refused to sign the formula of submission which was presented to him, so long as he should continue to be unjustly detained. He accumulated so many evidences and called so many witnesses to prove the plot that had long been hatching against him, that Cranmer cut short the proceedings. Gardiner was deprived of his episcopal see, and, like Bonner, he was detained in prison, as well as two other prelates Heath and Day, Bishops of Worcester and Chichester. It was at this period that the great Scottish reformer, John Knox, being in London, preached before the king with so much talent and vigour, that the primate was instrumental in offering him the bishopric of Rochester, which had become vacant by the translation of Poynet to Winchester, where he replaced Gardiner. Knox declined, but the proposal shows upon what path the Church of England, formerly so violent against the friends and partisans of Knox had entered. Some ardent and reforming prelates, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, replaced the revoked bishops; the latter was so profoundly imbued with Calvinistic principles, that much difficulty was experienced in inducing him to accept the consecration of the primate, and to clothe him in the sacerdotal ornaments.

It was not enough to establish effectually the new system, or to secure convinced and faithful ministers; it was necessary also to firmly establish its doctrines. Towards the end of the year 1551, the prelates had finished drawing up the articles of the national faith; forty-two propositions contained the same principles as the thirty-nine articles subsequently voted under Queen Elizabeth, which still remain the rule of faith of the Church of England. In the main, and under different forms, they come very near to the doctrines of the reformation on the Continent, inclining, sometimes towards Calvinism, sometimes towards Lutheranism, but always resting firmly upon the Bible.

The resource of removing the bishops, had always been open to the government when it had been found impossible to triumph over their resistance, but it was more difficult to compel the Princess Mary to practice the new worship. She had been warned, by an order of the council on the occasion of the institution of the prayer book, that the celebration of the mass would no longer be permitted even in her private chapel; and for two years the intercession of the Emperor in her favour remained ineffectual; the chaplains of the princess were arrested, she was at length summoned before the council, and the young king himself vainly endeavoured to convince her. The Emperor at length declared that he would wage war with England, rather than suffer his relative to be constrained in her conscience; Cranmer counselled the young king to temporise; but Edward VI. wept, lamented the obstinacy of his sister and the obligation which he was under of allowing mass to exist in any place in his kingdom. {291} The attempts were renewed with Mary several times; she remained inflexible in her resolution. "If the chaplains cannot repeat mass, I shall not hear it," she said; "but the new service shall not be established in my house; if it were introduced there by force, I would leave the place." "Matters remained thus," says Burnet, "and I think that Lady Mary continued to have her priests and to have masses said, so secretly that it could not be complained of."

In truth, and notwithstanding the removal of the bishops and some deplorable executions of poor heretics who attacked the very foundations of Christianity, persecution was at a standstill under the reign of Edward VI. In the new stage of the Reformation, no Catholic suffered seriously for his attachment to his faith.

The obstinacy of the Princess Mary had left a profound impression upon the mind of the young king, and thus contributed, no doubt, to the effect of the insinuations of Northumberland in favour of a Protestant succession. Edward did not wish, however, to compromise any of his councillors, and he drew up with his own hand the project for a law which was to regulate the succession to the throne; he then caused the judges to be summoned, with the attorney and solicitor-general, to commission them to prepare the act. They hesitated; the king peremptorily commanded them to obey, and only reluctantly granted them time to examine the precedents, in order to satisfy the desires of his Majesty.

When these officers returned they were still undecided, or rather they had convinced themselves that the law required of them by the sovereign would involve an act of treason both on the side of the framers of the act and on that of the council. The king insisted; the Duke of Northumberland, who was present, flew into a passion; the lords of the council, to whom the judges expounded their scruples, had been won over by the intrigues of the duke. Cranmer, who had at first been opposed to the proceedings, yielded to the solicitations of the young monarch; the measure was resolved upon, and the act, prepared by the lawyers, was sanctioned by the great seal as well as by the signatures of all the members of the council. Northumberland had made an attempt to take possession of the person of Mary; but she had been warned in time, and far from responding to the summons in the name of the king, her brother, she retired precipitately to her castle of Kenninghall, in Norfolk. It was there that she soon learnt the news of the death of Edward VI., who expired at Greenwich on the 6th of July, 1553, at the age of fifteen years and a half. The time had come for a trial of the new basis upon which Cranmer had sought to found the religion of the kingdom. The question whether England was to be Catholic or Protestant was about to be decided.

Chapter XIX.

Persecution.
Bloody Mary (1553-1558)

The Duke of Northumberland was more ambitious than able, and more bold than skillful. In seeking to disturb the natural order of succession he had undertaken a task beyond his strength; nor had he appreciated the relative power of the two religions now existing side by side; he thought the Catholics more weakened than they were, and the Protestants more disposed to sacrifice all for the accession of a Protestant sovereign than they showed themselves to be; the project of taking possession of the two princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, was thwarted from the first. The death of the young king was kept secret, and an express was despatched to the sisters to bring them to him. It was the second time that Mary had been summoned, and notwithstanding her repugnance, she had set out, when a note from the Earl of Arundel warned her of the state of affairs; she immediately retraced her steps, and shut herself up in her castle of Norfolk. Elizabeth had also been warned in time. Northumberland henceforth had to struggle against a rival, at liberty and fully aware of his sinister designs.

Edward VI. had been dead three days, and precautions had been taken in London when Lady Jane Grey, who had retired to Chelsea during the last weeks of the life of the king, was recalled to Sion House, the palace of her family. She was there alone on the 10th of July, 1553, occupied, it is said, in reading Plato in Greek—for Lady Jane was as learned as she was gentle and modest—when the arrival of the Duke of Northumberland, her father-in-law, accompanied by several lords of the council, was announced. Indifferent subjects were talked about; but the young woman was troubled by the watchful looks and respectful tone of her visitors, when her mother-in-law entered with the Duchess of Suffolk. "The king, your cousin and our sovereign lord, has given up his soul to God," said Northumberland; "but before his death, and in order to preserve the kingdom from the infection of Popery, he resolved to set aside his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, declared illegitimate by an act of Parliament, and he commanded us to proclaim your Grace as queen and sovereign to succeed him." At the same moment, the lords of the council prostrated themselves before Lady Jane, vowing fidelity to her; she started back a pace, uttered a loud cry, and fell to the floor. She was young, timid, in delicate health, fond of retirement, and addicted to serious studies; she protested, asserting that she did not feel herself capable of governing. "But if the right is mine," she said at length, raising her head with humble reliance, "I hope that God will give me strength to bear the sceptre for the glory and happiness of the people of England." She was immediately conducted to the Tower, the usual residence of sovereigns before their coronation; at the same time, the death of King Edward VI. and the accession of Lady Jane Grey were proclaimed in the streets and market-places, while the reason of the exclusion of the princesses was explained. {295} The crowd listened in silence, without any tokens of satisfaction, and the name of Mary was whispered among them. This infringement of the ordinary rules of succession was evidently viewed with no favour by the people of London.

In the country the movement was more vigorous. Mary had written to the council, haughtily claiming her rights in a tone befitting the sovereign power, and the lords had not yet replied to this appeal, when a certain number of noblemen and gentlemen hastened to join, their legitimate queen. The Catholics were not alone, for Mary promised to change nothing in the laws and the religion established by King Edward; she had a small army under her orders, when the Duke of Northumberland, who had hesitated to leave London, and the conspirators whom he held in some degree captive decided at length to march against Mary, leaving the Duke of Suffolk with his daughter to govern in her name. He had scarcely issued forth from the capital, when the members of the council crept out of the Tower under different pretexts, and met at Castle Baynard, the residence of the Earl of Pembroke. The Earl of Arundel was the first to announce his resolution of passing over to Queen Mary. "If reasons do not suffice," exclaimed Lord Pembroke, "this sword shall make Mary queen, or I will die in her cause!" All the nobles responded with acclamation, and the Duke of Suffolk, who had rejoined his colleagues, united his voice to theirs, thus basely abandoning his daughter. {296} Mary was proclaimed in the streets of London, in the open places where a week before the name of Lady Jane had resounded; at Paul's Cross, where Bishop Ridley had preached on the preceding Sunday in favour of the Protestant succession. This time the people applauded, and the Catholics triumphed; the Protestants had not learnt to connect religious principles with political freedom, or did not foresee the evils which they were about to suffer. On leaving London with his troops, Northumberland himself had augured ill from the coldness of the populace. "They come to see us pass," he said, "but nobody cries God bless you!" He was at Cambridge when he learned of Mary's proclamation in London, the defection of the members of the council, and that of the forces which he had raised in the north and who had rallied round Mary. Tears flowed down his cheeks when he repaired to the public square of the city, and throwing his cap in the air, was the first to proclaim Queen Mary. On the morrow he was arrested and taken to the Tower, which Lady Jane had quitted to return to Sion House as soon as Mary had been recognized by the council, but the little queen of ten days had been arrested, as well as her husband; the gloomy fortress began to be peopled by all the actors in the drama of which this poor girl was to be the victim. Mary advanced by short stages towards London, where she entered on the 3rd of August amidst the joyful acclamations of the populace; her sister, Elizabeth, came to meet her with a thousand noblemen and gentlemen. The conduct of Elizabeth had been as skillful as it was prudent, and worthy of the wise policy which she was to practise upon the throne, and she was already indebted for this to the counsels of the Secretary of State, Cecil.

When Northumberland had caused the accession of Lady Jane to be announced to her, proposing land and riches in exchange for her rights to the throne, Elizabeth replied that she had no rights to renounce, since her older sister, the Princess Mary, was alive. Then declaring herself ill, she awaited the event, knowing how to forecast it to the exact extent in order to arrive before her sister in London, muster her friends, and salute the new sovereign upon her entry into the capital. During the five years of the reign of her sister all the prudence of Cecil was required for the service of the mistress whom he had chosen.

The first care of the queen was to repair to the Tower; the prisoners awaited her, not those whom she had caused to be detained there, but the old Duke of Norfolk, a captive for so many years, the Duchess of Somerset, and Bishop Gardiner, who delivered in the name of all a brief speech of welcome to the sovereign whose accession restored them to liberty. Mary was moved to tears. "You are my prisoners," she said, embracing them. The Bishops Bonner and Tunstall were also delivered from their long captivity; the latter was admitted into the council as well as Gardiner, who soon became chancellor and prime minister. The corpse of King Edward had scarcely been interred, and the public obsequies celebrated according to the English rites, when already the sermons at Paul's Cross changed their character. Bourn, canon of St. Paul's, soon afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, rose against the innovations introduced into the Church under King Edward, declaring against those who had kept Bonner, the legitimate bishop of that diocese, for four years in prison. {298} The people were not accustomed to such tirades; the canon was upon the point of being beaten to death; two reformed preachers, who were shortly to seal their testimony with their lives, Bradford and Rogers, had great difficulty in conducting him back to his residence in safety.

Queen Mary had been a fortnight in London, but six weeks only had elapsed since the death of Edward VI., when the Duke of Northumberland, his eldest son, the Earl of Warwick, and the Marquis of Northampton appeared before the council as prisoners charged with high treason. The crime was manifest, but the judges assembled to condemn the guilty men were implicated in it like themselves. Northumberland tried to shelter himself behind the members of the council, who had all signed the edict emanating from the personal will of the deceased king; the councillors maintained that they had obeyed under the penalty of their own lives; the Duke of Norfolk, who had but just escaped from the Tower, presided over the court; Cranmer and the Duke of Suffolk signed the sentence. All the base acts of Northumberland could not save his head; in vain did he ask to confer with the doctors sent by the Queen in order to enlighten his conscience; the only favor granted him was that of being simply beheaded. The Earl of Warwick behaved with more self-respect; four secondary accomplices were condemned with the three great noblemen; but Northumberland, Sir John Gates, and Sir Thomas Palmer alone suffered their sentence. They died on Tower Hill on the 22nd of August; the duke was interred in the chapel of the Tower, beside the Duke of Somerset, his former victim; on his right and left reposed the remains of Anne Boleyn and Catharine Howard. {299} The queen was urged to rid herself also of Lady Jane Grey and her husband; but she called to mind the youth of the poor little usurper, saying that she had been but a tool in the hands of her father-in-law. Mary contented herself by detaining her at the Tower.

The Catholic party was triumphant; the Emperor Charles V. recommended prudence, advising that some few dangerous enemies be struck down, but that the new religion should not be touched, trusting to time the care of modifying errors, and taking care not to plunge the people into despair by too much severity. This wise policy agreed neither with the fervent convictions of Mary nor with the firmness of her character, embittered by long misfortunes, by reiterated acts of injustice and by shattered health. "God has protected me in all my misfortunes," she said, "it is in Him that I confide. I will not testify my gratitude slowly, in secret, but at once and openly." The public declaration promised to molest none of her subjects for religion; but mass had already been re-established in the principal churches in London, Cranmer and Latimer were sent to the Tower, and the Princess Elizabeth, prudently bowing her head before the storm, had renounced the practice of the Protestant worship to return to the Catholic faith, of which she always preserved some remains at the bottom of her heart; she accompanied her sister to mass, had a chapel established in her residence, and devoted a portion of her time to the embroidering of church ornaments. {300} Mary was crowned on the first of October at Westminister, by the hands of Gardiner. Five days afterwards Parliament assembled; a month had scarcely elapsed when the edifice raised with so much care by Cranmer and the English Protestants was falling in its entirety; matters had returned to the point at which Henry VIII. had left them: the prayer-book was set aside, the service in the vernacular tongue abolished, the marriage of priests and communion of the two kinds prohibited; the Bishops who were married, or were in favor of the reformed doctrines were deprived of their sees, while the marriage of Henry VIII. and Catharine was alone declared valid. The queen did not, however, renounce the title of chief of the Church; she did not wish to alarm the Protestants by placing them at the outset, under the yoke of Rome, and above all she avoided touching upon the question of the restitution of the property of the clergy, which would have raised all the House of Lords against the new form of government. The queen contented herself by setting the example by taking measures to restore to the Church all the estates annexed to the crown. Being reassured by this indulgence. Parliament voted all that was demanded, and destroyed all that it had formerly established; the convocation of the clergy returned in a mass to the old practices; the priests who had sincerely embraced the Protestant faith and who refused to repeat mass were replaced without difficulty by the monks who were everywhere issuing forth from their hiding-places. The prisons were soon filled by the refractory; those who were not prisoners were able to go about begging along the high roads with their wives and children; a certain number fled abroad. {301} Violent persecution had not yet commenced; Cranmer was acquitted upon the count of treason, but he was sent back to the Tower as a heretic. The sentence of death pronounced against Lady Jane Gray and her husband was not put into execution; the captives even enjoyed a kind of liberty in their prison. Queen Mary was occupied in a more important matter; although now thirty-seven years of age, moved by the solicitations of her councillors, she thought of marriage.

Many illustrious alliances for the Princess Mary had been contracted and broken off in succession; when she was yet in her cradle, the Emperor, the King of France, and the dauphin had each in turn aspired to her hand; but it was whispered at the court that the queen experienced some liking for Lord Edward Courtenay, son of the Marquis of Exeter, executed in 1538; scarcely had she released that handsome young man from the Tower, when she conferred on him the title of Earl of Devonshire, with all the confiscated estates of his father, and it was asserted that her favours did not stop there. Edward Courtenay did not know how to take advantage of fortune; he was thoughtless and a debauchee; his convictions did not incline to the side of Roman Catholicism, and he preferred, it was said, the society of the Princess Elizabeth to that of her royal sister. The queen manifested much coldness towards the princess, who retired to her residence at Ashridge in Buckinghamshire, closely watched by two agents of the court. {302} A union with Cardinal Pole, a cousin of the queen, and who was not in orders, was also spoken of; but he was fifty-three years of age, he was living in retirement by the Lake of Garda; and, although there was a project at that time at Rome for sending him as a legate to England, the Emperor increased the obstacles to his departure, in order to have time to accomplish an undertaking which he had greatly at heart and which the presence of Pole might have hindered.

Queen Mary had learnt during her misfortunes to depend upon Charles V., who had never failed her: since she had been upon the throne she had taken his advice in all her affairs; the Emperor took advantage of this circumstance to ask her for her hand in favor of his son, the Arch-duke Philip, soon afterwards Philip II., who had recently lost his wife, Isabella of Portugal. The foreign powers, and especially France, seconded by the ambassadors of Venice, dreaded this union, which was calculated to cause the balance in Europe to incline against them; their opposition was favored by a powerful party in the very bosom of the council; Gardiner was at its head. He vigorously represented to the queen the aversion which the English had always experienced towards foreign sovereigns, the discontent which the haughtiness of Philip had aroused among his own subjects, the continual hostilities with France which must result from this marriage, the anger and uneasiness of the reformed party. The Commons even presented an address praying the queen to choose her husband from among the distinguished men of her kingdom.

Mary Vows To Marry Philip II.

Courtenay was the soul of all the intrigues, encouraged and nourished by the French ambassador, M. de Noailles; but this opposition only aroused the obstinacy of Mary; she was a worthy daughter of Henry VIII., and on the very day on which the Houses had manifested their aversion to a foreign prince, she caused the Spanish ambassador to come to her private chapel; there throwing herself on her knees before the altar, she took God to witness that she plighted her troth to Philip, Prince of Spain, to belong to him and no other as long as she should live. The marriage treaty was communicated to Parliament on the 14th of January, 1554; the Emperor was very accommodating in the conditions, counting, no doubt, upon the influence which Philip might acquire over his wife. The queen was to remain sole mistress of the government in England, without any foreigner being able to participate in the offices or dignities; Burgundy and the Low Countries were secured to her children, and in the advent of Don Carlos, the son of the first marriage of Philip, happening to die, all the possessions of the crown of Spain were to devolve on the posterity of Mary. Gardiner himself unfolded before the two Houses and the burgesses of the City all the advantages of this alliance which he had so ardently opposed.

The arguments of the chancellor did not convince the country. Conspirators were encouraged by the promises of France; projects were various: some wished to place Elizabeth upon the throne while giving her Courtenay for a husband; others counted upon releasing Lady Jane Grey and proclaiming her again. They appeared to have determined on this project, when, on the 20th of January, the queen learnt that Sir Peter Carew had taken arms in Devonshire, resolved to oppose the disembarcation of Phillip; he had already taken possession of the city and citadel of Exeter. {304} Almost at the same time it was discovered that Sir Thomas Wyatt was inciting the population of Kent to rebellion. He was a Catholic, and had distinguished himself at the siege of Boulogne, but he had conceived the most violent horror of Spain, and he appears to have been disposed to support the claims of the Princess Elizabeth, for he had refused, from the first, to enter into the plot in favour of Lady Jane Grey. In London the terror was extreme; the guards at the gates were doubled; the Duke of Suffolk, whom Mary had pardoned, took refuge in Warwickshire, and loudly protesting against the marriage of the queen, he called the population to arms without much effect. The boldest as well as the most popular of the conspirators was Wyatt, who held the city of Rochester, against which place the old Duke of Norfolk was advancing with Lord Arundel. As the Duke was ordering the assault, five hundred men of the London train-bands, whom he had brought with him, suddenly stopped at the entrance of the bridge, and the captain addressing them said, "My masters, we are going to fight against our fellow-citizens and friends in an unjust quarrel: they have assembled here to resist the evils which would fall upon us if we were subject to the proud Spaniard, and I know not who is the Englishman who could say nay to them." The train-bands immediately began to cry, "Wyatt! Wyatt!" at the same time turning their field-pieces against the royalist troops. The Duke of Norfolk was compelled to retire in haste, and his return spread terror in London. {305} The queen alone remained firm, repairing with her ladies to the City protesting to the Lord Mayor, the aldermen, and burgesses, that she only wished to be married in a manner honourable and advantageous for her kingdom; that nothing compelled her to marry since she had delayed so long, and that she counted upon her good subjects to help her subjugate the rebels. On this same day she learnt that the Duke of Suffolk and Sir Peter Carew had been defeated in the inland shires and in the West. A full amnesty was promised to all the insurgents of Kent, the noblemen excepted; a price was set upon the head of Sir Thomas Wyatt. He had delayed in his march, but on the 3rd of February he entered the suburb of Southwark with considerable forces without doing any damage, except in the residence of Bishop Gardiner, which was pillaged. Wyatt had counted upon the good will of the inhabitants of London, but the gates of the City remained closed, and the population of Southwark, who had received him well, soon begged him to retire. When the cannon of the Tower began to roar, and the cannon-balls to rain upon the bridge and the two churches fortified by Wyatt, the insurgents directed their efforts to another point, and contrived to cross the river at Kingston; but Lord Pembroke awaited them at the head of the royal troops, and when Wyatt, with a handful of brave men, had opened up a passage for himself, the ranks closed behind him; he found himself seized in the streets. The citizens did not rise in his favour, as he had hoped; he defended himself bravely, but, overwhelmed by numbers, was captured and sent to the Tower; a great many of his followers were taken and hanged. The insurrection had miscarried.

The courage of Queen Mary had not belied itself for one moment; while her terrified courtiers were hastening to bring the grievous news she shamed them for their terrors, asserting that she would herself enter into a campaign to support the justice of her quarrel, and die with those who served her rather than yield an inch to a traitor like Wyatt; but she had already caused her anger to be felt by those whom she suspected of having taken part in the plot. Three of her councillors had by her orders arrived at Ashridge, where they found Elizabeth in bed. It was late, and the emissaries insisted upon entering the residence of the Princess. "Is the haste such that it might not have pleased you to come to-morrow in the morning?" she asked haughtily. "We are right sorry to see your grace in such a case," said the councillors. "And I," replied Elizabeth, "am not glad to see you here at this time of night." It was necessary, however, to give way and get into the litter which the queen had sent; Mary wished to see her sister, "dead or alive," she said. The house was surrounded by soldiers, they set out; the journey was slow; Elizabeth dreaded the arrival in London; some few noblemen who came to meet her reassured her; she learnt, however, that Courtenay had been sent to the Tower. She had not yet seen the queen when she was informed of the sad fate of Lady Jane Grey.

The insurrection had scarcely been stamped out and Wyatt made a prisoner, when Mary signed the order to execute Lady Jane and her husband, both of whom had been condemned to death several months before. The royal clemency had allowed a last interview between husband and wife, but Lady Jane refused the favour. "I shall see him again shortly," she said. She saw him, in effect, before the eternal reunion, but dead and mutilated; the corpse passed under her windows, on the return from Tower Hill. A few hours later, on the 12th of February, 1554, Jane in her turn mounted the scaffold, within the precincts of the Tower, after having firmly repelled the Dean of St. Paul's who pursued her with his arguments in favour of the Roman Catholic religion. She died in the faith which she had embraced in her infancy, serene and grave, without a complaint or a tear, simply avowing to the few spectators of her ordeal, that she deserved death for having consented, although with regret, to serve as an instrument to the ambition of others. She implored the mercy of God and delivered herself up into the hands of the executioner, moving all hearts by her constancy and and meekness. Her father was beheaded on Tower Hill, several days later, without arousing the compassion of any one. Passing from one treacherous act to another, he had at length found himself on the scaffold. Executions succeeded each other without intermission. To the last moment Sir Thomas Wyatt maintained that the Princess Elizabeth had been ignorant of all his projects. The jury had the courage to acquit Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, a devoted friend of the princess, compromised in the conspiracy; the verdict saved his life, but this unusual independence was to be dearly paid for by the jurymen: they were all sent to prison, and only regained their liberty after a long captivity, and upon the payment of a fine. {308} Meanwhile, appearances were unfavourable to Elizabeth; she had in vain solicited an audience of her sister, and finally wrote to her, absolutely disclaiming all complicity in the insurrection and denying the correspondence which she was accused of having carried on with the King of France. The order was nevertheless given to conduct her to the Tower, and on Palm Sunday, while the population of London thronged the churches, the princess conducted by Lord Sidney, was brought by the Thames to the Traitor's Gate. She refused at first to alight; then, as one of the guards offered her his hand, she repelled him abruptly, and placing her foot upon the gloomy stairs, she exclaimed, "Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs; and before Thee, O God, I speak it, having none other friend but Thee above." She sat down for a moment upon the stone; the lieutenant of the Tower begged her to take shelter from the cold and rain: "Better sitting here than in a worse place," she said, "for God knoweth whither you bring me." She entered, however, and found herself within the walls of a prison, fearing in the recesses of her soul the fate of her mother; and soon afterwards she was still more terrified, when a new governor, Sir Henry Beddingfield, was nominated to the Tower. He had the reputation of being harsh and cruel, and, several times Elizabeth asked the guards whether the scaffold of Lady Jane had been removed, expecting to ascend it in her turn. On the 19th of May, however, Elizabeth was taken to Richmond, and thence to Woodstock, where she remained, closely watched by Sir Henry Beddingfield, while Courtenay was removed to Fotheringay. {309} The arrival of Prince Philip was now expected, and the preparation for the marriage occupied all minds whether satisfied or discontented. The population of London daily manifested its aversion to the Spanish alliance and its attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation; the queen's preachers began to look upon the pulpit erected at Paul's Cross as a dangerous spot. One of them, Doctor Pendleton, received a shot there, from which he narrowly escaped death. The use of arms was thereafter prohibited.

The manœuvres of the Emperor had succeeded; his confidential ambassador, Renard, had prevailed over the intrigues of Noailles; Philip arrived in England with the title of King of Naples, Charles V. was unwilling, he said, that so great a queen should unite herself to a simple prince: the marriage was celebrated with great pomp, on the 25th of July, 1554; but the royal bridegroom had taken care to surround himself with troops at the moment of his landing, one of his emissaries, Count Egmont, having been assailed shortly before by the people, who mistook him for his master. The first care of the Houses of Parliament when they assembled on the 1st of November, was to increase the precautions against the Spanish influence in the councils of the queen: all the liberality of Philip, who had brought a quantity of money from Spain, could not lull a distrust, which on the other hand was nourished by the haughtiness of his manners and the rigid etiquette with which he surrounded himself.

The first Parliament convoked by Mary had voted the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic worship; the second had adopted the treaty of marriage; the third was summoned to declare the reunion with Rome; but the interests of the House of Lords were opposed to this measure. Before repealing the act of supremacy, the Lords, enriched by the spoliation of the monasteries, required guarantees from the court of Rome; the Pope gave them, through the mouth of Cardinal Pole, who had arrived in England as legate; Parliament then became submissive, and presented a petition to the king, queen and cardinal, begging them to intercede with the Holy Father to obtain the pardon of the English people and their reconciliation with the Holy See. Pole was furnished with the necessary powers, and he pronounced the absolution. The work of Henry VIII. as well as that of Edward VI. was destroyed; and the conscience of Queen Mary was able to rest in peace. Parliament thought to have done enough; but Mary desired to feel her way towards securing the royal crown to her husband, but she encountered so much ill-feeling that she was obliged to renounce her project; the commons also refused the subsidies which she had caused the Emperor and his son to expect, as an assistance in prosecuting the war with France. Philip in vain endeavoured to win a little popularity by interceding with the queen in favour of the prisoners of state detained at the Tower. Several were restored to liberty. Courtenay received permission to travel upon the Continent, and the Princess Elizabeth reappeared at court, but she did not long remain there; her position was difficult; she was constantly watched by jealous eyes; when she returned, however, to her residence at Ampthill, the queen began to look upon her sister with less uneasiness, for she was now expecting an heir to the throne.

The year 1555 opened under sinister auspices for the Reformed Church; the laws against heretics had been put in force again, and on the first day in January the Bishop of London, Bonner, followed by a great procession, repaired to St. Paul's, to return thanks to God for the light with which He had once more illumined the sovereign of the nation. A court commissioned to try heretics was soon formed. The prisons were filled with the accused; the first who was summoned belonged to the clergy of St. Paul's; Gardiner presided over the tribunal. "Did you not pray for twenty years against the Pope?" cried the prisoner, driven to extremities by the questions of his judge. "I was cruelly forced to it," replied the bishop. "Why, then, do you wish to make use of the same cruelty towards us?" asked Rogers; but this simple notion of liberty of conscience had not yet penetrated into the most enlightened minds, Catholic or Protestant; each party, in turn, had recourse to force, to aid what it looked upon as the truth, to triumph, and William of Orange, loudly proclaiming toleration towards the Catholics in a country which he was snatching from the horrors of the inquisition, drew down upon himself the censure of his Protestant friends. Rogers was condemned to be burned, and was refused the consolation of saying farewell to his wife. She was at the foot of the stake with her eleven children, the youngest at her breast, encouraging her husband until the last moment. He died worthy of her, augmenting by his firmness the long series of martyrs of the Reformed faith with whom the fanaticism of Mary was about to enrich the Church. Executions succeeded each other. {312} Hooper, the dispossessed bishop of Gloucester, an eloquent and austere divine, and Robert Ferrar, bishop of St. David's, were burned in their former dioceses. Condemnations and executions increased every day. Gardiner, weary of so many horrors, had ceased to preside over the court commissioned to try heretics, and the zeal of Bonner himself did not suffice to satisfy Philip and Mary. Cardinal Pole in vain endeavoured to moderate the persecuting ardour of the queen; the gentleness of his character and the experience which he had acquired in Germany, equally rendered him averse to executions as a means of conversion; but the conscience of Mary was pledged to the work; she desired to make England Roman Catholic; and, notwithstanding the terror of some, the hesitation of others, and the servility of a great number, she, day by day, found her task greater and more difficult; it was not the moment for relaxing her efforts.

Upon the accession of Mary, the relative strength of the two religions was about equal in her kingdom, although irregularly divided according to localities. The Protestants were numerous in nearly all the towns; the Catholics remained powerful in the north; but great influences were struggling against the royal authority, passionately engaged, as it was, in the struggle; the great noblemen were imperfectly assured of the security of their possessions, notwithstanding all the protestations and promises of the Pope. {313} The Protestant faith had taken firm hold upon a great number of souls among the clergy and the people. The ranks of the nobility did not furnish any religious martyrs, but the uneasiness which their temporal interests caused them contributed to keep up the agitation which produced so many political victims, and the masses of the people sealed their convictions with their blood. Two bishops and a great number of priests had already perished at the stake, in company with a host of unknown and obscure martyrs. The most illustrious witnesses of persecuted Protestantism were still captives; two bishops and an archbishop, all three celebrated for their eloquence and the part which they had played in the past, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, had been conducted to Oxford, in the month of March, 1554, there to argue in public with the Catholic doctors; all three had boldly maintained their opinions, and all three had been declared obstinate heretics. They had been awaiting their sentence for eighteen months, when, on the 12th of September, 1555, the royal commissioners arrived at Oxford. In his capacity of former Primate of England, Cranmer, a prisoner, was summoned to appear in Rome within eighty days, according to the forms of the canon law. Ridley and Latimer were condemned to die forthwith. A learned Spanish theologian was, however, despatched to them to enlighten them upon their errors. Latimer refused to see him, Ridley combated all his arguments; he was learned, eloquent, admirably versed in the Holy Scriptures, and it was he who had maintained the discussions with the Catholic doctors, with the most brilliant results. The day for argument had gone by, that of martyrdom was arriving. {314} On the 16th of October, 1555, the two prelates were conducted to the stake prepared for them near Baliol College, where the monument now stands which commemorates their execution. Latimer was old and worn out; he walked with difficulty. Ridley, who had preceded him, ran to meet him and embraced him "Be of good heart, brother," he said, "for God will either assuage the fury of the flame or strengthen us to bear it." The old man smiled, suffering himself to be stripped by the guards; Ridley divested himself of his clothing, which he distributed among the bystanders. When both were clothed in their shrouds and fastened back to back at the stake, the old bishop drew himself up, as though suddenly endowed with that superhuman strength which his companion in punishment had promised to him. "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley!" he cried, "and play the man, and we shall see this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out." The flames immediately suffocated him, but Ridley suffered for a long time. One of the bystanders at length had the charity to stir the embers, and the bag of gunpowder which had been attached to the necks of the victims having ignited, Ridley died by the explosion, while the prophetic words of old Latimer still resounded in every ear. England has remained illumined by the candle thus lighted by the martyrs of the sixteenth century.

Gardiner died on the 12th of November, and the queen confided the seals to the Archbishop of York, Heath, a prelate more zealous than his predecessor in the persecution of heretics, but less skilful and prudent in the conduct of public affairs. Upon the assembling of Parliament, Mary touched a tender chord; she asked for authority to restore to the Holy See the first-fruits and tithes, annexed under the reign of her father to the crown. "I set more value upon the salvation of my soul," she said, "than upon the possession of ten kingdoms such as England." The Houses did not oppose the salvation of the soul of the sovereign, but they trembled to see her lay hands upon their property, and the subsidies rendered necessary by the decrease in the royal revenues which the return of the annats to the court of Rome involved, were voted with ill-humor, and not without objections. The queen was obliged to have recourse to many vexatious courses in order to procure the money which her husband constantly demanded of her, thus increasing every day, the unpopularity of the Spaniards in the kingdom. All the English detested Philip. Mary alone loved him, with the sad tenderness of an unrequited affection. The king was almost always away from his wife, and only replied to her constant letters when he demanded of her the sums which he needed to maintain the wars with France. It was in vain that English prudence stipulated that peace should be maintained between France and England. What could laws effect against the devotion of the queen for her husband?

The weakness and timidity of Cranmer, deprived of the firm example of his companions in captivity, had been counted upon with good reason. The eighty days had elapsed, and the Primate, not having appeared at Rome, was declared guilty, degraded from his holy office, and delivered up to the secular power. {316} Then began the attempts at conversion. The prisoner was transferred to the house of the Dean of Christchurch, where indulgences were lavished upon him. It was represented to him that he was still in the prime of life, healthy and vigorous; why should he be obstinate in his errors and die like Latimer, who had only renounced a few years of a miserable existence? The unhappy archbishop suffered himself to be gained over, and signed six abjurations in succession, adding each time something to his shame. At the termination of these humiliations, at the moment when he at length thought to have purchased his liberty, it was announced to him that penitence did not absolve from punishment, that his return to the bosom of the Church insured, indeed, eternal life to him, but could not save him from the stake, and he was condemned to die on the 21st of March. In view of this perfidy, which deprived him of the fruits of all his acts of cowardice, Cranmer at length saw the extent of his mistake, and from the platform upon which he was placed, read to the people his last confession, boldly rejecting the Papal authority and the doctrines which he had recognized a few days previously, protesting his attachment to the Reformed faith, and his resolution to die faithful to it. At the same time he humbled himself before God and men for the base fear of death which had led him to belie the truth and his conscience. The agitation among the people was great; something totally different had been expected. "Recall your senses," said Lord Williams, "and show yourself to be a Christian." "That is what I am doing: at this moment," replied Cranmer; "it is too late to dissemble, I must come to the truth." {317} When he was conducted to the stake, before the flames reached him, he plunged his right hand into the raging fire to punish it for having signed the abjuration. "That is the one which has sinned," he exclaimed. Motionless in the midst of the flames, he appealed neither to the mercy nor the justice of men. "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," he cried, and expired. The impression produced by his execution was immense; he had redeemed, by his firm courage at the stake, all the vacillations and inconsistencies of his life, and his executioners had placed upon him the seal of glory as the Reformer of the Church of England, by employing against him a base act of perfidy somewhat rare in the annals of the persecutions under Mary. Those who recanted sometimes died of remorse, like the diplomatist Sir John Cheke; they were rarely dragged to the stake. Cardinal Pole was immediately nominated Archbishop of Canterbury; but his counsels were unable to arrest the persecutions, stimulated by the violent zeal of Pope Paul IV., recently elevated to the pontifical throne. Eighty-four persons perished that year by the flames. Nor did the living only suffer condemnation; the bones of Martin Bucer, who had died in England, whither he had been summoned by Cranmer during the reign of Edward VI., were disinterred and publicly burned. The body of the wife of Pierce., the martyr, suffered the same outrage; after her grave had been first desecrated she was buried in a dunghill. The reign of Mary lasted but five years; but in this short space of time two hundred and eighty-eight persons were legally condemned to execution on account of religion, and it would be impossible to enumerate the obscurer martyrs who died of hunger or suffering in the prisons. {318} The greater part of the victims belonged to the middle classes and the people; it was in those ranks that the most faithful attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation was manifested. The great enriched by by the spoliation and governmental reform of King Henry VIII., took no care but for their property. The poor defended their precious convictions by dying for them. Secret discontent was great even among the Roman Catholic population; the Spaniards were detested; crimes increased. Notwithstanding the stern repression which they had suffered under Henry VIII.,—seventy-two thousand murderers, thieves, or vagabonds, had, it is said, perished upon the gallows during his long reign,—the executioners of Queen Mary also had much to do; several times men of good birth, who had degraded themselves to the profession of highwaymen, were detected and seized. Certain parts of the kingdom were secretly agitated, and it was amidst this general uneasiness that Philip, who had become King of Spain in 1556, through the abdication of the Emperor Charles V., at length contrived to involve his wife and England in his quarrels with France.

The personal influence of Philip over Queen Mary was alone able to obtain this concession; the king was aware of this, and he arrived in England in the month of March, determined to recruit his armies with English forces. The whole of the council of Mary, with Cardinal Pole at their head, at first opposed the measure; in vain did Philip threaten to leave her for ever. {319} The ministers of the queen appealed to the marriage contract, affirming that England would find herself reduced to the state of a vassal if she allowed herself to be dragged at the heels of Spain into a war of no interest to her. An enterprise attempted by an English refugee in France, Thomas Stafford, who crossed the British Channel with some few troops, and took the castle of Scarboro by surprise, happened to second the solicitations of Philip II. Being made a prisoner, Stafford asserted that the King of France, Henry II., had encouraged him in his attempt, and the queen eagerly seized this pretext to satisfy the wishes of her husband by declaring war with France. When Philip quitted England, upon the 6th of July, 1557, never to return, he was shortly afterwards followed to Saint-Quentin, by a thousand English knights and six thousand foot-soldiers, commanded by the Earl of Pembroke. Queen Mary had great difficulty in raising this small corps; for the first time, perhaps, war with France was not popular in England.

It was destined soon to become still less popular, notwithstanding the successes of the King of Spain in France. The capture of Saint-Quentin, and the fear of seeing the victorious army advance against Paris, recalled the Duke of Guise from Italy, where he had threatened the territories of Philip; the latter took up his winter-quarters in Flanders, when the French general laid siege to Calais. The Spaniards had foreseen the danger and proposed to strengthen the garrison, but the council of England had jealously rejected this offer; they were preparing to send reinforcements. {320} Meanwhile, the French had appeared before Calais, on the 1st of January, 1558; on the 8th, after a skilful and bold attack upon the ramparts, the town capitulated and the garrison issued forth with their arms and baggage, while the English troops were waiting at Dover until the state of the sea should permit them to proceed to the assistance of their fellow-countrymen. On the 20th, Guisnes succumbed in its turn, and the English lost the last foot of ground which they possessed in France. Calais had been in their hands two hundred and eleven years, and the loss of it was bitterly painful to the queen and the people. Parliament immediately voted subsidies for prosecuting the war more vigorously. The Dauphin, subsequently Francis II., had recently married the young Queen of Scotland (April 24th, 1558), and the Scotch took up arms upon the frontiers, thus associating themselves with the quarrel of their sovereigns, by one of those aggressions towards which they were always disposed. They refused, however, to formally declare war with England, as they were urged to do by Mary of Guise, the regent of Scotland in the name of her daughter. The English fleet, under the orders of Lord Clinton, ravaged the coast of Brittany without much result; but a small squadron of ten vessels contributed to the victory of Gravelines by ascending the Aa, as Egmont was beginning the combat, and opening fire upon the right wing of the French. The Marshal de Termes, and a great number of French noblemen were made prisoners in this battle, which cost France dearly, yet brought nothing to England but a little glory in the wake of the Flemish general.

Meanwhile, Mary had been taken ill; she had seen her deceitful hopes of issue fade away, and the eyes of all turned towards the prudent Elizabeth, in retirement at her house at Hatfield. She professed a minute attachment to the practices of Roman Catholicism, following, in that matter, without difficulty, the counsels of her politic adviser, Cecil. She had refused the proposals of marriage which had been made to her by several princes, among others by the Duke of Savoy, and the Duke Eric of Sweden. Philip II. would have been glad to rid himself of his sister-in-law by causing her to marry, but Elizabeth contrived to thwart his projects without offending her sister, who ordinarily adopted all the wishes of her husband. She replied to the emissaries of the King of Sweden, who had addressed themselves directly to her, that she could not think of listening to any overtures which had not been sanctioned by her Majesty. Mary was touched by this confidence, and she manifested more friendliness to the princess, who always walked with caution upon the brink of abysses into which the imprudence or unskilful zeal of her friends might have precipitated her. The great nobles attached to the Reformation lived, as she did, in retirement. The Earls of Oxford and Westmoreland, as well as Lord Willoughby, had been reprimanded by the council, upon a question of religion. The Earl of Bedford had even suffered a short imprisonment. Sir Ralph Sadler, one of the usual negotiators of King Henry VIII.—a gentleman who was afterwards often employed by his daughter—had quitted the court, weary of the fanaticism which was displayed there. {322} All awaited in silence the death of Mary, bowing their heads under a yoke which could not last long. The queen, always delicate, had for several months been deeply attacked by a slow fever. She had vainly hoped to recover her strength at Hampton Court. She was brought back to London, and expired in St. James's palace, at the age of forty-three, on the 17th of November, 1558, without having seen the king her husband again. She sighed so bitterly in her death agony that her ladies asked her if she was suffering, commiserating her for the absence of King Philip. "Not that only," she said, "but when I am dead and opened you shall find Calais lying in my heart." On the morrow morning, almost at the same hour, Cardinal Pole died at Lambeth. The two pillars of the Catholic Church in England fell at the same time. Pole would have desired to insure the triumph of his cause by means of gentleness and justice; Mary had supported it by iron and fire. Both were equally sincere and convinced. Mary was of a narrow mind; her character, naturally stern and harsh, had been embittered by injustice and, suffering, but she was straightforward and honest, avoiding the subterfuges and deceits which Queen Elizabeth too often practised; she was animated by a fervent faith, which she deemed it her right and duty to impose by force upon all her subjects. In her breast the sufferings of the heretics excited little compassion, she was hardened against them, but in her private life, and towards her servants, she was good, generous, and capable of affection and devotion. She blindly loved her husband, who neglected and despised her on account of her lack of youth, and the few charms which nature had bestowed upon her. {323} Mary, however, was learned; she wrote pure Latin, she had studied Greek, and spoke French, Spanish, and Italian with ease. She was a good musician, and danced gracefully, her household was a model of order and regularity, and she was a noble example of piety and virtue. The memory of these good qualities and misfortunes pales in the presence of a supreme fault; a terrible stain remains imprinted upon the brow of the unfortunate queen by her fanaticism and her conscientious cruelty. She persecuted piously, she burned sincerely; her acts more than her character, merit the odious name which history has given her. On examining her life closely one is tempted to pity "Bloody Mary."

Chapter XX.

Policy And Government Of Queen Elizabeth.

Her Foreign Relations (1558-1603).

Elizabeth was at Hatfield when Mary died, a striking proof of the distrust which reigned between the two sisters, and which banished one from the death-bed of the other. The princess was devoting herself, as usual, to the serious occupations which were dear to her. Still more learned than her sister, brought up with care by the learned Roger Ascham, Elizabeth had continued the practice of reading some Greek every day; she even translated the rhetorician Isocrates. These literary recreations were interrupted by more urgent cares when the mortal illness of her sister began to bring about her the worshippers of the rising sun. Philip II. had been careful to send her a trustworthy ambassador. The Count of Feria had seen the princess before the death of the queen, and the king believed her to be gained over to the great Catholic confederation, and compelled to rely upon him and to regulate her conduct according to his counsels. She did not consult him, however, upon the course to be followed, when she was apprised of the death of her sister. Sir William Cecil, formerly secretary of state under Edward VI., who being in disgrace under Mary, had prudently submitted to the Roman Catholic requirements, had received all his orders by anticipation. {325} Parliament was sitting, Chancellor Heath repaired to the Houses, and there announced the accession of Queen Elizabeth, "the legitimate and rightful heir to the throne." Cries were raised of "Long live Queen Elizabeth!" Couriers were despatched by Cecil to all the sovereigns of Europe, announcing the accession, and the Lords hastened to Hatfield, to pay homage to the new sovereign. They asked her, upon arriving, what attitude she intended to assume. The Protestants, delivered from an odious yoke, were rejoicing, being convinced that, under the reign of her sister, the princess had concealed her real opinions. The Catholics, who were uneasy, counted upon the influence of Philip II. The first speech of Elizabeth did not enlighten them; it was cautious and measured, announcing no intention of abrupt changes. One indication alone, though slight in itself, soon caused people to feel from which quarter the wind blew; when the queen arrived at Highgate, the bishops came to meet her, and all kissed her hand, with the exception of Bonner, bishop of London, the principal persecutor of the Reformers, upon whom she turned her back. Notwithstanding the solemnity of the Catholic services celebrated in honour of Queen Mary and the Emperor Charles V., who had died a short time before, discreet observers saw that the queen inclined towards the party of the Reformation. Her ministers were yet more decided. Cecil, Pembroke, Northampton, and Lord John Grey, her intimate councillors, were all convinced of the immense progress which Protestantism had made during the persecution of Mary. They perceived, moreover, that the throne of their mistress rested exclusively upon Protestant principles. {326} Subject to the Pope, England must reject Elizabeth as illegitimate, since the marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn had not been sanctioned by the Catholic Church, and the succession would be between Lady Catherine Grey, a younger sister of the unhappy Jane, grand-daughter of Mary Tudor, and Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, dauphiness of France, grand-daughter of Margaret Tudor, wife of James IV., king of Scotland. The legitimacy of Elizabeth and her right to the throne sprang naturally from the act of supremacy. On the occasion of the ceremony of the coronation, on the 15th of January, all the bishops, with the exception of Doctor Oglethorpe, bishop of Carlisle, refused to officiate, striking a fatal blow to Roman Catholic influence in the kingdom by the hostile attitude which they thus assumed from the outset, either by their own action, or by orders emanating from Rome. Elizabeth was, however, crowned by Oglethorpe with all the ancient ceremonies, to the passionate delight of the populace of London, still in favour of the Reformation, who followed her through the streets upon her issuing forth from the Tower, where she had been formerly detained in terror of death; nosegays rained into her carriage, and shouts of gladness resounded in all quarters. Elizabeth received them with that kindly condescension which bound the hearts of her people to her, smiling when she heard the old men in the crowd declare that she resembled King Henry. "Be ye well assured," she said to the multitude that thronged around her at the Guildhall, "I shall stand your good queen." Amidst many faults and even crimes, Elizabeth was destined to keep her promise.

The Protestants were eager to enjoy their triumph, the more eager indeed since they were a little uneasy; the queen had preserved in her chapel a crucifix and a holy-water basin; she had forbidden controversial preaching and the sermons at Paul's Cross. These measures were taken in the interest of peace and concord, it was said, but they did not satisfy the ardour of the Reformers. Lord Bacon relates that on the morrow of the coronation, one of the courtiers presented to Elizabeth a petition in favour of certain prisoners, entreating, since she had in honour of her accession delivered several captives, that she would please also to release the apostle Paul and the four evangelists so long detained in prison, in a foreign tongue, so that they could not converse with the common people. The queen gravely replied that it would be necessary first to ascertain of them whether it was agreeable to them to be released. She had, however, already authorized the reading of the liturgy in English; a commission of theologians were secretly entrusted to revise the Prayer-Book of Edward VI., before restoring it to use. Elizabeth did not approve of all the reforms practised by Cranmer; the English who had taken refuge abroad on account of their religion, and who had returned to England at her accession with a zeal increased by persecution, would soon have drawn the Church of England into a path which was not hers, if the secret tendencies of Elizabeth towards Roman Catholicism and her resolution to maintain the royal prerogative had not energetically resisted their influence. When Parliament met, on the 25th of January, 1559, the queen made no proclamation, leaving to Cecil and the keeper of the seals, Nicholas Bacon (father of the great Chancellor Bacon), the duty of making known her wishes. {328} She allowed the bill of supremacy and the restoration of the tithes and annates to the crown to be proposed and voted. She allowed the laws of King Edward concerning religion to be put in force again as well as the prayer-book as modified by her orders, but the law for the reinstatement of the married clergy interdicted under the reign of Mary, was set aside by her desire. She was never able to approve of the marriage of priests. She also discountenanced the project for a code of canon law, being uneasy, no doubt, concerning the discussions which might spring from it. This double check dissatisfied the party ardent for the Reformation. Elizabeth subsequently asserted that the Protestants had impelled her in her course at the moment of beginning her reign. She took credit to herself; Parliament had not yet raised its head. It was under the prolonged influence of the Reformation that it was destined to foster noble instincts of liberty, and even at times to triumph over the firm will of Elizabeth.

Everything depended upon the marriage of the queen, and of this all parties were sensible. The great bulk of the nation were not so anxious about the selection of a husband as about the husband himself. They ardently desired to see the succession assured, and in the first session of Parliament in 1559, a deputation presented themselves before the queen at Whitehall, with the message, that the Commons conjured her Grace to think of marriage, in order that her posterity might reign over the kingdom. {329} It was the first time that Elizabeth proclaimed that aversion to marriage which was definitely to triumph over so many assaults and momentary hesitations. "From my years of understanding, knowing myself a servitor of Almighty God," she said, "I chose this kind of life in which I do yet live as a life most acceptable unto Him, wherein I thought I could best serve Him, and with most quietness do my duty unto Him." Then, laying stress in a few sentences upon the difficulties which she had overcome under the reign of her sister, in remaining faithful to her resolution, she added, without promising the Commons to marry, that she would never choose any but a husband as devoted as herself to the happiness of her people. "I take your petition in good part, for it is simple and containeth no limitation of place or person. If it had been otherwise, I must have misliked it very much, and thought it in you a very great presumption, being unfit and altogether unmeet to require them that may command. And for me, it shall be sufficient that a marble stone declare that a queen, having reigned such time, lived and died a virgin." The Commons retired without having obtained anything definite. The same demand was to be repeated many times, and to receive answers of a very different kind; but until the end of her life Elizabeth took pleasure in keeping the world in suspense by her grave coquetries, in the expectation of a marriage which she never seriously desired.

While Parliament was imploring the queen to take a husband, the King of Spain. Philip II., solemnly determined, by a conscientious sacrifice, to do her the supreme honour of offering his hand. Being resolved to preserve the place which he had acquired in England, and to retain that powerful kingdom in the bosom of the Catholic Church, he had written to Feria on the 10th of January, 1559, enumerating the objections which might be made to his union with his sister-in-law, and the inconveniences and sacrifices which must result from the step; but by an act of magnanimity of which he was the first to be convinced, Philip had resolved to set aside all obstacles. "You will understand in this what service I render to our Lord; through me her allegiance will be regained to the Church." Philip ended by settling beforehand all the conditions to which Elizabeth was to conform—all the submissions which she was to make to the Pope and to the Church, before being in a position to aspire to the elevation which he destined for her. Paul IV. had ill-prepared the way for the contrition of Queen Elizabeth. In the first days of her accession, when that event had been communicated to the Holy See, as well as to all the sovereigns of Europe, the Pope abruptly replied that, the Princess being illegitimate, she was to beware of laying hands upon the crown, and to lay down the sceptre as soon as possible until he should have declared concerning her rights. This claim had not inclined the queen to appreciate the generous sacrifice of Philip; she meekly rejected the advances of the Count of Feria, asserting that the friendship of her brother of Spain was as dear to her as his love could be, and that the Pope himself could not unite her to the husband of her sister. Feria spoke of the Queen of Scotland. Elizabeth did not suffer herself to be frightened, and without positively refusing the honour which the King of Spain did her, she said laughingly, that she was afraid he might be a bad husband, since he would come to England simply to marry her, but would not sojourn there with her. {331} The confidential letters of Philip had transpired: Feria understood that the definite reply would be unfavourable, but Elizabeth loaded the ambassador with attentions. A peace with France was negotiating at Cambray, and the queen who yet hoped to recover Calais, wanted the support of Philip for this important business. When peace was at length signed at Cateau-Cambresis and the violence of English resentment was appeased, on the 2nd of April, by the promise of the surrender of Calais at the end of eight years, Philip II. transferred to another Elizabeth the honour which he intended for his sister-in-law, by marrying the young Elizabeth of France, daughter of Henry II. "My name brings good-fortune." said the Queen of England on learning, not without ill-humor, the conditions of the treaty, with that singular coquetry which impelled her all her life to make use of every means to retain around her the suitors to whom she would grant nothing. The alliance between England and Spain still continued. "You will assure the queen that I remain her good friend," wrote Philip II. to Feria. He feared that she would turn towards the court of France, which was making great advances towards her. He might have reassured himself. France was then represented, in the eyes of Elizabeth, by Mary Stuart, and that princess had committed a mistake for ever ineffaceable in the eyes of Elizabeth, by quartering upon her escutcheon the arms of England with those of Scotland and France. The dauphin, in confirming the treaty, had also taken the title of King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a fatal pretension which was to engender many crimes.

Parliament was dissolved when Elizabeth called upon the bishops to conform themselves to the laws which had recently been re-established. All refused with the exception of Kitchen, bishop of Llandaff, formerly a Benedictine, whose habit it was to adopt at all times the religious belief of his sovereign. A certain number of dignitaries of the Church followed the example of the bishops, who found among the lower orders of the clergy very few adherents. Several bishoprics were vacant at the accession of Elizabeth. She gave pensions to a few of the clergy who retired on account of their religion, and provided for all the livings by placing in them the greater number of the exiles driven forth by the fanaticism of Mary. The Church of England was for ever lost to the Holy See, whatever hopes the Catholics might conceive in the future. The two statutes generally known under the names of the "Act of Supremacy," and the "Act of Uniformity," debarred from all public offices the conscientious Catholics who refused to recognise the religious authority of the queen, and at the same time prohibited the practice of their worship. Then began for the Catholics a silent, minute, continual persecution, penetrating into families, maintained by espionage, always vexatious, sometimes outrageous, mingling with politics and drawing therefrom the pretext for tyranny. This oppression did not break forth at first; it was in 1561 that Sir Edward Waldegrave and his wife were sent to the Tower for having entertained in their house a Catholic priest. {333} The bishops themselves were at first simply deposed; but their intemperate zeal having led some, towards the end of 1559, into presenting a petition which implored the queen to follow the example of her sister, of blessed memory, Elizabeth, greatly incensed, sent the petitioners to prison. Bonner was detained there until his death. The other prelates were at length released and even installed, sometimes with the Protestant bishops who had succeeded them, at other times with the rich clergy, to the great displeasure of both. The monasteries, recently reopened by Mary, were once more closed, and the crown again took possession of the property of the Church, which had been returned under the last reign. In the main, and notwithstanding a few modifications, the work of Cranmer and Edward VI. was restored. The opinion of the majority of the nation, and prudent policy, had overcome, in the mind of Elizabeth, her personal tastes and tendencies.

Political motives were about to unite her more and more with the Protestants of Europe. When she learned of the impertinent pretension of the dauphin to the title of King of England, she exclaimed, "I will take a husband who shall cause the head of the King of France to ache; he does not know what a rebuff I intend to give him." The queen had attributed to her the intention of uniting herself to the Earl of Arran, son of the former regent of Scotland, now known under the French title of Duke of Chatelleraut, heir presumptive to the throne of Scotland after the Stuarts. The Earl of Arran had ardently embraced the Protestant faith, and was in London in 1559, at the moment when Mary Stuart mortally offended "her good sister of England." {334} He had a secret interview with the queen at Hampton Court, and immediately set out, under an assumed name, for Scotland, accompanied by Randolph, a confidential emissary of Elizabeth. The condition of Scotland had become both complicated and aggravated by the death of the King of France, Henry II. Francis II., the husband of Mary Stuart, had determined, it was said, to expend all the property of France, if necessary, to put an end to the insurrection. It was to the support of the insurgents that the Protestant policy, then represented by Cecil, wished to pledge Queen Elizabeth, in order to bring about the marriage with the Earl of Arran, who had become King of Scotland, and that union of the two crowns which Henry VIII. had contemplated by the marriage of Edward VI. with Mary Stuart.

Nowhere had the Catholic Church offered so many vulnerable points to the Reformers as in Scotland, for nowhere were the clergy so corrupt. The Protestant doctrines, in their most austere and aggressive forms, had made such great progress there, that Knox may be regarded as the real chief of the insurrection which everywhere held the regent, Mary of Guise, in check. The violence of religious passions had already occasioned the destruction of a great number of churches and monasteries; the greater part of the nobility had abandoned the regent, to form themselves into a "Congregation of the Lord," under the direction of Lord James Stuart, an illegitimate son of James V., and a brother of Mary Stuart. {335} The troops from France alone allowed the regent to struggle against the insurgents; but the reinforcements were numerous and efficient. A French garrison had taken possession of Leith and threatened Edinburgh, when the agents of Queen Elizabeth set themselves to work, Randolph in Scotland, Sir Ralph Sadler at Berwick, where he was officially entrusted to negotiate with the delegates of the regent concerning the question of outrages upon the borders. The negotiations with the Lords of the Congregation were taking their course, still profoundly secret. Elizabeth was naturally parsimonious, and she had found the finances of England in great disorder. At the instigation of Cecil, however, she sent to Sadler considerable sums for the support of the malcontents. No blows had been struck since the recent arrangement between the regent and the great noblemen, and it was not until the month of October, 1559, that the insurgents laid siege to Leith. Hitherto Elizabeth had resolutely denied all relations with the Lords of the Congregation; but one of her agents were arrested, having in his possession a sum of two thousand pounds sterling. The hesitations and doubts of the queen often impeded the action of Cecil. She had no liking for the ardent Presbyterians. Knox, in particular, was odious to her; she had never forgiven him for a pamphlet upon female government, entitled, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous Regiment of Women, "I like not the audacity of Knox, whom you have well brought down in your answer," wrote Cecil to Sadler; "it does us no good here, and I suppress it as much as I can; however, fail not to send me what he writes." The subsidies did not suffice to maintain courage and discipline in the Scottish army. {336} Being repulsed before Leith, the Lords of the Congregation evacuated Edinburgh, and retired during the night to Stirling. Elizabeth resolved to adopt more efficacious measures. On the 27th of February, 1560, through the agency of Maitland of Lethington, formerly secretary of the queen regent, and who had gone over to the insurgent party, she concluded a treaty of alliance with the great Scottish noblemen, for the whole duration of the marriage of the Queen of Scotland with the King of France, undertaking not to lay down arms as long as the French should remain in Scotland. An English army crossed the frontier, under the orders of Lord Grey of Wilton; an English fleet, commanded by Winter, entered the Firth of Forth; and the Lords of the Congregation having assembled all their forces, siege was laid to Leith, on the 6th of April. The siege was still in progress on the 10th of June, when the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, expired in Edinburgh Castle, where Lord Erskine had received her, as upon neutral ground. This death precipitated the conclusion of a peace desired by both parties. The French surrendered Leith, and went aboard their vessel again, thus delivering Scotland from their presence; and a council of twelve noblemen, chosen partly by the queen, partly by Parliament, was entrusted to govern the country in the absence of the sovereign. The court of France recognized the right of Queen Elizabeth to the throne, and her good sister Mary gave up bearing the arms of England. The treaty of Edinburgh secured in Scotland the supremacy of Protestantism, which had become the religion of the majority of the population. {337} The vote of the Scottish Parliament, in the month of August, 1560, officially severed all bonds with the court of Rome, by adopting a confession of faith drawn up by Knox and his disciples, according to the doctrines of Calvin, and striking the ecclesiastical organization at its basis, no less than the religious practices of Catholicism. Matters stood thus, when the Parliament deigned to think of the assent of the queen. Sir James Sandilands, formerly Prior of the Hospitallers, was dispatched to France to demand a ratification, which was immediately refused. It was said that the uncles of Mary, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, were making preparations for an invasion in Scotland, when the young King of France, Francis II., expired suddenly, on the 5th of December, 1560, after the reign of seventeen months. The power of Mary Stuart was suddenly eclipsed; the bright morning of her life was about to disappear behind a dark cloud heavy with misfortunes and with crimes.

While Mary, but lately queen of France, was preparing to return to her cold and rugged country, Elizabeth was keeping in check the suitors who were contending for her hand. The King of Sweden, who had been ambitious of the honour of becoming her husband when he was but heir apparent, and when she was watched at Hatfield by the spies of her sister, despatched his brother, the Duke of Finland, to renew his offer. The ambassador was courteously received, and treated with distinction by the queen; but scarcely had he been installed by order of Elizabeth in the bishop's palace at Southwark, when the King of Denmark sent his nephew, the Duke of Holstein, as a claimant to the same honour. {338} "It is said that the Archduke Philip is on the way here," wrote Cecil, "without pomp, and, so to say, in secret. The King of Spain supports him warmly; I would, in God's name, that her Majesty might accept one, and that the rest should be honourably sent back." The Archduke Charles, son of the Emperor Ferdinand, did not come; like Elizabeth herself, he hesitated. The King of Sweden was not easily put off with refusals, but the Duke of Finland was obliged to quit without having obtained anything. The Duke of Holstein at least carried away, for his uncle, the Order of the Garter, and a pension for himself. The queen was making sport of all these suitors, taking pleasure in keeping them upon the alert by her coquetry, but more tenderly concerned for a young nobleman of her court than with all the princes who were seeking her alliance. For several months past the attention of the courtiers had been excited by the signal favour which she manifested towards Lord Robert Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland and brother of Lord Guilford Dudley, husband of Lady Jane Grey. The passing fancy which Elizabeth had displayed for Sir William Pickering and Lord Arundel, had given place to a more durable attachment. Lord Robert, subsequently known in history under the title of the Earl of Leicester, had taken possession of the heart of the queen. He nourished the hope of marrying her, but he had a wife, whom he kept in a secluded spot in the country. One day she fell down a staircase and broke her neck, without any one being a witness of the accident. Court rumours were unfavourable to Lord Robert. He was loudly accused of having caused the death of his wife, and the queen felt how much public opinion in England was opposed to her desire to marry the man whom she loved. {339} Mary Stuart had returned to Scotland. Elizabeth, still uneasy at the claims of her rival to the crown, had tartly refused an authorization to pass through her dominions, which Mary had asked for, and the bitter feeling which had always existed between the princesses had only increased. The Lords of the Congregation had invoked the support of the Queen of England, when Mary Stuart refused to ratify the separation which they had determined upon between Scotland and Rome. Upon leaving, with regret, that France in which she had been reared, the young queen had scarcely set foot in her kingdom when she encountered the violent opposition of her subjects to the worship which she had sincerely at heart. Her Roman Catholic friends, among others the Bishop of Ross, had urged her to land in the Highlands, and surrounding herself with the forces of the Earl of Huntley, a fervent Catholic, to repair at once to Edinburgh. She rejected this clumsy proposal, which placed her at the outset in contention with the majority of the nation, and the plaudits of the population greeted her at Leith, on the 19th of August; but, on the first Sunday after her arrival when the fierce Protestants saw the altar prepared in Holyrood Chapel, an outcry was raised against the mass, and Lord James Stuart was obliged to remain before the door of the chapel, with his sword drawn during the whole time of the service, in order to prevent any scandal. He did not contrive to prevent a visit from Knox. {340} The ardent and indomitable preacher repaired to the residence of the queen, now urging her by formal solicitations, now loading her with reproaches. Mary wept; but she refused to listen any longer to Knox, and the Reformer acquired the habit of referring to her from the pulpit under the name of Jezebel. The abyss was already beginning to open between Mary Stuart and her people; the crimes of both were about to render the evil irreparable.

Queen Elizabeth had opened negotiations for persuading her good sister of Scotland to publicly renounce all claim to the crown of England, but Mary demanded to be recognized as the second person of the kingdom, heiress to the throne in case of the death of Elizabeth without issue. The queen would not admit this claim; she experienced an inexpressible repugnance towards settling the succession after her decease. Mary Stuart was not destined to be the only sufferer from this mean jealousy. Elizabeth was at times more than a man, as her minister, Robert Cecil, son of the great Burleigh, said subsequently, but she also became sometimes less than a woman. She had conceived suspicions concerning Lady Catharine Grey, sister of Lady Jane, and heiress to her rights, such as they were. It was discovered that Lady Catharine had secretly married Lord Hertford, son of the Duke of Somerset, formerly Protector. She was imprisoned in the Tower, as though she had conspired against the life and power of the queen. Her husband was travelling in France; he was peremptorily recalled and thrown into prison in his turn. The marriage was declared null, and the child that had recently been born to this pair was stamped as illegitimate. {341} Without any other pretext than state reasons the husband and wife were detained in the Tower, where Lady Catharine Grey died in 1569. The same cause had already cost the lives of two daughters of the Duchess of Suffolk; the third was shortly afterwards to pay, like them, for the royal blood which ran in her veins.

Arthur and Anthony Pole, nephews of the Cardinal, had made a vain attempt in favour of Queen Mary, whom there was a project it is said, for marrying to one of the two brothers, when they should have placed her upon the throne of England; but the queen felt no uneasiness from this source, and she pardoned all the accused persons. She could not, however, conceal from herself that the Catholic princes in general looked upon her with distrust, and would willingly seek a pretext in the illegitimacy of her birth to conspire against her in favour of the Queen of Scotland. This secret motive, far more than her religious convictions, lead her to maintain abroad the cause of the oppressed Protestants, who turned their eyes towards the Queen of England. In France, the Reformers, under the orders of the Prince of Condé and the Admiral de Coligny, had risen at the beginning of 1562, upon the violation by the Duke of Guise of the recent treaties and the massacre of the Protestants at Vassy. They immediately claimed the assistance of Queen Elizabeth. Philip II., who had sent six thousand men to support the Duke of Guise, advised him to keep out of the quarrel and to remain neutral; but Elizabeth had adopted the theory, that she was seconding the wishes of the King of France, by fighting against the Guises, who endeavoured to tyrannize over him. {342} Under this pretext, she sent three thousand men to France, with instructions to take possession of Havre, as a pledge for the good intentions of the Huguenots towards her. At the same time she furnished money to the prince of Condé. An English detachment sent to the assistance of the besieged people in Rouen, was cut to pieces, after the capture of the town. But the garrison of Havre had been reinforced; the Earl of Warwick, brother of Lord Robert Dudley, was in command of the town; he remained firm for nine months both against treachery and the armies of the French. He only yielded to the plague, when infection had thinned his forces. Wounded and ill himself, he was concerned only for the fate of the soldiers whom he brought back when he returned to England in the month of July, 1563, bringing with him the pestilence which had triumphed over all his efforts. Thousands of victims succumbed to the plague which ravaged London during the months of September and October. Elizabeth was negotiating with Queen Catharine of Medicis. The Protestants had been vanquished, but the Duke of Guise was dead, assassinated by Poltrot. Peace was signed on the 11th of April, 1564, at Troves, and the last hope of regaining Calais vanished with the departure of the hostages whom France had given shortly before; Elizabeth received in exchange the sum of a hundred and twenty thousand crowns, a sum very useful to her treasury, which was then empty.

The Parliament of England had, nevertheless, voted considerable subsidies in the preceding year, not without repeating its constant request in favour of the marriage of the queen. The Commons had added on this occasion another petition, which sounded ill in the royal ears. In the event of her Grace having decided for ever against marriage, she was implored to permit Parliament to designate and recognize her legitimate successor. Once more Elizabeth led her people to hope that she was thinking of marriage. She was then engaged in the Scottish intrigues respecting the marriage of Mary Stuart, more probable, although as much debated as her own. Religious and political parties continued to rend Scotland asunder. The Catholics, under the order of the Earl of Huntly, had been defeated at Corrichie by the Earl of Murray, formerly Lord James Stuart, at the head of the Protestants. It was constantly repeated that such or such a one of the great opposing noblemen aspired to the hand of Queen Mary, and they were not the only aspirants. Her beauty, her charms, and the prospect of the crown of England added to the crown of Scotland, drew upon her the eyes and the ambitious hopes of a crowd of princes. The King of Spain proposed his son and heir Don Carlos, and the treaty had been sufficiently advanced by the care of the skilful ambassador of Philip in London, the Bishop of Quadra. When that prelate died, the negotiations relaxed [and] the Guises spoke of the Duke of Anjou, subsequently Henry III., of the Duke of Ferrara, and of several others; but all these claimants were Catholics, the Scottish nation was hostile to them, and Queen Elizabeth did not conceal the fact that any union with a foreign prince, opening up to her enemies the road to her dominions, would bring about war. {344} A personal interview had been projected between the two queens. Mary was, it was said, desirous of consulting her good sister and of proceeding according to her advice, but Elizabeth, vain as she may have been and whatever care she may have taken to cause her beauty to be exalted by her courtiers, at the expense of the charms of her rival, had no wish to face the comparison; the two princesses never saw each other. The Queen of England, meanwhile, proposed for the husband of Mary Stuart, the man whom she herself loved, Lord Robert Dudley, whom she soon raised to the rank of Earl of Leicester. Did she act sincerely? Did she seriously wish to make the fortune of Leicester through the hands of Mary, when politics and her personal scruples did not allow her to raise him to her own level? None will ever know this; but the negotiations were renewed several times, Elizabeth continuing to insist upon marrying the Queen of Scotland to a great English nobleman, and refusing to hear of any but Leicester. People spoke of Lord Darnley, the eldest son of the Earl of Lennox, and grandson, by his mother, of Lady Margaret Douglas, of the Earl of Angus and of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland, and aunt of Elizabeth. He was, therefore, cousin-german to Mary Stuart, and his father, for a long while exiled from Scotland, whither he had recently returned, had immediately undertaken to bring about his marriage with the queen. His birthplace was in England, and he was an English subject, but Elizabeth did not favour his pretensions. Resting her hand upon the shoulder of Leicester, she said to Melville, the skilful and faithful envoy of Mary Stuart, "What do you think of this man? Is he not a good servant? And, nevertheless, you prefer that stripling to him?" referring to Darnley who bore the sword of justice before her. {345} Notwithstanding these objections, Darnley arrived in Scotland at the beginning of the year 1565. and was received kindly by Queen Mary. He was handsome and of good figure; his mother was skilful and intriguing. The confidants of Mary were all gained over; the queen was not opposed to this union. Lord Murray, who counted upon retaining power, counselled the marriage; Parliament did likewise. Queen Elizabeth was informed of what was happening and her anger was violent. Cecil still hoped that Mary Stuart would marry Leicester and so ward off from the head of his mistress the danger of a union which constantly occupied his thoughts. The grave objections of her "good sister" were made known to the Queen of Scotland. Elizabeth went further; the property which the Lennoxes possessed in England was confiscated, and the Countess of Lennox and her second son were sent to the Tower. Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, in whom Elizabeth had confidence was despatched to Scotland, to intrigue with the Lords of the Congregation; they were by slow degrees separating themselves from Mary, and Murray was the first to blame what he had himself advised a short time before. The preachers thundered against the possibility of a union with a Roman Catholic king. Mary was solemnly invited by the assembly of the Church to conform herself to the Protestant faith, by abolishing everywhere in her dominions the Catholic worship. {346} Plot succeeded plot, but Mary was, she said, too much involved to draw back, and on the 12th of July, Darnley, whom the queen had recently raised to the rank of Earl of Ross and Duke of Rothsay, married Mary Stuart in Holyrood Chapel. He was proclaimed king at the Cross in the market-place of Edinburgh. The Earl of Murray and the greater part of the Lords of the Congregation immediately rose in insurrection; but before they were able to assemble their forces, the queen marched upon them at the head of the royal army, and with pistols at her saddle-bow. The lords turned their horses' heads and retired without fighting. Lord Murray and the Duke of Chatellerault only stopped in their flight when they had crossed the frontier. They were ill-received by Elizabeth, though she had encouraged them in their revolt, for she liked neither the insurgents nor those who were vanquished, and she did not intervene in their favour with Mary, who had caused a bill of attainder to be declared by her Parliament against the chiefs of the insurrection. At the same time, Mary committed the error to which she had for a long time been solicited by her uncles of Guise. She united herself to the great Catholic alliance formed several years before between France and Spain, and renewed, it was said, at Bayonne, in 1564. The continual difficulties caused by the rebellions of the great nobles, and by the intrigues of England, naturally tended to throw Mary into the arms of the Catholic sovereigns; it was a fatal blunder on the part of the Queen of Scotland, but her guilt was of another kind.

Mary, Queen Of Scots.

Darnley was both incompetent and unmannerly, violent and weak. The affection which he had inspired in Mary Stuart soon disappeared and gave place to contempt. She has been accused of worse still; the niece of the Guises, brought up by Catherine of Medicis, amidst all the disorder of morals which reigned at the court of France, had a bad reputation among the austere Presbyterians; they attributed the most unworthy motives to the elegant tastes for frivolous pastimes which led the queen to surround herself with young men, with foreigners and artists. No one was more suspected among the favourites of Mary than an Italian, David Rizzio, who had won her good graces by his musical talents, and to whom she had gradually confided important trusts. Rizzio had especially aroused the jealousy of Darnley; the Italian had, it was said, taken the liberty of reproaching the young king with his behaviour towards Mary; he also encouraged the queen in her refusal to confer upon Darnley the crown as her consort instead of the vain title which he bore. A plot was hatched against the life of Rizzio. At the head of the conspirators was Lord Ruthven, who had been a short time before in a dying condition, and who arose from his sick-bed to take part in a deed of blood with Lord Morton, chancellor of the kingdom. Their aim was to recall the Earl of Murray and the exiled lords, by revoking the acts passed against them by Parliament.

On the 9th of March, 1566, Mary was supping in her apartment with her ladies, and Rizzio was in the room, when the young king came to the palace, followed by Ruthven. The queen rose in alarm, for the other conspirators had just entered. Ruthven ordered Rizzio to leave the chamber, but Mary placed herself before her favourite, who clung to her dress. Darnley seized the hands of his wife; the table was overthrown; the unhappy Italian cried, "Mercy! justice! justice!" George Douglas drew the dagger of Darnley, and struck the secretary. Andrew Ket, one of the conspirators, presented his pistol close to the body of the queen, who implored them to spare Rizzio. He was dragged out, and was pierced by numerous dagger-thrusts in the antechamber, while Morton guarded the doors of the palace with a troop of armed men. When Mary heard that Rizzio was dead, she stood erect. "I will now dry up my tears," she said, "and I will think of revenge." Darnley endeavoured to console the queen; she suffered him to believe that she accepted his excuses, and when his brother, Lord Murray, presented himself on the morrow at Holyrood, with the banished noblemen, she received him without anger, and contrived to detach him from those who had exerted themselves on his behalf, perhaps without his knowledge. Morton and Ruthven, abandoned by Darnley and Murray, immediately took to flight, while the Earl of Bothwell and Lord Huntley were bringing to the queen an army of eighteen thousand men, that they had immediately levied. Mary was once more mistress of the situation. Two obscure accomplices in the murder of Rizzio alone bore the penalty of the crime, and on the 9th of June, 1566, the queen gave birth to a son, who was to become James VI. of Scotland, and James I. of England. Elizabeth had promised to act as godmother to the child of the Queen of Scotland. When the prince was born, Melville departed in all haste, to bear the news to London.

"George Douglass Seized Darnley's Dagger And Struck Rizzio."

Cecil was the first informed; he repaired to Greenwich; the queen was dancing after supper. "But," wrote Melville, "when the secretary of state whispered in her ear of the birth of a Prince, the merriment disappeared for the evening. Everybody was astonished at the change, but the queen sank into a chair, with her hand upon her cheek, saying to her ladies that the Queen of Scotland was the mother of a fine boy, while she was but a barren stem." On the morrow, Elizabeth had regained her composure, and she graciously congratulated the ambassador, despatching the Earl of Bedford to Scotland with her gifts, to be present at the baptism of the little prince. Darnley did not wish to take part in the ceremony; he knew that the Queen of England had forbidden her emissaries to bestow royal honours upon him.

He had, besides, other causes for dissatisfaction. A growing coldness existed between his wife and himself. The apparent reconcilliation which had followed the murder of Rizzio, had not lasted long, and Darnley thought of going away from Scotland, and travelling upon the Continent. Queen Mary had addressed a letter to the privy council of Elizabeth, claiming the recognition of her hereditary rights, a matter which had recently been mooted in the English Parliament, to the great exasperation of her Majesty. The Commons had even insisted more than usual, notwithstanding the ordinary promise of the queen to think of marriage. Elizabeth had recently been ill, and the terrors of a contested succession had drawn forth the deputies from their ordinary state of submission. {350} When the request of Mary arrived, the queen of England abruptly imposed silence upon the Commons. "Under the pretexts of marriage and succession, many amongst you conceal hostile intentions," she said, "but I have learnt to distinguish my friends from my enemies, and take care, whoever be the sovereign who holds the reins of government, not to wear out his patience as you have done mine." She gave instructions to the Earl of Bedford to induce Mary to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh, which yet remained pending, and which contained verbally, the renunciation of the rights which Mary claimed, promising to regulate the question of the succession by a fresh treaty. Mary refused, but, in order not to exasperate her powerful rival, she consented at the request of Bedford to pardon Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay, who had taken refuge in England after the murder of Rizzio. Darnley no doubt conceived fears at the news of the return of Morton, for he immediately left the court and sought retirement at the residence of the Earl of Lennox near Glasgow.

Scarcely had the young king arrived at his father's house when he caught the small-pox. He was in great danger, and the queen sent her physician to him, without going to see him herself, as long as he was seriously ill. She remembered, no doubt, that while in a dying condition the preceding summer, at Jedburgh, her husband had not troubled himself to go and see her. When Darnley was convalescent, Mary consented to a fresh reconciliation. She repaired to Glasgow and took the king with her to Edinburgh. {351} She took up her residence as usual at Holyrood, but the fear of infection caused Darnley to be installed in an isolated house, where the queen went to see him. Rumours of conspiracy were already afloat; the insolent Darnley had few friends and many enemies. He was, however, warned by the Earl of Orkney that if he did not promptly quit this place, he would lose his life there, but the king had been smitten again with a capricious passion for his wife. He only saw through his eyes, and a word from the mouth of Mary soon quieted his suspicions. On the 9th of February, 1567, the queen supped with him, then left him at eleven o'clock for a ball which she was giving at Holyrood, in honour of the marriage of one of her servants. Three hours after her departure, at two o'clock in the morning, the house in which Darnley was alone with five servants, was suddenly blown up, and the body of the unhappy king was found in the garden, beside that of a page, without trace of burning or of any violence, while the other victims remained buried beneath the rubbish. No one had escaped. The blow had been struck by a sure hand. Mary was again a widow.

The public voice immediately accused the Earl of Bothwell. His violent passion for the queen was known; it was even whispered that it was mutual, notwithstanding the signs of grief shown by Mary, who remained shut up in an apartment hung with black. The details of the crime indicated long premeditation and skilful accomplices. Nearly all the ministers of the queen, Maitland especially, were implicated in the suspicions of the public. Nobody laid hands upon the principal person accused, even when the Earl of Lennox demanded his arrest. {352} He was allowed to take possession of Edinburgh Castle before a warrant of arrest was granted against him. He appeared at the bar of the court of justice, but rather in triumph than as an accused person. The Earl of Lennox, alarmed at the attitude of the assassins of his son, had fled and taken refuge in England. Bothwell was acquitted, and bore the sceptre before the queen at the opening of Parliament. Darnley had been sleeping only one month in his bloody tomb, and already the rumour was afloat that the queen was about to marry the Earl of Bothwell, whom general opinion regarded as the murderer of her husband. Bothwell had been married six months before to the sister of the Earl of Huntley.

In the midst of this court agitated by such violent passions and tainted by such dark acts of treachery, the queen had a few faithful friends, and these warned her of the sinister rumours which circulated concerning her. Her honest envoy, Melville, relates how he took her a letter from England upon this subject; the queen showed it to the Secretary Maitland: "Bothwell will kill you," said the politician; "retire before he comes within this place." And, as Melville persisted, the queen sharply replied that matters had not yet come to that, although she refused to go into details.

Bothwell had, however, taken his precautions and secured powerful partisans. He brought together at a banquet all the principal members of Parliament, and there, protesting his innocence of the murder of Darnley, he announced his intention of marrying the queen. Whether from fear or from promises of advantage, the guests signed a document which Bothwell produced, recommending the earl for the husband of Mary, and they undertook to favour the marriage by every means. {353} Four days later Bothwell gathered together a thousand horses. He planted himself in the way of the queen, who was returning from Stirling, between Linlithgow and Edinburgh, where she had been to see the little prince. He fell upon the royal escort, and himself laying hands upon the bridle of Mary's horse, he dragged her, with her principal councillors, into Dunbar Castle, exclaiming at the moment of the capture, "that he would marry the queen, whether people wished it or not, whether she wished it herself or not," he detained her for five days in the fortress, without her subjects attempting the slightest effort to deliver her. On the 29th of April, when she was restored to liberty, the queen appeared before the session court, announcing with shame that notwithstanding the outrages which the Earl of Bothwell had made her suffer, she was disposed to pardon him and to raise him to fresh honours. On the 15th of May, the marriage was celebrated publicly at Holyrood, according to the Protestant rites, and in private according to the Catholic rites. Bothwell had legally separated himself from his wife; the murderer had obtained the object of his crime.

Hitherto silence had been preserved as to the guilt of Bothwell, but the public conscience was shocked by the marriage. At the same time burst forth the plots which had long been in preparation to hurl Mary from the throne. Scarcely had she, whether willingly or under compulsion, concluded this odious union, when revolt suddenly threw off its mask. {354} The great nobles had signed the engagement of Bothwell; now they loudly accused him of the murder of Darnley, manifested their fears for the life of the little prince, and announced the intention of delivering the queen from the yoke of her husband. An attempt to take possession of Bothwell's person having failed, the confederates marched upon Edinburgh, where they seized the government; but Mary rarely shrank from violence; she was resolute and quick; on the 15th of June, a month after her marriage, she was at Carbery Hill at the head of the troops that she had raised, in the face of the army of the insurgents. No blows were struck. The ambassador of France, the aged Le Croc, endeavoured to negotiate between the two parties. The forces of the confederates increased every moment; the soldiers of the queen appeared valiant. Bothwell proposed single combat to the hostile chiefs. Several accepted, but without result. It was at length agreed to allow Bothwell to proceed without obstacle, provided the queen should consent to return to her capital, where her faithful subjects surrounded her with honour and respect. Two hours later Bothwell departed at a gallop, and placed himself in safety; but Mary was a prisoner, and she was conducted to the house of the Provost of Edinburgh, where she remained shut up for twenty-four hours without being approached by any one. On the morrow, after nightfall, a numerous guard took the captive to Lochleven Castle, under the custody of William Douglas and his mother, formerly the mistress of James V. and the mother of Murray. Bothwell soon left the kingdom.

The anger of Elizabeth, at the news of the arrest of Mary, was violent and unfeigned. Not that she took much interest in the rival whose power she had incessantly endeavoured to ruin, through fear of the enterprises which she might attempt against England, but the outrage suffered by the Queen of Scotland cast a reflection upon all sovereigns. It was a blow at the regal dignity, the fruit of the pernicious principles which Knox and his adherents propagated. Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was sent to the confederate noblemen to command them to deliver their queen; but Cecil was in no such haste as his mistress to see Mary out of prison. His private instructions relaxed the ardour of the negotiator. The lords of the council had lost no time. Lord Lindsay appeared at Lochleven, the bearer of an act of abdication in favour of the little prince. The queen was invited to sign it; she refused. Lindsay took hold of her arm, and squeezing it in his iron gauntlet, "Sign," he said, "if you do not wish to die as the assassin of your husband." The queen signed without looking at the paper, merely raising her sleeve to show to those present the traces of the violence which she had just suffered. The uncouth warrior was himself ashamed. "I did not know that the flesh of women was like newly-fallen snow," he muttered; but he carried away the document. King James VI. was proclaimed and crowned on the 20th of June, and on the 22nd of August the Earl of Murray, who had returned to Scotland, after a prudent absence, was declared regent of the kingdom. He paid a visit to his sister at Lochleven, and asserted that he only accepted that office out of consideration for the prayers and tears of Mary. {356} In the month of December, an act of the council declared the queen an accomplice in the murder of her husband, and in the abduction of her person by Bothwell. The deed was proved, it was said, by a correspondence between Mary and Bothwell, recently discovered by the Earl of Morton. The responsibility of the deposition of the queen fell entirely on her own head, and was but the just punishment of her crimes.

Justice or the violence of men might take everything from Mary Stuart, except the power of her charms. Even at Lochleven, she contrived to make partisans and win friends. On the 2nd of May, 1568, the lords of the council suddenly learnt that the queen had escaped from Lochleven, through the skill of a young man who had contrived to steal the keys. She arrived by night at Hamilton Castle, and had already revoked her abdication. A week had not elapsed before she had gathered an army around her.

The situation was critical, but the regent and his friends contrived to face the danger. As Mary advanced towards Dunbarton Castle, she encountered a body of troops, small in number, but disciplined and well armed; her partisans sprang to the combat with more zeal than strategy; they were soon defeated and put to flight. The deserted queen at first escaped the pursuit of her enemies, but she felt that she was closely pressed. The thought of the horrors of a prison chilled her with fear; she had expected death when she had been in the hands of her revolted subjects; she resolved to place herself under the protection of her good sister, Queen Elizabeth, and to proceed to England. The friends who yet surrounded her were opposed to this project. {357} The Archbishop of St. Andrew's implored her upon his knees to abandon it; but Mary would listen to nothing; she stepped into a little fishing-boat to cross the Solway, and landed, on the 16th of May, at Workington, a fortnight after her escape from Lochleven, hence to direct her course at once towards Carlisle. Arrived there, she despatched a messenger to solicit an interview with Elizabeth. The fugitive queen was already lodged in a fortress, rather as a prisoner than as a sovereign, when she received the reply of Elizabeth to her request. The Queen of England could not see her, it was said, until she should have cleared herself of all suspicion with regard to the death of her husband.

Elizabeth had refused to grant the title of regent to Murray, and she had appeared to espouse the cause of Mary; but the policy of Cecil received too opportune an assistance from the imprudent confidence of the Queen of Scotland, to allow the opportunity to pass without profiting by it. The captive committed the mistake of asking that, if the queen could not protect her, she would at least allow her to traverse her kingdom, to go and beg the support of the foreign princes, "the King of France and the King of Spain being bound to come to her assistance on this occasion." The Catholic confederation in Scotland, at the threshold of England, was too real a danger for the wisdom of Elizabeth not to be struck with it. She consented to the proposal of Cecil, and offered to serve as arbitrator between the Queen of Scotland and her subjects, through the agency of an English commission. Mary indignantly refused. She could not and would not degrade the crown of Scotland to the condition of vassalage; she was the queen and independent. {358} The judges who were suggested to her, had at all times fomented the agitations against her, and supported her enemies. She asked for no other favour than liberty to return to Scotland, or to repair to France. She had come to England upon the faith of the assurances of friendship which Queen Elizabeth had transmitted to her while she was at Lochleven. "Being innocent, as, thank God, I know I am, do you not (she asked) do me a wrong by keeping me here?"

In reply to this appeal, which it was difficult to reject with common justice, Mary was transferred from Carlisle to Bolton Castle. The agents of Elizabeth, in all the courts of Europe, appeared to have given the signal to each other to alarm her concerning the consequences of the liberation of the Queen of Scotland. "Her Grace now holds the wolf who wished to devour her," wrote, from Paris, Sir Henry Norris; "it is said that there is a conspiracy between the King of France, the King of Spain, and the Pope, to ruin her Majesty, and to put the Queen of Scotland in her place."

Elizabeth sent a messenger to Scotland, to call upon the regent and the confederate lords to cease hostilities; but her representations had little effect, while the manœuvres of the Scottish insurgents powerfully impressed her. She began to believe in the crime of which Mary so vigorously protested her innocence, and she demanded that the Queen of Scotland should exculpate herself in her eyes, promising to place her again upon the throne if her innocence should be proved; for, at the bottom of her heart, and in her royal sympathy for sovereigns, she had been and remained shocked at the audacity of the Scots, who had dared to dethrone their queen, whatever might have been her faults. {359} The regent had replied to the reproaches and threats of the Queen of England, that "if Elizabeth wished to wage war against them, they would not sacrifice their lives, and would not risk their possessions, by passing as rebels in the world, when they had in their hands the means of justifying themselves, whatever regret that might occasion them."

The die was cast; the accusers of Queen Mary, her brother, Lord Murray, and his constant enemy, Lord Morton, were to come from Scotland, to be confronted with her before the commission of English judges. All parties were equally uncertain, respecting the result of the conference, for all distrusted Queen Elizabeth, who had lavished upon both sides the most contradictory promises. Mary counted upon her to replace her again upon her throne. "I have abandoned despatching my letters to the courts of France and Spain, relying upon the promises of your Grace, and wishing, if I am to be restored to the throne, that it may be solely by the means of the court of England." However, Cecil had assured Murray "that it was not intended to re-establish the Queen of Scotland, if her crime is proved, whatever her friends may say."

The conferences opened at York, upon the 4th of October. There were repeated all the arguments, there were enumerated all the facts well known in history. Mary threw the guilt of the crime not only upon Bothwell, but upon his accomplices, causing it to be clearly understood that her accusers had good reasons for making the whole weight of it fall upon her. She resolutely denied the genuineness of the letters found in her casket, of which copies only had been produced at first, and she demanded to be admitted to the queen, to defend herself in her presence. The conferences were transferred from York to Westminster. The Queen of England and her ministers felt the necessity for following more closely the dark intrigues which intersected each other in all directions around the captive queen. The secretary Maitland had opened negotiations for the marriage of the Queen of Scotland with the Duke of Norfolk, affirming that the Protestantism of the great English nobleman would reassure the reforming party in Scotland, and would definitively re-establish the throne of the Queen. It is probable that the designs of the skilful intriguer went further. He was aware of the secret discontent of the English Catholics, of the powerful friends whom Norfolk could rally around him, and he hoped no doubt to raise a revolt in England. The wisdom of Cecil saw through the manœuvre. The liberty of Mary was for ever lost, even could her innocence have been proven, which it assuredly was not. Mary in Scotland constantly threatened the throne of Elizabeth. The servants of the Queen of England were even alarmed for her life. Mary in prison was dangerous, no doubt, but the peril was less and the question of the justice of the detention of a sovereign who had voluntarily come to place herself under the protection of her relative, did not enter into the matter. {361} On the 11th of January, 1569, after three months of conferences and intrigues, Elizabeth publicly declared to the Regent Murray that nothing had been proved against his honour or that of his partisans, but that the crimes imputed to Queen Mary had not been demonstrated with sufficient clearness to inspire her with a bad opinion of her good sister. Nevertheless, Murray returned freely to Scotland, supplied with the money which was necessary for the support of his government, and Mary remained in prison, in spite of her protestations and anger. Elizabeth several times found means of counselling her to abandon the crown and to lead a peaceful life in England, but Mary firmly replied that she was determined to die rather than to comply with such suggestions; that justice required that she should be reestablished upon her throne, after which "she would show as much clemency to the authors of her troubles, as should appear to her compatible with her honour and the good of her kingdom." The captive also protested that she would not consent to proceed further away from the frontier; but, on the 26th of January, in cold and gloomy weather, the beautiful queen was compelled to mount a wretched horse, and accompanied by a few ladies, and a small number of servants, to ride as far as Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire, a fortress belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury. This nobleman was henceforth entrusted with her custody, a constant anxiety to the sovereign who under the influence of female jealousy had belied the nobler side of her character, and who now could find no place sufficiently strong, no jailor sufficiently vigilant to keep the prisoner whom she was unjustly detaining.

The affairs of Queen Elizabeth were as much complicated abroad as at home, and her external policy was neither frank nor sincere. The oppression of the United Provinces by the King of Spain had aroused a general discontent which brought about insurrections in the towns, and the beginning of that indomitable rebellion which was to end in the dismemberment of the Low Countries. The Prince of Orange had placed himself at the head of the oppressed people, protecting the religious and political liberties of his country, and his great struggle with the terrible Duke of Alba had begun. Everywhere the Protestants felt themselves threatened, and conspiracies recommenced in France. The Prince of Orange and the Prince of Condé both applied to Queen Elizabeth for assistance and money. The queen secretly supported them in a niggardly and unwilling fashion, though urged by Cecil, whose policy was more firm, whose intelligence was more clear-sighted, and whose views were broader than those of his mistress; but she took care loudly to protest her friendship for the King of Spain and Charles IX., while encouraging the open or secret enemies who were struggling against their power. Upon all stages and in all countries of Europe the policy of the sixteenth century continually presents that character of duplicity and falsehood which necessarily results from the absence of publicity and control, but which renders history difficult to understand, and more difficult to relate.

Amidst the embarrassments which the claimants of the succession to the crown of England caused her, Elizabeth had resumed, it, indeed, she had ever abandoned her matrimonial negotiations. The Archduke Charles was yet unmarried, and, in 1567, the queen solemnly sent the Earl of Sussex, as ambassador, to Vienna, to deal with the great question of religion. The archduke had never come to England, although he had several times been invited, and the queen declared that she would never marry a man without having seen him. Sussex lavished upon her descriptions of the person of the Archduke, not without adding to them the attraction of his domains, and of the great position which he occupied at the court of the Emperor. He assured the prince that this time the queen wished to proceed seriously in the matter, since she was free to marry whomsoever she should think fit, and she had never inclined towards any other union. The archduke felt much honoured, but when the question of religion was opened, he frankly declared that his ancestors had always professed the same religion as himself, that he knew no other, and would never change it. Elizabeth then urged the Protestant feeling of her subjects, without, however, breaking off the negotiations, which only ended on the day when the archduke married the daughter of the Duke of Bavaria.

The embarrassments of Elizabeth in England were complicated through the progress of the intrigue having for its object the marriage of Mary with the Duke of Norfolk. Elizabeth had openly spoken of it to the Duke, who had excused himself, affirming that he could never think of uniting himself to a princess who had raised claims to the throne of England, nor to a woman whose husband could not sleep peacefully upon his pillow. {364} This allusion to the fate of Darnley had for a moment lulled the distrust of the Queen of England, but Cecil was alive to all the dangers which threatened his mistress. He had a short time before discovered the marriage of Lady Mary Grey, sister of Lady Jane and Lady Catherine. "What a mischance!" he wrote; "Sergeant Portier, the tallest and fattest of the gentlemen of the court, has conceived the idea of secretly marrying Lady Mary Grey, the shortest of all the ladies. They have been placed in separate prisons, the crime being very great." And the jealousy of Elizabeth towards any who approached the throne closely, or at a distance, was so excessive, that the unhappy Mary remained in prison until her death, without ever seeing her husband again. Deplorable end of a family doomed to the most tragic reverses!

Cecil had personal reasons for watching the intrigue for the marriage of Mary with the Duke of Norfolk. The Earl of Leicester, always jealous of the influence of the great Minister with his mistress, endeavoured secretly to undermine a power which he dared not attack face to face, and he exerted himself to attach the powerful Norfolk by urging him on in his perilous undertaking. The duke hesitated, but the Earl of Arundel and the Earl of Pembroke united themselves with Leicester. They despatched to Queen Mary articles of marriage, intended to insure the security of Elizabeth, by the total renunciation by Mary of her pretensions to the crown of England, and by an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the queen, her good sister. Mary Stuart was to allow the reformed religion to be established in Scotland, and to give her hand to the Duke of Norfolk.

People who are anxious to get out of prison are ready to accept harsh conditions, especially when they are not firmly resolved to observe them. Mary promised all that was desired with the sole reservation that the consent of Elizabeth should be obtained to the marriage. "All my misfortunes," she said, "have arisen from the anger of my sister, when I married Darnley." Leicester was counted upon to obtain this favour, and the duke wrote the most passionate letters to Mary, through the agency of the Bishop of Ross, who was still faithful to his mistress. The consent of the Kings of Spain and France had been asked for, and Murray was to propose to the Parliament of Scotland the liberation of the Queen.

He proposed it, in effect, though probably without any great sincerity. Mary had brought many misfortunes and few benefits to Scotland, and her brother had not that attachment for her which causes all other considerations to be forgotten. The articles coming from England were rejected; the question of the divorce which Bothwell had caused to be declared in Denmark was not even examined, and Queen Elizabeth was warned of what was preparing in the dark. She was at Farnham; the rumour of the marriage circulated at the court. Leicester had taken no step with regard to it as yet. Norfolk was there, not daring to go away; he dined at the table of the queen, who one day said to him, with a significant look, which reminded him of his own words, "Good evening, my lord duke; be careful upon what pillow you rest your head." Norfolk took alarm. A few days afterwards, the court was at Titchfield. {366} Leicester fell ill; the queen hastened to his bedside, and there impelled by remorse and keeping up the farce of passion, Leicester avowed to her with tears that he had acted disloyally towards her, by endeavouring, unknown to her, to marry her rival to the Duke of Norfolk. Leicester obtained his pardon, but the royal displeasure rested upon the Duke of Norfolk. The disfavour of Elizabeth was dangerous; the Duke retired to Kenninghall, whence he was soon recalled. A French servant of Mary Stuart, arrested in Scotland, had, it is said, made fresh revelations upon the complicity of his mistress in the murder of Darnley; the servant was executed, but the imprisoned queen remained exposed to the anger and indignation of Elizabeth. An insurrection in the North was feared, for the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke had both quitted the court. Norfolk was conducted to the Tower; the Bishop of Ross was arrested, although he pleaded the privilege of an ambassador, and all the noblemen compromised in the intrigue received an order to retire to their homes. The anxieties of Elizabeth, real or feigned, were not without some foundation. The Catholics of her kingdom, groaning under a secret but cruel oppression, naturally turned towards the Queen of Scotland, in their eyes the legitimate heiress to the throne, sanctified by her misfortunes, surrounded by the double fascination of her charms and of that faith towards which she had always manifested the most sincere attachment. The Huguenots had recently suffered great disasters at the battle of Jarnac, where the Prince of Condé had been killed, and also at the battle of Moncontour. {367} The English noblemen whom the queen had gradually allowed to pass into the service of the French Protestants were compelled to return to England, whither they brought gloomy tales of the cruelty of the victorious Catholics, and of their resolve to cause Catholicism to triumph everywhere, no matter by what means. To complete the hostility of the Continent, Queen Elizabeth, always greedy for money, had taken possession in time of peace of a fleet of Spanish galleons, bearing to the Duke of Alba the sums sent him by the King of Spain, which fleet had taken refuge upon the coast in order to escape the Huguenot vessels. It was pretended, at the court of England, that the money did not belong to Philip II., but to some Genoese and Lombard bankers, who could have no objection to lend it to Queen Elizabeth. The vessels of the English merchant navy had all become pirates, stopping and pillaging Spanish and French ships, seconding the attempts and projects of the Huguenots upon all coasts, and bringing arms and supplies to them. Some convoys setting out for La Rochelle were even accompanied by royal vessels, and the queen secretly authorized a great number of noblemen to take service in the army of the Huguenots, or in that of the Prince of Orange, while she replied to the complaints of the Spanish and French ambassadors by the assurance of her friendship for their sovereigns and of her wish to preserve the peace. Treachery was met by treachery. A conspiracy, half Spanish, half French, was preparing upon the Continent, to encourage the insurrection of the Catholics. Ridolfi, an agent sent from Italy, had communication with the Duke of Alba on passing through the Low Countries. {368} Evil designs were secretly meditated against the life of Elizabeth, and the representations of the governor-general, who did not believe in the possibility of success, having had no effect upon his master, the intrigue was developed in the north of England; the tyranny of Elizabeth had itself paved the way for it.

Captive princes always find means of communicating with their partisans, however close may be their prison, and however strict the supervision may appear. Mary Stuart had entered into relations with all the great Catholic noblemen of Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland. An attempt at escape had even been organized, which was to place her at the head of her little army, but the project collapsed, and, on the 16th of November, 1569, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, with a great number of noblemen and retainers, raised the standard of revolt, with the intention of marching upon Tutbury, to deliver and proclaim the captive queen. Upon the way the insurgents burnt in the churches the prayer books, while announcing everywhere that the Catholic religion was re-established, and summoning all good Catholics to join them. But Mary had already been transferred from Tutbury to Coventry. The populations did not respond to the appeal of the rebels; the southern counties took up arms against them. A goodly number of Catholics joined the royal army, assembled at York. Uneasy and irresolute, the two earls fell back upon Praby Castle. They besieged Sir George Bowes, in Barnard Castle, compelled him to capitulate, and planted themselves in the little port of Hartlepool, hoping to receive Spanish assistance through the Low Countries.

Meanwhile the Earl of Sussex, who had delayed so long at York that suspicions had been aroused as to his loyalty, was at length advancing against the rebels with the reinforcements which the Earl of Warwick had brought him. The insurgents fell back slowly towards the frontier of Scotland, and soon took refuge, without fighting, in that kingdom, the support of which they had hoped for. Elizabeth at once demanded the surrender of all the chiefs. Murray could not or would not satisfy this requirement. The Earl of Northumberland alone was in his hands. The Earl of Westmoreland, Egremont, Ratcliff, and the other great noblemen were in safety at the residences of their Scottish friends, who furnished them with means to reach the Low Countries. The regent sent his prisoner to Lochleven, saying that he would exchange him for Queen Mary; but before the negotiation had begun, even before Lord Leonard Dacre, the last of the insurgents who still held out in England, had been in his turn obliged to take refuge in Scotland, Murray was assassinated on the 22nd of January, 1570, in the streets of Linlithgow, and Queen Elizabeth wreaked her vengeance upon the counties which had taken part in the insurrection. "There are so many guilty persons to condemn," wrote the Bishop of Durham to Cecil, "that difficulty is experienced in finding enough men innocent of all rebellion, to make juries of them." A royal declaration was read in all the churches in the peaceful districts, as well as in the regions bristling with gibbets, reminding the people of the peaceful years which England had enjoyed under the reign of Elizabeth, and affirming that she claimed, as chief of the Church, no other authority than that which her predecessors had exerted, her noble father, King Henry VIII., and her dear brother, King Edward VI. {370} She did not intend to put a constraint upon the conscience of her subjects, provided the Christian religion, as it was established in the acts of faith, should in nowise be molested, and that people should conform themselves to the laws of the kingdom, for the practice of public worship. Liberty, as understood by Queen Elizabeth, consisted in doing exactly as she commanded.

The death of Murray, the only man sufficiently skilful and influential to maintain a little order in unhappy Scotland, had again delivered up that kingdom to the dissensions of parties. The Duke of Chatellerault and the Earl of Argyle immediately took possession of the government in the name of Queen Mary; but Morton, at the head of the king's men, as the partisans of James VI. were called, had taken up arms, summoning England to his aid. Elizabeth sent him an army and a regent. She had taken back into favour the Earl of Lennox, father of Darnley, and grandfather of the little king, and despatched him to Scotland, to govern in the name of his grandson, while the English troops entered several times into Scotland, devastating all the southern counties, burning down the towns and villages, and supporting the efforts of the new regent, who was implacable in ravaging the domains of the Duke of Chatellerault and of all the family of the Hamiltons. When Sir William Drury returned to Berwick, on the 3rd of June, after the recent campaign, the ravages had been so great, that the authority of Lennox appeared to be established upon the ruin of all his adversaries.

The Catholic arms had failed as well as the Catholic conspiracies. Pope Pius V. was anxious to try the spiritual thunders of the Vatican. A bull declaring the excommunication of Elizabeth, depriving her of her pretended rights to the crown of England, and absolving her subjects from their allegiance, had been prepared for some time; it was signed after the insurrection had failed, and several copies of it were sent to the Duke of Alba; but Philip II. prohibited the publication of them in the Low Countries. On the 13th of May, 1570, however, the bull was posted upon the door of the palace of the Bishop of London. During the investigations which were immediately made in courts of law, of evil notoriety both in political and religious affairs, it was ascertained from a student under torture, that he had received a copy of the bull from a rich Catholic gentleman named Felton. The latter was arrested, and he avowed without hesitation that he had posted up the bull, but no punishment could make him reveal the names of his accomplices. Being condemned to a traitor's death, he walked to the place of execution as to a martyrdom, designating the queen by the name of "Pretender," and remaining firm in his enthusiasm until the last moment. Before his death, and while upon the scaffold, however, he asked that the pardon of Elizabeth might be solicited for aught in which he might have offended her, and sent her, as a token a magnificent ring of great value, which he took from his finger. Even among those who contended against her with the greatest tenacity, Elizabeth contrived to win from her people so sincere and loyal an affection, that condemned persons sent presents to her, and criminals whom she had caused to have a hand cut off for having written against her, seized their hats with their left hands and waved them above their heads, exclaiming, "God bless Queen Elizabeth!"

The faithful attachment of the English nation to its sovereign did not, however, prevent the progress of a new principle of liberty which grew with the independent and firm opinions of a portion of the Protestant population. Elizabeth had preserved at the bottom of her heart considerable affection for the Catholic doctrines, still more for the external practices of their worship. She loved sacerdotal garments and pompous ceremonies. She retained in her chapel some candles and a crucifix, and she had a horror of married priests. All the weight of her authority did not prevent the most fervent Protestants of her kingdom, especially among the middle classes, from being convinced that the Reformation had been too quickly checked in England, and had not been sufficiently thorough. They thus inclined more and more towards the religious practices and doctrines of the Continent in their austere simplicity. The "Puritans," as they were already called, were in bad odour with Elizabeth, and she often persecuted them, all the more because she attributed to them, and not without reason, the republican and democratic tendencies fostered in Scotland by Knox, of which she had seen the effect in the revolts against Mary Stuart. {373} A certain number of Bishops and many great noblemen secretly inclined towards the Puritan ideas. Even Cecil was not hostile to them, although he had the royal favor more at heart than all the sects and doctrines. In the Parliament of 1571, the Puritans raised their heads for the first time. Thomas Cartwright, a distinguished professor who occupied, at Cambridge, the Margaret Professorship of Theology, maintained that the Episcopal system was opposed to the Holy Scriptures. He was suspended, but not without commotion among the public. The laws proposed to Parliament were hostile to the Catholics; they prohibited, under the penalties of treason, claiming the succession to the crown, for whomsoever it might be, during the lifetime of the Queen; they placed an absolute veto upon any communication with the Pope, and all obedience rendered to his bulls; but at the same time they required assiduity in the worship established by the State, and, four times a year, participation in the communion of the Anglican Church. This last article was abandoned by the Queen, but the Anglican worship was as odious to the Puritans as to the Catholics. They presented to Parliament seven bills for the progress of reform and the repression of abuses. The Queen, in a passion, ordered the member of the House who had proposed them, Mr. Stickland, to abstain from appearing at the sittings; but the Puritans had gained more ground than the Queen was aware of; they introduced a motion to summon Strickland to the bar, and to cause his exclusion to be explained to him, declaring that the House which could decide the right to the throne, had the privilege of occupying itself in ecclesiastical matters. The wise prudence of Elizabeth prevailed over her anger. {374} Strickland reappeared on the morrow in Parliament, and was received with acclamations by his colleagues; but the Queen had been vanquished, and her aversion to the Puritans was thereby increased. It was the first triumph gained by the fathers of the liberties of England over the political and religious despotism winch rose in the shadow of the throne of the Tudors. At the end of the session, after the Commons had been reprimanded for their indocility, by the Lord Keeper of the Seals, Nicholas Bacon, Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, caused Mr. Wentworth, one of the great orators of the House of Commons, to be summoned, to demand of him how they had dared to suppress some of the articles of faith which had been presented to their vote. "We were too busy to have time to ascertain whether they were in conformity with the word of God," boldly replied Wentworth. "What?" said the Bishop; "you are mistaken, you must refer to us in this matter." "No," said the Puritan, "by the faith which I have in God, we will vote nothing without understanding what it relates to, for that would be to make you Pope; it will not be by our hands." Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the proud resistance of the Houses, the Bishops continued to insist upon the preservation of the new edition of the articles of faith, under thirty-nine heads, which had replaced the forty articles of Edward VI. A complete submission was required of the pastors, and they were deprived of their livings at the first refusal declared before the court of high commission, entrusted to judge all ecclesiastical disputes. {375} "Matters will soon be ended with them," wrote Parker to Cecil, speaking of the nonconformist ministers, "for I know that they are cowards." The learned archbishop was never more completely mistaken. The courage of the Puritans was to remain firm through all persecutions. A hundred years were not destined to elapse without bringing the day of their triumph. The friends of Queen Mary had resolved upon her marriage. The Duke of Norfolk was in the Tower. People began to talk of causing the Queen of Scotland to marry her brother-in-law, the Duke of Anjou. Queen Elizabeth was alarmed, and in order to cut short this new intrigue, she made overtures on her own behalf to the Court of France. Her most skilful diplomatist, Walsingham, was sent to Paris, entrusted with this negotiation, complicated by the secret support which the queen continued to give to the Huguenots. The parley lasted for several months, but the Duke of Anjou positively refused to change his religion; people turned their eyes towards the Duke of Alençon, the youngest son of Catherine of Médicis; he had scarcely reached his eighteenth year; the queen was drawing near her fortieth. The negotiations nevertheless took their course, amusing Elizabeth by outward tokens of gallantry, in which she still took delight, and, at the same time, preventing all the assistance which the court of France might have brought to avert the unhappy fate of Mary Stuart. Charles IX. had claimed, for his sister-in-law, permission to live in France; but, piqued at the reports of the French ambassadors, upon the relations of the captive with the King of Spain, and by her correspondence with the Duke of Alba, he at length exclaimed, "Ah! the poor fool will never cease till she shall have lost her head; she will be put to death through her own fault, I see it clearly; but I am powerless in the matter." {376} The prospect of the throne of England for the Duke of Alençon was too brilliant to be sacrificed to the interests of Mary. Queen Catherine was negotiating an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Walsingham.

Abandoned by her relatives and her friends in France, Mary Stuart had not ceased to conspire with Spain; but her agents were so closely watched, the supervision of Cecil was so strict, that several emissaries fell in succession into his hands. On one occasion, the Bishop of Ross, recently restored to liberty, contrived to substitute innocent letters for the compromising papers, which his messenger brought; but enough was soon known to make it certain that Mary was urging the Spaniards to attempt an invasion of England, and that the Duke of Alba promised to make arrangements with a person designated in cypher. Suspicion immediately fell upon the Duke of Norfolk. The plague having broken out in the Tower, he had been guarded in his house in London for fifteen months. He was taken back to his prison, and his trial began. The duke at first made a bold denial; then, when the confessions were shown him, which had been extorted by torture or fear from his servants and the agents of Queen Mary, including the Bishop of Ross, he admitted certain things, still maintaining that he had never conspired against the queen, that he had only engaged in the negotiation for the marriage, because he thought she was informed of it, and that, in marrying Queen Mary, he did nothing prejudicial to her Majesty. {377} He formally resented all accusations of correspondence abroad or with the rebels during the insurrection. No witness was confronted with him; only the depositions, written after the tortures, were communicated to him. He was accused of having maintained relations with the Pope. Norfolk, the old pupil of Fox, the author of the Protestant martyrology, declared that he would rather be drawn by four horses than change his religion. He recalled the solicitations which the Earl of Leicester had made him, before he had become concerned in this affair. Leicester sat at the council listening without pity to the complaints of his confiding victim. He voted the death of the duke, who immediately turned toward his judges. "This is the punishment of traitors, my lords," he exclaimed: "but I am faithful to God and the queen, as I have always been. I do not desire to live and do not ask you for my life. You have this day cut me off from your company, but I hope soon to find a better one. I only beg you, my lords, to intercede with her Majesty, in order that she may have pity upon my poor orphan children." Even in his letters to the queen, full of repentance for having offended her, and for having acted in several matters without her knowledge, the duke never asked for mercy, and refused to make any confession which might drag other victims to the unhappy fate which awaited him. Norfolk had been condemned since the middle of January, and the queen had signed his sentence on the 8th of February; but during the night, she became agitated, and caused Cecil, whom she had raised to the rank of Lord Burleigh, to be summoned. {378} She forbade him to have the sentence executed, saying that she wished to reflect again; three times the sentence was signed, and three times Elizabeth recalled it, hesitating to put to death her relative and former friend. At length Parliament intervened. The nation was profoundly agitated by rumours of plots. The documents found upon the emissaries of Mary had circulated among the public; already they saw the Duke of Alba, the ferocious butcher of the Low Countries, invade England at the head of those Spanish soldiers whose dark exploits had terrified Europe. On the 16th of May, the Commons presented to the queen a petition accepted by the Lords, demanding the execution of the duke, for the security of the country. This time the sentence was not withdrawn, and, on the 2nd of June, 1572, the Duke of Norfolk was beheaded on Tower Hill, protesting to the last his devotion to his sovereign and his attachment to the reformed faith. He refused the handkerchief with which it was proposed to bind his eyes. "I do not fear death," he said. When his head fell, the crowd wept as they had wept twenty-five years before at the death of his father, the Earl of Surrey, beheaded on the same spot, by order of King Henry VIII. Two months later, on the 22nd of August, the Duke of Northumberland, captured by treachery when he thought himself delivered at the price of an enormous ransom paid by his wife, died upon the scaffold at York. He was seized upon the vessel which was to take him to the Low Countries, and the "attainder" which overtook him, avoided the embarrassment of a trial. His father had also died upon the scaffold, upon the same day, nineteen years before.

All these prosecutions and deaths upon the scaffold tended towards the same end. Mary Stuart had been condemned before her accusation. Protestant opinion, and Protestant fears were violently excited against her. Burleigh and Walsingham were both convinced that the repose of England was only to be purchased at the price of her blood. Parliament, always ardent in such a matter, proposed to proceed against the prisoner by means of an attainder, but the queen opposed this. The Houses contented themselves with depriving Mary of her hereditary rights, and declaring her unfit to succeed to the throne of England. The captive queen was then at Sheffield, in the custody of Sir Ralph Sadler, and the Countess of Shrewsbury. None of the details of the death of the Duke of Norfolk had been spared her. She had refused to leave her apartment during all the time of the trial. Her faithful servants were everywhere losing ground in Scotland. The archbishop of St. Andrew's, seized by Lennox in Dunbar Castle, had been hanged without more ado, and the murder of Lennox himself by the Hamiltons had not sufficed to compensate for the blows to the Catholic cause. The new regent, the Earl of Mar, was less powerful than Morton, his fiercest enemy. Meanwhile Edinburgh Castle still held out for Mary, and the Highlanders recognized no other sovereign.

A crime committed far off, and for which she was in nowise responsible, was destined to condemn the unfortunate Mary to death, however long the alternations between hope and fear might be. In the night of the 23rd to the 24th of August, 1572, following the day of St. Bartholomew, the Protestants, gathered together in great numbers in Paris, upon the occasion of the marriage of the King of Navarre to Marguerite of Valois, sister of King Charles IX, were surprised and massacred, in their beds, in the streets, or while flying upon the housetops; and the same slaughter, spreading from town to town like a fire, soon extended through the whole of France. {380} Thirty to forty thousand persons perished thus in a few days. Almost all the chiefs of the Protestants had fallen. The most illustrious, the Admiral de Coligny, was killed in his apartment, and his body thrown out of the window. It was to free themselves from the preponderating influence which he was beginning to assume over the king, that Catherine of Medicis and her son, the Duke of Anjou, formerly an aspirant to the hand of Elizabeth, now king-elect of Poland, had concerted and accomplished the massacre, for which they had only obtained the authorization of Charles IX. by dint of harassments which had almost reduced the monarch to imbecility. The public outcry was terrible in all Protestant countries, nowhere, however, more than in England, whither the fugitives, who escaped from their executioners, flocked from all quarters. The queen went into mourning, and refused for several days to receive the French ambassador, M. de La Mothe-Fénelon; but she felt no real sympathy for the French Huguenots, and the horrors which caused the blood of her subjects to boil in their veins, did not interrupt the tranquil course of her policy. Walsingham courteously thanked the king, inasmuch as his house had been spared during "the riot." The excuses and explanations of Charles IX., transmitted by his ambassador, were accepted. {381} The project of marriage with the Duke of Alençon was not abandoned: but Walsingham gave Queen Catherine to understand that the time was not favourable for the visit of the Duke of Alençon to England, considering the extreme exasperation of the people against the Catholics.

The fruits of this exasperation were the counsels which queen Elizabeth received from all quarters for the destruction of her rival, so long a prisoner. The bishops, in a body, advised her to rid herself of the Queen of Scotland, "the origin and source of all the evils;" but Elizabeth shrank from the State crime which has sullied her name in the eyes of posterity. She would have wished that the natural enemies of Mary Stuart, the subjects whom she had misgoverned and who had revolted against her, might have steeped their hands in the blood of their sovereign. She dispatched Killigrew, one of her most skilful agents, to negotiate for the liberation of Mary Stuart, who was to be consigned to the justice of the people, in exchange for certain hostages of the great families of Scotland. "It was becoming too difficult to keep the Queen of Scotland (Killigrew was to say); she drew too many dangers upon the Kingdom, and the queen preferred to consign her into the hands of her subjects."

This attempt failed through the royal uprightness of the Earl of Mar, then engaged in the difficult task of reconciling the factions. After taking part in a banquet at the residence of Lord Morton, in the course of his patriotic negotiations, he fell ill and died, not without suspicion of foul play, and, on the 14th of October, 1572, Morton, who for a long time previously, had been a dependant of Elizabeth, was raised under her auspices to the dignity of Regent. {382} Killigrew assisted him in negotiating for the surrender of Edinburgh Castle, which was reduced to the last extremities by the private treaty concluded by Lord Huntley and the Hamiltons. The secretary, Maitland, shut up in the castle with the brave Kircaldy of Grange, poisoned himself a few days after the capitulation, ending, by his voluntary death, a life of ingenious and subtile intrigues which were almost always doomed to final collapse. Kircaldy was hanged as a traitor, and Queen Mary lost her last friends in Scotland. Charles IX. had refused assistance to the faithful defenders of the citadel of Edinburgh, for fear that Elizabeth might support the Protestants, who depended upon La Rochelle. Secretly, she had several times come to their assistance, and she encouraged the naval expedition of the Earl of Montgomery in their favour. When the unhappy Charles IX. died in 1574, haunted upon his deathbed by the remembrance of his victims, the efforts of the French reformers were suddenly seconded by the support of the Duke of Alençon leagued against his brother, Henry III., who had returned from Poland to ascend that throne of France whereon the sons of Catherine of Medicis sat successively, to the misfortune and shame of their country. When the new king had discovered the plot, the Duke of Alençon was already engaged in concert with the young King of Navarre in raising an army: both asked assistance of Elizabeth, but she preferred the position of mediator, and it was through her good offices that the peace of St. Germain was concluded in 1576, securing to the Protestants the free exercise of their religion, and to the Duke of Alençon the appanage and title of Duke of Anjou. {383} The peace was not of long duration, and the formation of the League, the progress of the influence of the Guises in the kingdom, and their authority over King Henry III. as well as the fanatical party, soon put arms once more into the hands of the reformers. A brilliant prospect was opened up at the same time in the Low Countries to the new Duke of Anjou.

The affairs of the Prince of Orange and the cause of liberty in the United Provinces had been under a cloud since the commencement of the struggle; but through defeat after defeat, from disaster after disaster oppression after oppression, the indomitable courage of William the Taciturn and his fellow-citizens had by degrees gained so much ground, that Spain was upon the point of losing for ever half of the Low Countries. The Duke of Alba had been recalled after that government, the fearful memory of which yet causes us to tremble. His successor, the great commander Requesens, died in 1576; shortly afterwards the Prince of Orange, not knowing where to look for a support in his growing embarrassments offered the Protectorate of Holland and Zealand to Queen Elizabeth, as the descendant of the former sovereigns of the country through Philippine of Hainault, wife of Edward III. The Queen of England refused, not desiring, she said, to encourage the subjects of her good brother the King of Spain in revolt. William the Taciturn offered the sovereignty to the Duke of Anjou. {384} Don Juan of Austria, then governor of the Low Countries, longed to invade England, to deliver Queen Mary, marry her, and sit with her upon the throne of Elizabeth. The project was chimerical, and was not encouraged by Philip II.; but it was a plausible pretext for Elizabeth with regard to the King of Spain. She affirmed that the offensive and defensive alliance which she had concluded with the Prince of Orange, was solely intended to defend the Low Countries against the invasions of France, and to protect England from the invasions of Don Juan. Queen Elizabeth had already given a great deal of money to the revolted provinces; she gave yet more upon the pledges which the State-general furnished her; but the Duke of Anjou took no steps, and the patriotic armies were twice defeated by Alexander Farnèse, nephew of the King of Spain. The French prince excused himself for his tardiness by the fear of offending the Queen of England. He had resumed his matrimonial negotiations with her. The agent whom he sent to London, M. de Simier was a man of talents and of pleasant manners; he obtained great influence over the queen, and revealed to her a circumstance of which she was ignorant, namely, the secret marriage of the Earl of Leicester with the widow of the Earl of Essex, then very recently deceased. Elizabeth flew into a passion; the man who had occupied for thirty years the first place at her court was closely confined in his mansion at Greenwich. Simier did still more: he induced his master to attempt a romantic venture with the queen; in the middle of the summer of 1580 the Duke of Anjou appeared in England under a disguise. He was short, lean, marked with small-pox; but his amorous ardour, his youth, his journey, pleased the queen. {385} When the duke was about to return, it seemed that, for the first time, Elizabeth really wished to contract a princely union. The council was much divided: the queen was forty-eight years of age, the prince was very young and a Catholic. The most skilful politicians could not contrive to discover the secret feelings of their sovereign; but the time of petitions for her marriage had gone by; the queen bitterly felt it. The negotiations with Simier continued with alternations of favour and discontent on the part of Elizabeth. It was at length announced that the marriage would take place in six weeks. The States-general of the Low Countries proclaimed the Duke of Anjou, and when he entered the provinces with an army of sixteen thousand men, his royal affianced wife sent him a present of a hundred thousand crowns. After having achieved several successes and delivered the city of Cambray, besieged by the Spaniards, he repaired to England, where he was favorably received. The queen gave him her ring, and commanded that the contract should be prepared. There was rejoicing at the marriage in Paris and in the Low Countries. Even in England it was believed that the queen was at length about to take a husband. This was the 22nd of November, 1581. When the duke appeared before the queen on the morning of the 23rd, he found her pale and in tears; it is said that she had changed her mind during the night upon the representations of her ladies, and at the idea of the danger which threatened her if she should have children; she declared to the prince that she would never marry. {386} The duke in a passion, returned to his residence, throwing the ring upon the ground, and accusing the women of England of being as capricious as the waves of their seas. The change which had been wrought in the designs of the queen was not yet made public; the Protestant preachers thundered against the Catholic marriage, and libels abounded against the Duke of Anjou, which were severely punished by the queen, who accompanied the prince as far as Canterbury, weeping bitterly at his departure. She was never to see him again; the defeats suffered by his arms in the Low Countries, his retreat into France, and his death in the month of June, 1584, caused so much grief to the queen, that the ambassador of her Majesty in Paris dared not write her the details of his last moments, fearing "to cause her too much sorrow."

The affairs of Scotland caused great anxieties to Elizabeth. As long as Morton governed she was assured of the support of a mortal enemy of Queen Mary; but the great Scottish noblemen, had become wearied of the iron hand of a master sullied by so many crimes; and in 1578 the assembly of the nobility declared the young king, then thirteen years of age, competent to exercise his authority himself. Morton retired to Lochleven Castle, then reappeared at Court, powerful with the young king, and abusing his power as usual; but the ground was undermined beneath his feet; King James had a favorite, the first of a long list, Esme Stuart, his cousin, son of a brother of the Earl of Lennox. The young monarch had raised him to the title of Duke of Lennox; he was seconded by another Stuart, son of Lord Ochiltree; both accused Morton of the murder of Darnley. {387} The earl was arrested. Queen Elizabeth sent Randolph, her former agent, to Scotland, to plead in his favour. It was even attempted to intimidate the Scots by movements of troops; but all was useless; Elizabeth did not wish to wage war to save the head of Morton; he was condemned, and perished upon the scaffold. The young Duke of Lennox and Stuart, who had become Earl of Arran, governed the kingdom in the name of James VI.

This revolution in Scotland, this resistance to the pressure of Elizabeth and even the Protestant princes of the continent, revived the hopes of the Catholics. James had been brought up with great care in the Protestant religion. His tutor, George Buchanan, celebrated for his genius and learning, was a distinguished theologian, and had inspired the taste for that science in him, but it was hoped that the Catholic blood of the Guises would strengthen his power, and that the desire of delivering his mother would inspire in the young monarch opinions favourable to the intrigues which were still in progress on her behalf. The Earl of Arran, who wished to supplant Lennox in the favour of James, lent himself to these manœuvres. Queen Mary offered to legalize the irregular assession of her son, and to abdicate in his favour. But at the moment when the agents of the Catholic party abroad brought to James the approval of the the Pope and of Spain, he was lured into the residence of the Earl of Gowrie, son of old Ruthven, where he suddenly found himself a prisoner. The power fell again entirely into the hands of the Protestant lords. Arran was cast into prison. Lennox fled to France, where he perished shortly afterwards, and Queen Mary, trembling for her only son, wrote to Elizabeth, imploring her to preserve the life of the young king. {388} James had already contrived to deliver himself from the snares of his enemies; he had promised pardon, he was free, and lived in the midst of a crowd of contradictory and confused intrigues which occasionally embarrassed even the penetration of Walsingham, who had been sent to Scotland by Queen Elizabeth. Meanwhile, the presence of the son upon the throne of Scotland had awakened the hopes of the mother in her prison, as well as the ardour of her friends in England and on the Continent. A number of isolated Catholic plots, of no serious importance, were constantly renewed and inevitably followed by torture and the gallows. The penal law against the Catholic priests were applied with extreme rigour, being often favoured by public opinion, which saw in them only so many conspirators. The most celebrated victim of this persecution was the Jesuit Campion, a distinguished and able man, whose execution excited a certain amount of passion. Burleigh was compelled to exonerate himself for having ordered him to be tortured. The wooden horse had been applied so gently, he affirmed, that the Jesuit had been able to walk at once to sign his confession. The prisons were filled with Catholics; those whom the persecutors dared not send to gallows, sometimes died there of grief and suffering. This was the fate of the Earl of Arundel, son of the Duke of Norfolk, formerly in great favour with Elizabeth. Having become a Catholic and fallen into disgrace, he was arrested while endeavouring to escape; being thrown into the Tower, he languished there for several years, and finally died without being permitted to see his wife and children again. {389} The formidable abuses of absolute power manifested themselves vigorously, for the strong intellect of Burleigh had not, any more than that of his mistress, conceived the least idea of the rights of conscience. While Elizabeth forbade the Catholic priests to say mass, she drove from their livings the nonconformist ministers until 1589, and caused the anabaptists and heretics to be burned. A circumstance which aggravated the situation of the Catholics, was the suspicion, very often well founded, that they had a secret understanding with foreign countries, and mixed politics with the religious interests. In 1584, the ambassador of Spain, Mendoza, received his passports and quitted the kingdom, much compromised by the revelations of Francis Throgmorton, who was condemned to death for having conspired against the queen, with the object of delivering Mary Stuart. Parliament voted fresh measures against the Catholic priests; these measures were attacked by a Welsh member named Parry, who was sent to the Tower; his confessions were so complete, he denounced so many accomplices, he revealed dangers so imminent, that he was suspected of being simply the instrument of the Protestant party, intended to prove the peril which surrounded the queen. But if Parry had counted upon pardon, he was mistaken; he was executed on the 25th of February, 1585, retracting at the last moment all his revelations, and exclaiming upon the scaffold, "God grant that in taking my life Queen Elizabeth may not have killed the best keeper of her park." {390} It was supposed that Parry was mad, but his accusations agitated the Catholics, who resolutely protested against any disloyal project and in particular against the theory of permissible assassination, which Parry had attributed to their Church. The gentleman who presented this protest to the queen was cast into prison where he died. A Protestant association was formed, to protect the life of her Majesty, and to avenge her death in case of crime. The Earl of Leicester placed himself at the head of the movement, which received the sanction of Parliament. Mary Stuart looked upon this league as her death-warrant; she trembled, with good reason, in her prison, for her son made no effort in her favour; he was negotiating with the Queen of England for a treaty of alliance against the Catholic powers, without the name of Mary being uttered between them. In reply to the pathetic appeals of his mother, James VI. contented himself with replying that she was Queen-Mother, and had nothing to do with the affairs of Scotland. "I love my mother, as I ought, by duty and by nature," he said to the French ambassador, "but I cannot approve of her conduct, and I know that she wishes no more good to me than to the Queen of England." The end of the long drama was approaching.

The Protestant policy had completely gained the ascendant in the councils of Elizabeth; she was still officially at peace with Spain; but, for many years her great admirals, Drake, Hawkins, and Sir Walter Raleigh, freely overran the seas, taking possession of all the Spanish vessels which they encountered, furnished with letters of marque, pillaging at times the Spanish towns, and constantly the Spanish settlements in America. {391} For a long while, moreover, the cause of liberty in the Low Countries had been secretly protected by the money and assistance of Elizabeth, and she had recently lent her brilliant support by sending an army of six thousand men, under the orders of the Earl of Leicester, to support the war which had lost (a year before, on the 10th of July, 1584,) its illustrious chief, William the Taciturn, by the dagger of Balthazar Gérard, an assassin in the pay of Philip II. The Queen of England again declined the Protectorate of the United Provinces; but she accepted as a pledge of her close alliance with that rising state the surrender of the towns of Brill and Flushing. On his own motive, and without consulting the queen, Leicester even went so far as to cause himself to be nominated governor by the States-general of the Low Countries. But he had presumed too much upon his past influence over his queen; she had never forgiven him for his marriage with the Countess of Essex; he gained no success in the Low Countries; his military talents were not as great as his political skill. Elizabeth flew into a passion against him, with a violence which gave uneasiness to the members of the council; great difficulty was experienced in preventing her from recalling Leicester at once, and the States-general, who had thought to satisfy the Court of England, soon perceived with grief that Elizabeth was growing cold toward their cause.

A fresh effort was being prepared in favour of Queen Mary, the last link of the long succession of plots which were to bring her to the scaffold. Anthony Babington, a young man of good birth, a fervent Catholic, rich, for a long while devoted to the unhappy captive, engaged in a project of conspiracy, supported, it is said, by the Duke of Parma, Alexander Farnèse, who was to make a descent upon England as soon as he should succeed in assassinating Queen Elizabeth. Babington was desirous of delivering Mary Stuart and placing her upon the throne; he did not take heed of the means proposed by Savage, the prime mover in the plot, and he gathered around him a few friends as bold and imprudent as himself. It appears certain that from this point Walsingham was aware of the conspiracy, but he allowed matters to proceed until Queen Mary had written twice to Babington. As soon as the captive was compromised, the accomplices were all arrested. Savage and Babington alone had desired and plotted the murder of the queen; a few of the conspirators contemplated only the deliverance of Mary Stuart, others limited themselves to keeping silence concerning the conspiracy. "It is my cruel destiny," exclaimed Jones, before the tribunal, "that I should betray my friend whom I love as myself or fail in my allegiance, and become a false friend or a miserable traitor. My tender feeling for Thomas Salisbury has ruined me, but God knows that I meditated no treason." The less guilty among the conspirators were condemned to be hanged; the chiefs of the conspiracy suffered the horrible punishment at traitors. They were so young and of such good appearance that their punishment caused a certain degree of emotion in London. These were the last victims of the beauty and misfortunes of Mary Stuart.

The captive queen had been transferred from prison to prison, each day more closely confined, each day treated with less consideration and respect. She had at one time reproached Lord Shrewsbury for too much severity, but she felt herself protected by his honour; Lord Shrewsbury was no longer her guardian, she was entrusted to Sir Amyas Pawlet and Sir Drew Drury, fierce Protestants, almost Puritans, who felt no pity for the corrupt, murderous, and idolatrous woman whom they held in their hands. Mary had been removed from Chartley Castle, in Staffordshire, a few days before the arrest of Babington; when she was taken back there, she found all her coffers open, her papers abstracted: her two secretaries, Nam and Curie, had been taken to London. She looked for a moment at the havoc, then, turning towards Pawlet, "There are two things, sir, which you cannot take from me," she said, with dignity, "the royal blood which gives me the right to the succession, and the attachment which unites me to the faith of my ancestors." Alas! Mary would willingly have repurchased her life and liberty at the price of the faith of her ancestors; she had formerly made the offer to Elizabeth, but the approach of death, which she felt to be inevitable, brought her back to the real convictions of her soul. Throughout all the faults and crimes of her life, she had been sincerely Catholic; purified by long sufferings, she was to die a Catholic, leaving to a rival whose life she had embittered, the odious stain of her execution.

Parliament now voted a law, which, without naming Mary, condemned her by anticipation. The council of Elizabeth urged the queen to place the captive upon her trial. The repeated plots of which she had been the occasion, the inexhaustible interest which she had excited in Europe, appeared to Burleigh, Walsingham, and Sadler, sufficient reasons for her destruction. Elizabeth hesitated, irresolute and perplexed; she foresaw, perhaps, better than her councillors the harm which would be done her by the death of her relative, who had taken refuge under her protection and was without defence in her hands. Leicester, who had recently returned to England proposed to have recourse to poison; Walsingham opposed this suggestion resolutely; he was specially entrusted with the matter. Burleigh was old, and perhaps had a repugnance, like the queen, to striking the last blow; but Walsingham insisted upon a trial in due form and a public condemnation. "That conduct is alone worthy of your Grace," he said. He carried with him the majority of the council, and the queen nominated a commission entrusted to try "her good sister, the Queen of Scotland," according to the new law of Parliament, against "any person claiming the succession who might have encouraged or supported plots, invasions, or attempts against the safety of the of kingdom and the person of the queen." It was not necessary to bring together the great names which formed the commission for signing a sentence already written in the law itself.

Mary was brought, a few days after the execution of Babington, to Fotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire. It was there that the commissioners arrived, on the 11th of October, 1586, the bearers of a letter of Queen Elizabeth, which informed the captive that she was compromised in the recent conspiracy, and that she was about to be tried upon that count, as well as several other points, according to the laws of England, under the protection of which she had lived. {395} Mary was old before her time, infirm and overwhelmed with sorrows, but her royal pride was aroused by this arrogant pretension of her rival. "I do not recognize the laws of England," she replied; "and I know that what the Parliament has just voted is directed against me; but I will not derogate from the honour of my ancestors, Kings of Scotland, by submitting to be tried as the subject of my sister of England, and as a criminal." The legists were before her when she made this protest "We will try you then as absent and contumacious," said Burleigh. "Look to your conscience," replied Mary. "If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear," insisted the old chamberlain, Hatton: "but in rejecting the trial, you sully your reputation with eternal infamy." Mary at length yielded, on condition that her protest should be admitted. Protestation and resistance was equally useless.

On the 14th of October, the commissioners assembled in the great hall of Fotheringay Castle. A throne, with a canopy, occupied the place of Queen Elizabeth; lower down, a chair without a canopy awaited Queen Mary. The judges were surrounded by their assessors, with tables for their documents. The accused queen had neither assessors, advocates, nor documents; but her pride, her skill, her presence of mind sufficed, for two days, to hold in check the most able lawyers of England. It was no longer a question of defending herself from past accusations, from the murder of her husband, or her complicity with Bothwell; she was accused of having participated in plots for the overthrow and death of the Queen of England, and, notwithstanding her denials, it is difficult for history to exonerate her from this crime. {396} She had probably implicated herself in the conspiracies against Elizabeth at the time when she was yet a sovereign and free. What a temptation to do so when she was detained, a prisoner, in defiance of justice as well as royal hospitality! The light of those eyes which had made so many victims was extinguished, the elegant figure bent, but the subtle wit, the majestic grace, the infinite seductiveness which had been the danger and the charm of Mary Stuart still existed. She covered her face with her hands when the Earl of Arundel, still in prison at the Tower was mentioned. "Alas!" she exclaimed, "what has the noble House of Howard endured for my sake?" She asked that her two secretaries, whose depositions had been read, should be brought before her. They were in London, and she challenged the authenticity of their testimony, as well as that of a letter written, it was said, by her, to provoke an invasion of England. "I think that that document is the work of the secretary of State, Walsingham," she said. Walsingham rose, protesting that he had never acted through malice, and had done nothing which was unworthy of an honest man. He, no doubt, congratulated himself inwardly on having rejected the suggestion of poison put forth by the Earl of Leicester. The weight of the accusation rested upon the recent conspiracy of Babington, and upon the testimony of the two secretaries. Mary demanded to be heard by Parliament and to see the queen in person. {397} The instructions of the commissioners were formal. Elizabeth would not see the captive. When the judges quitted Fotheringay and assembled at Westminster, the witnesses were summoned before them, but the accused was not there. On the 25th of October, 1586, in the Star Chamber, the commissioners declared that Mary Stuart, daughter of James V., known as the Queen of Scotland, had taken part in the conspiracy of Anthony Babington and in several others to the prejudice of and against the life of her Majesty the Queen of England, in the name and under the pretext of her pretended rights to the crown; consequent upon which, she was condemned to death, without this sentence being in any wise prejudicial to James VI., King of Scotland, who retained all his rights and privileges as though the said condemnation had not existed.

The sentence was passed, but Elizabeth hesitated to put it in execution, as she had hesitated to bring her royal cousin to trial. Parliament made an effort to deliver her from the odious responsibility which she dreaded, and, on the 12th of November, the two Houses implored the queen to provide for her safety, by causing, as soon as possible, the punishment which her crimes deserved, to fall upon the guilty head. Elizabeth replied to her faithful subjects, while dwelling upon the absence of any rancour in her soul, "If we were two milk-maids, with pails upon our arms, and it was merely a question which involved my own life, without endangering the religion and welfare of my people, I would willingly pardon all her offences." She prayed God to enlighten her upon the course to follow, promising to make known her resolution within a short time. {398} In the meanwhile, she caused the two Houses, through the chancellor, to be asked whether there was not some means of placing her life in safety without interfering with that of Mary. Parliament replied in the negative. But the hesitations of Elizabeth were not yet at an end; a fresh speech expounded her scruples to her people. "Many opprobrious books and pamphlets (she said) accuse me of being a tyrant, which is indeed news to me; but what would they now say if a maiden queen should shed the blood of her own kinswoman? Yet it were a foolish course to cherish a sword to cut my own throat, and I am infinitely beholden to you who seek to preserve my life. If I should say I will not do what you require, it might peradventure be saying more than I should mean, and if I should say I will do it, it might, perhaps, breed greater perils than those from which you would protect me; for an answer, I will dismiss you, then, without an answer." The sentence of death was meanwhile posted up in all parts of London, and greeted with shouts of joy by the people.

Lord Buckhurst was chosen to announce her condemnation to Mary; it was hoped that some confession would be obtained from her, in the agitation and despair of an approaching death. But whatever might have been the crimes of Mary in the past, and her wrongs towards Queen Elizabeth, her courage had not relaxed in misfortune, and did not abandon her at the supreme hour. A bishop had accompanied the fatal messenger; the queen refused to see him, asking for her chaplain, "I am weary of this world," she said, "and glad that my troubles are about to end." {399} She repeated that she had never taken part in any plot against the life of Elizabeth, and her last care was to write to the Pope and the Archbishop of Glasgow, to enjoin that her reputation should be cleared of all stain; it was a task above the power of those to whom it was entrusted by the unfortunate woman, who could not appeal to her son to defend her.

In her quality of a condemned person, the Queen of Scotland was degraded from all the honours which had hitherto been rendered her. Her jailor, Sir Amyas Pawlet, would sit down before her without permission. "I am an anointed queen," said the fallen sovereign; "in spite of the Queen of England, her council, and her heretical judges, I will still die a queen." The last letter of Mary to Elizabeth was truly a royal epistle, without complaints or recriminations, thanking God inasmuch as He was good enough to put an end to a sorrowful pilgrimage, and asking no other favour than that of dying in the presence of her servants, to whom she begged the queen to cause the small legacies indicated in her will to be given. It was in the name of Jesus Christ, of their kinship, of the memory of Henry VII., their ancestor, and of the royal dignity which was common to them, that the captive, upon the point of dying, proudly demanded these modest favours of her triumphant rival.

The King of France, Henry III., had not absolutely abandoned his sister-in-law in her extremity; he sent to the court of England an ambassador extraordinary to plead her cause. Elizabeth delayed before giving him an audience; when she admitted him into her presence, with great ceremony, it was not without keen tokens of emotion that she affirmed that the Queen of Scotland had three times attempted her life. All the arguments of Bellièvre were useless; when he declared that his sovereign would consider as a cause of rupture the execution of a Dowager Queen of France, Elizabeth flew into a passion. The emissary received his passports. The ordinary ambassador, M. de l'Aubespine, accused of having been implicated in a fresh conspiracy against the life of the queen, saw his secretary cast into prison. A third emissary was no more successful.

While he was interceding for Mary with the Queen of England, King Henry III. was endeavouring to awaken in the breast of James VI. the natural feelings of a son for his mother. What more cruel condemnation of the conduct of the King of Scotland could be imagined than the fact that it shocked and scandalized Henry III.! He succeeded in obtaining a preliminary mission to Elizabeth, but by a personage of so little importance, and so deep in the interests of England, that France was not satisfied with this proceeding, which, nevertheless, aroused the anger of Queen Elizabeth. James hastened to write, excusing himself humbly, alleging that he in nowise imputed to her the blame of what she had done against his mother. Sir Robert Melville accompanied the second embassy. "Why does the Queen of Scotland seem so dangerous to you?" asked the emissaries. "Because she is a Papist and wishes to succeed to my throne," said Elizabeth, flatly. "Does her grace still live?" said Melville, tremblingly. "I think so," replied the queen, "but I would not answer for it in an hour." {401} The old servant of Mary interceded ardently for her, but his colleague, Gray, assured the ministers that it was not a dangerous affair, adding coarsely, "A dead woman does not bite." Walsingham was seriously astonished that a Protestant monarch should not feel that the existence of his mother was incompatible with the safety of the Reformed Churches in England and Scotland. James VI. recalled his ambassadors and contented himself with recommending his mother to the prayers of all his subjects; the greater number of Presbyterian pastors refused to obey his orders.

Elizabeth had repelled all foreign intervention; meanwhile, she still hesitated; she was heard to mutter between her teeth, in Latin "Aut ferire, aut feriri; ne feriare, feri." (Either to strike or to be stricken; in order not to be stricken, strike). The warrant had been ready for six weeks, when the queen signed it, in private, on the 1st of February, consigning it to the secretary of state, Davison, "without other orders," as she subsequently asserted. She only suggested that Sir Amyas Pawlet might spare her all that trouble, and she commanded that he should be written to in that strain, Pawlet formally refused, saying that his property and life were at the disposition of her majesty, but that God did not permit him to sacrifice his conscience, nor to leave an infamous stain upon his name. None would incur the responsibility of the crime; the queen did not even command the warrant to be sent. It went, however, without her having inquired into it, a precaution which was useful to her subsequently. On the 7th of February, while the scaffold was being erected in the courtyard of Fotheringay, Elizabeth told Davison that he should write again to Sir Amyas. {402} "It is useless, I think," began the secretary; she did not allow him time to explain himself, and turned towards one of her ladies who was entering. Davison was never to see his mistress again.

The Earl of Shrewsbury now arrived at Fotheringay. Queen Mary immediately understood what the arrival of the Earl-Marshal meant. When the sentence was read, Mary made the sign of the cross, then, without agitation, she said that death was welcome, but that she had not expected, after being detained twenty years in prison, that her sister Elizabeth would thus dispose of her. She at the same time placed her hand upon a book beside her, swearing that she had never contemplated nor sought the death of Elizabeth. "That is a Popish Bible," exclaimed the Earl of Kent, brutally, "your oath is of no value." "It is a Catholic testament," said the captive, "and therefore, my lord, as I believe that to be the true version my oath is the more to be relied on;" and she asked what would be the time of the execution. "Tomorrow morning, at eight o'clock," said Lord Salisbury, in great agitation. "Your death will be the life of our religion," said Kent, "as your life would have been its death." The queen smiled bitterly. She was left alone with her servants: she bade farewell to them, drinking to their health at her last repast, and asking pardon of them all. She passed a portion of the night in writing to her confessor, to the King of France, and to the Duke of Guise.

Mary Stuart Swearing She Had Never Sought The Life Of Elizabeth.

At eight o'clock the sheriff of the county entered the oratory where she was in prayer; she raised herself immediately, took the crucifix from the altar, and advanced with a firm step; she was clad in the rich and sober costume of a Dowager Queen. At the door of the antechamber, she found her faithful servant, Melville, who for three weeks had waited in vain to be permitted to see her. He threw himself upon his knees before her, weeping and sobbing. "Cease to lament, good Melville," said the queen, "for thou shalt now see a final period to Mary Stuart's troubles; the world, my servant, is naught but vanity, and subject to more sorrow than an ocean of tears can wash away. But, I pray thee, take this message when thou goest, that I die true to my religion, to Scotland and to France. Commend me to my son, and tell him that I have done nothing to prejudice the kingdom of Scotland." She asked that her servants might be present at her execution. The Earl of Kent refused; she insisted, with warmth: "In regard of womanhood," she said, "your mistress would not deny me to have some of my women about me at my death." The point was conceded: two of the ladies of the queen accompanied her to the scaffold, as well as Melville and a few servants. When the sentence had been read, Mary reminded the spectators that she was a sovereign princess, and had nothing to do with the laws of England, that she died by injustice and violence, without ever having conspired against the life of Elizabeth. The Dean of Peterborough began to speak; the queen interrupted him several times. "I am fixed in the ancient religion," she said, "and, by God's grace, I will shed my blood for it." Seeing that she could not impose silence upon him, she turned round looking on the other side of the scaffold but he followed her movements, and proceeded to place himself in front of her. {404} While he prayed aloud in English, the queen repeated in Latin the Penitential Psalms, with profound contrition. When the dean had finished, she prayed aloud in English for the Church, her son, and Queen Elizabeth. She kissed the crucifix; the Earl of Kent exclaimed, "Madam, you had better put such Popish trumpery out of your hand and carry Christ in your heart." "I can hardly bear this emblem in my hand without at the same time bearing Him in my heart," said the queen. The executioners laid hands upon her to undress her; as her women burst into sobs in their indignation, she placed her finger to her lips and embraced them, saying to the spectators, "I am not accustomed to be undressed by such attendants, nor to put off my clothes before so much company." Her eyes were bound with a handkerchief embroidered with gold, and the executioners conducted her to the block. She laid her head upon it without trembling. "Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit," she said aloud. The executioner was more agitated than the victim; he was compelled to strike three times. When he raised the bleeding head, exclaiming, "God save Queen Elizabeth," the dean and the Earl of Kent alone replied, "Thus perish all her enemies." No one said Amen. The queen's little lap-dog had hidden himself in her clothing; he could not be separated from the body while it remained upon the scaffold.

The news of the execution soon spread abroad in London, and many people manifested their joy thereat, before anyone dared to announce the fact to the queen. She feigned great anger, shedding tears, and asserting that she had given no order. The secretary of state, Davison, was sent to the Tower; Burleigh and the other ministers were disgraced. Walsingham had been prudent enough to absent himself; when he reappeared, his colleagues were not long in returning into favour, but a victim was necessary. Davison remained in prison during all the remainder of the reign of Elizabeth, and his whole fortune was confiscated to pay the fine which was imposed upon him.

The first care of Elizabeth was to communicate to King James the grief which she experienced at the unhappy event which had occurred without her knowledge in her kingdom. The king wept on learning the death of his mother, asserting that he would move heaven and earth in his vengeance. His anger was immediately appeased; the pension which he received from Elizabeth was increased; one of the obstacles which might impede his succession to the throne of England had disappeared. The royal Pretender consoled himself with this expectation. "Could an only son forget his mother?" Mary Stuart had asked on learning her condemnation. The conduct of King James proved that he could.

King Henry III. would have been much embarrassed to accomplish his threats and to wage war in England to avenge his unhappy sister-in-law. He groaned under the yoke of the League and of the Guises, and no doubt easily forgave Elizabeth for the blow which she had struck at the haughty House of Lorraine. L'Aubespine reproached Elizabeth for the assistance which she had so long been giving to Henry of Navarre. "I have done nothing against your sovereign," said the queen, resorting to her former argument; "I support the King of Navarre against the Duke of Guise." L'Aubespine did not persist.

For a long time past, the expeditions of the English Buccaneers in the West Indies had completed the exasperation occasioned to Philip by the assistance accorded by Elizabeth to the rebels of the Low Countries. The death of Queen Mary furnished him with a natural pretext for the bursting forth of his resentment. The Queen of England made some efforts to appease it as she had appeased the anger of the Kings of France and Scotland. In the Netherlands her arms had not been covered with glory. Leicester was the weakest and most incompetent of the generals, and in his absence, while he was in England to assist in the condemnation of Mary Stuart, a body of his troops commanded by malcontent officers, had restored Deventer to the King of Spain, passing at the same time into his service. The return of the Earl into the Low Countries did not repair matters. The Dutch were discontented and uneasy; the queen recalled her forces, retaining merely the hostage towns, and she accepted the provisional nomination of Maurice of Nassau, son of William the Taciturn, as Stadtholder of the United Provinces. She had even opened up a secret negotiation with the Duke of Parma, who still held out in the Low Countries, but although endeavouring to preserve the peace, she understood that war was becoming imminent, and the great preparations to which the King of Spain was devoting himself were not unknown to her. {407} As a preliminary to hostilities, Sir Francis Drake was despatched with a fleet of thirty vessels, with orders to destroy, even in their ports, all the Spanish vessels which he might encounter. Never was a mission executed with more satisfaction and success. On the 19th of April, 1587, that bold seaman forced the entrance of the port of Cadiz, where he destroyed thirty great vessels; then, following the coast-line as far as Cape St. Vincent, he captured, burnt, and sunk a hundred other ships, and destroyed on his way, four fortresses. At length he entered the Tagus, recently become tributary to Philip II., who had taken possession of Portugal, to console himself for the loss of Holland, and Drake took possession, under cover of the Spanish standard, of the St. Philip, the largest vessel of the royal navy, laden with a precious cargo, The exploits of Drake delayed by more than a year the expedition which the King of Spain contemplated, and gave time to Elizabeth to complete her preparations. "I have singed the King of Spain's beard," said the victorious admiral on returning to England. The anger of Philip redoubled under these insults. The Pope, Sixtus the Fifth, had supplied him with money and renewed the bull of excommunication against Elizabeth. All the vessels of the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily were confiscated for the service of the king. The republic of Venice and that of Genoa lent their fleets to him. Every where in all the ports of Spain vessels were in course of construction. A fleet of flat-bottomed vessels prepared in Flanders were to transport to England the Duke of Parma and his thirty thousand soldiers. {408} The humblest Spanish sailor thought himself assured of the conquest of England. Philip II., promised himself the triumph of the Catholic faith in this haunt of the heretics. It is allowable to doubt that the Pope Sixtus the Fifth was as sure of success. "Un gran cervello di principessa" (She has the mind of a great princess), he often said in speaking of Elizabeth. But Europe, Protestant or Catholic, had not yet lost the habit of trembling before the power of Spain. All eyes were fixed upon England, against which country so many preparations were being made.

Meanwhile England did not remain idle. In the month of November, 1587, the queen convoked a council of war, to which she had summoned all the distinguished soldiers and seamen of that time, and which was destined to found the great navy of England. Sir Walter Raleigh took a large share in the deliberations, and vigorously maintained the opinion, that it was necessary both to meet the enemies at sea, and to prepare for them on land. The fleet of Elizabeth was not large. She had never waged war, and the money of which she could dispose did not suffice for the demands she received from all the Protestant countries, opposed and struggling for their faith. Thirty-six vessels only composed the royal navy, but merchant ships abounded. The progress of wealth had been rapid during the reign of Elizabeth; the devotion of her subjects provided for all wants; private persons armed the commercial ships for war, to do homage to the queen with them, and the great seamen who had acquired their renown and experience in waging war as buccaneers against the Spanish in all the seas of the world—Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher—took command of the vessels, under the orders of the High Admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham. {409} A hundred and ninety-one ships were at length gathered together, and the Dutch sent to the assistance of their allies sixty others manned by the fierce Zealanders, ever eager to fight the Spaniards. The fleet was disposed in squadrons to cover the coasts, while the land forces, under the orders of Leicester, assembled from all parts to resist the invasion. All the ancient fortifications were repaired, and new redoubts were raised as though by enchantment. A camp was formed at Tilbury Fort, opposite Gravesend. The queen repaired thither herself, to be present at a review. Her subjects had vied with each other in devotion. Catholics as well as Protestants had generously responded to her appeal. Catholic gentlemen, when command was refused them, enrolled themselves as private soldiers. A hundred and thirty thousand men were raised in the kingdom. When the queen assembled her forces at Tilbury, she had around her more than sixty thousand men. The Earls of Essex and Leicester marched at the bridle of her war-horse; she carried in her hand the staff of command. All her courage glistened in her eyes. "My loving people," she said, "we have been persuaded by some that are careful for our safety to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes for fear of treachery, but I assure you that I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear! I have always borne myself so that, under God, I place my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation and sport, but being resolved in the midst and heat of battle to live or die amongst you all, to lay down for my God, for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust. {410} I know that I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain should dare to invade the borders of my realms. To which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me I myself will take up arms." The popular enthusiasm was great, but general terror equalled the enthusiasm. The terrible reputation of the Spanish troops had preceded them. The inexperienced recruits who formed the greater portion of the land forces would have been unable to resist the veterans of the Duke of Parma; the English navy was to save England.

The invincible Armada, as the Spaniards arrogantly called it, issued forth from the Tagus on the 29th of May, 1588. It numbered about a hundred and thirty ships, of which some were enormous. The sea appeared to fight in favour of England, in directing the course of the invaders towards Corunna, where the fleet was to take reinforcements. In the vicinity of Cape Finisterre a storm arose which dispersed the squadron and destroyed a certain number of vessels. The news of the disaster arrived in England; the people thought themselves delivered of the enemy. Elizabeth, always economical, immediately wrote to Lord Howard to disarm the four largest vessels of the fleet, and to disband the crews. {411} The Admiral refused to do so, saying that he would prefer to maintain them with his private fortune; this was fortunate for him, for the Armada had re-formed, and on the 19th of June it was signalled in the vicinity of Plymouth. It advanced majestically, in the form of a crescent, covering the sea, measuring from one horn of the crescent to the other a space of three leagues. An immediate landing was expected, but the orders of Philip were to approach the coast of Flanders, there to rally the Duke of Parma, his fleet and his soldiers. Lord Howard followed the enemy, in readiness to attack the ships separated from the squadron by accidents of the sea. Thus began a series of combats, all disastrous to the Spaniards, though often impeded on the side of the English by the failure of supplies. On the 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th of July, Howard, Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, engaged either in concert or separately, fought almost without intermission. On the 28th at length, "this morrice-dance upon the waters," as Sir Henry Wotton called it, was approaching its end. The Duke of Medina-Sidonia, a Spanish Admiral, had asked assistance of the Duke of Parma; he was in the vicinity of Calais, but the English vessels blockaded the Strait between Nieuport and Dunkirk. The Flemings could not pass; a great battle began. The Spaniards presented a compact mass which impeded the movements of the English vessels, smaller than theirs. During the night, fire-ships were launched against them. The Spaniards had had terrible experience of this method of warfare from the Dutch in the Scheldt; confusion spread through the squadron. The vessels quitted their positions and crowded all sail to escape from the explosion of the fire-ships; in vain did their admiral endeavour to reassemble them; the English attacked the isolated vessels at their ease. {412} Everywhere minor encounters were signalled; almost everywhere the English were the victors. The Duke of Medina-Sidonia had already taken the course of abandoning any invasion and of returning to Spain by doubling Scotland. The English pursued him. "We have the Spaniards before us," wrote Drake to Walsingham, "and with the grace of God, we intend to join them yet. God grant that the Duke of Parma be watched, for, with the grace of God, if we are living, we will not delay in seizing the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, so that he may wish himself at St. Mary amidst his vines." The failure of supplies put an end to the pursuit; it was necessary to abandon the Spaniards to the mercy of the sea. A terrible storm assailed them near the Orkney Islands. A great number of vessels stranded upon the coast of Scotland, and the crews were made prisoners. Those ships that were driven to Ireland did not save one man. The English colonists cut them to pieces to prevent them from seconding the Irish insurrection. When the Duke of Medina-Sidonia returned in the month of September, to Santander, in the Bay of Biscay, he had but sixty vessels, and those in bad condition, while their crews, overwhelmed with fatigue, looked like spectres. The English had lost but one ship of importance. For some time people feared a descent of the Duke of Parma, "who," wrote Drake, "I take to be as a bear robbed of her whelps;" but the alarm soon subsided, and the queen caused the camp at Tilbury to be raised. {413} The army was disbanded, and the Earl of Leicester set out for his castle at Kenilworth. He died there on the 4th of September, shortly after his arrival. The queen, whose favorite he had been for thirty years, did not appear greatly afflicted at his loss; she caused his effects to be sold at auction, to pay his debts to the public treasury. She had chosen a new favourite, as yet almost a child, the Earl of Essex, son-in-law of Leicester. The charm of his person, the gaiety and frankness of his manners, amused Elizabeth. She was fifty-five years of age; Essex was not twenty, when, in 1587, she made him Knight of the Garter, and captain-general of the cavalry. At the death of Leicester, he was raised to the dangerous position of titled favourite at the court of an imperious, exacting woman, accustomed to the most extravagant flatteries, and moreover jealous yet of her beauty and personal charms. The greatness of Essex was to cost him dearly.

A fruitless expedition to Spain, in favour of Don Antonio, Pretender to the crown of Portugal, did more honour to the bravery of the Earl of Essex than to his military talents. When he returned to England, he imprudently entered into a fierce struggle against the influence of the Cecils. Walsingham had died, in 1590, and Burleigh desired to have his office bestowed upon his son, Robert Cecil. Essex supported the cause of the unhappy Davison, unjustly disgraced for several years; the queen gave the office to Burleigh, authorizing him to obtain the assistance of his son. Hence there sprang a constant hostility which was to terminate in the ruin of Essex. {414} Elizabeth had often differed in opinion from her great minister; she had offended him, ill-used him, vexed him, but none had ever succeeded in destroying his influence with her. Leicester had attempted it in vain. Essex was endeavouring to attain the same object in his turn, with as little chance of success. The queen knew to whom she owed in a great measure the prosperity of her reign, and the memory of the father was destined to constantly increase in her eyes the services and merits of the son.

The Earl of Essex consoled himself for his defeat at court, by departing for France at the head of the troops whom Elizabeth sent to the assistance of Henry of Navarre, now become Henry IV., king of France. Henry III. was stabbed by Jacques Clément, on the 21st of July, 1589, and since then, his legitimate successor was labouring to rescue his kingdom from the Leaguers obeying the Duke of Guise, and supported by Spain. He was besieging Rouen when the Earl of Essex joined him, at the head of the English reinforcements. He distinguished himself in the skirmishes, in one of which his brother, Walter Devereux, was killed: but the impatient attachment of his mistress recalled him to England. Duplessis-Mornay advised Henry IV. to send back Essex to Queen Elizabeth, if he wished to obtain of the latter fresh aids in men and money, which were becoming every day more necessary in order to check the attacks of the Duke of Parma, who had recently entered France. The war was popular in England, the English gentlemen having always been eager to enroll themselves in the ranks of the Huguenots. The queen had been, for a long while past, the faithful ally of Henry of Navarre. {415} When he resolved, in 1593, to secure the peace of his kingdom and the establishment of his throne by adjuring Protestantism, indignation in England was violent. Elizabeth accused the king of treachery, but the Edict of Nantes soon satisfied the English Protestants, while securing to their brethren the free exercise of their religion, and the hostilities which continued between France and Spain, served the policy of Elizabeth too well for her to withdraw from her ally the efficacious support which she had always given him. The moment would not have been propitious for abandoning him; for the Spanish armies had again penetrated into France, and in the month of April, 1596, the Archduke Albert of Austria took possession of Calais which Elizabeth claimed of Henry IV., in exchange for her services. Amiens, Doullens, Cambray, were taken in succession. "It is very well to make a King of France," exclaimed Henry IV., on placing himself at the head of his troops; "it is time to make a King of Navarre," and he repulsed and defeated his enemies, while Queen Elizabeth, carrying war to their coasts, sent the Earl of Essex to Spain with Sir Walter Raleigh. The fleet commanded by Lord Howard bombarded Cadiz. Essex stormed the town and took possession of it; he wished to retain his prize, but, the council of England not approving that measure, Cadiz was delivered up to the flames before the English weighed anchor to return to their country. A second expedition directed against the Azores, brought about few results. The influence of the Cecils over the queen was still hostile to Essex, notwithstanding an apparent reconciliation. {416} The earl retired to Wamstead House, inhabited by his wife, the daughter of Walsingham, and widow of the celebrated Sir Philip Sydney, the Christian hero of the chivalry of the sixteenth century, slain at thirty years of age, before Zutphen. The jealousy and affection of the queen soon recalled Essex to court; he was nominated earl-marshal. Notwithstanding the opposition of the court of England, the King of France had concluded, in 1598, with Philip II., the treaty of Verdun, and Sir Robert Cecil, who had been on a mission to Paris, brought back the Spanish proposals for peace. Essex, who only lived for war, and who could not exert his influence elsewhere, rose vigorously against these overtures. The queen was not in favour of peace, but the Cecils dwelt upon the embarrassments of the situation, upon the gravity of affairs in Ireland, upon the distress of the treasury. Burleigh, drawing from his pocket a book of Psalms, showed this prophetic verse: "The bloodthirsty man shall not live half his days." The quarrel became bitter. Essex flew into a passion, and turned his back upon the queen, who had reprimanded him. Elizabeth rose and gave a box on the ear to her insolent subject. Essex had his hand upon his sword: "I would not have such an affront from the hands of the king, her father," he said, "and I will not accept it of a petticoat." Lord Howard arrested his arm, and the earl impetuously quitted the council, to proceed to Wamstead, where he remained in retirement for four months. When he reappeared at the court, still powerful in appearance, Burleigh had disappeared from the scene; he died on the 4th of August, 1598, at the age of seventy-eight. His loss had cost his mistress bitter tears. {417} Sir Robert Cecil, able and sagacious, but more corrupt than his father, and less faithfully attached to the interests of the queen, could not replace with Elizabeth the constant and sincere union of the sovereign and the minister, during forty years. The great consolation of the queen at this period was the death of Philip II. The war soon languished, and peace being concluded at the end of the year 1598, between the Spaniards and the United Provinces, delivered Elizabeth from the enormous subsidies which she had for a long time furnished her Dutch allies. The States-general recognized their debt to her Majesty, and undertook to discharge it by degrees. People in England were now only occupied with the imaginary or real plots which were discovered every day against the life of the queen, some hatched, it was said, by the Catholics, who still groaned under the weight of the most oppressive penal laws, others attributed to the Spanish influence. The King of Scotland was even accused of a project of assassination. He defended himself warmly against the charge. The queen wrote him that she could not think him guilty; but her confidence in his honour was so like a pardon for the alleged crime, that King James was not content, and demanded the trial of the accused, Valentine. The court of England contented itself with detaining in prison the wretch who had dared to tarnish the name of James VI.; when the latter succeeded to the throne, he enjoyed the pleasure of sending Valentine to the galleys.

The state of Ireland had for a long while preoccupied Queen Elizabeth and her ministers. A serious insurrection at the beginning of the reign had for a moment placed Shane O'Neil at the head of all the Irish of pure race. He had been betrayed and assassinated, but his country was not subjugated. The projects of colonization of the Earl of Essex, father of the favourite of Elizabeth, and encouraged by her, had not succeeded better than the devastating campaigns of the Lords-Lieutenant, Sir Henry Sidney and Fitzwilliam. The English had undertaken to civilize Ireland by destroying its inhabitants, as they had undertaken to establish Protestantism by prohibiting Catholic worship in a country entirely devoted to that religion. Both efforts had justly failed, and the jealous rivalries of the Irish noblemen, the ever-recurring quarrels of the Butler's and the Fitzgeralds, the revolts, the submissions, the arrests, the murders of the chiefs of these two houses, the rival pretensions of the Earls of Ormond and Desmond wearied the patience of the queen and council, exhausted the public treasury, and maintained the hopes of the enemies of England. Two adventurers, Stuckely and Fitzmaurice, conceived the idea of taking advantage of the papal pretensions to the possession of the islands, to attempt a bold stroke upon Ireland. They obtained a bull relieving the Irish of their allegiance to Elizabeth, besides assistance in money, a few soldiers and some arms. Stuckely remained in Portugal, and perished at the battle of Alcazar against the Moors, but Fitzmaurice, brother of the Earl of Desmond, landed in Ireland, in 1579, in the hope of bringing about an insurrection. He was coldly received, and compelled to take refuge at the residence of his brother. {419} A reinforcement of pontifical soldiers, besieged in the fortress of Smerwick, were put to the sword by Sir Walter Raleigh. The Earl of Desmond, suspected of having taken part in the insurrection, was beheaded by the English troops, who seized him in a hut; Lord Grey de Wilton, who had become Lord-Lieutenant, restrained the revolt with a hand of iron, without obtaining any amelioration in the moral or material situation of the country. Sir John Perrot succeeded him in 1585; as severe as Lord Grey, but more just, he had the misfortune to give himself up in a fit of exasperation, to bitter words, not only against the queen, but against her "dancing chancellor," Hatton. The vengeance of the minister and the anger of the sovereign appeared to slumber, but when Perrot, weary of asking in vain for assistance and money, obtained his recall, he was accused of high treason, overwhelmed by the testimony of men whose excesses he had restrained during his government, and was soon condemned to death. His son had married a sister of Essex, and the influence of the earl counterbalanced that of his enemies. Grief or poison averted his execution, he died on the 20th of June, 1591, at the moment when the power of the Earl of Tyrone, Hugh, son of O'Neil, baron of Duncannon, was becoming great in Ireland. He was regarded by his fellow-citizens as the legitimate sovereign of Ulster. He claimed for his country liberty of conscience and the maintenance of ancient local customs, savage privileges having little compatibility with civilization. At the same time he also claimed all the property which had formerly belonged to his ancestors. Skilful and of noble appearance, he had contrived to discipline his fierce soldiers, and he conducted them in battle array against the troops of the queen. {420} Sir John Norris had died of grief and anger. Sir Henry Bagnall was defeated and killed at Blackwater, in County Tyrone, and the insurrection spread throughout the whole of Ireland. It was asserted that the Pope and the King of Spain had promised assistance to the rebels. In this perilous situation the council of the queen decided that no other but the Earl of Essex could take command of the army. For a long time he refused. The viceroys of Ireland had all suffered disgrace or death. He finally yielded to the personal entreaties of Elizabeth, and left London in the month of March, 1599, accompanied by the flower of the English nobility. His absence was to inflict upon him a mortal blow. The troops were despatched slowly, ill armed, ill fed. In vain he demanded reinforcements. Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Robert Cecil assured the queen that her general had no other desire than to prolong the war. When he entered the province of Ulster, the centre of the rebellion, he had less than six thousand men with him. He concluded an armistice with the Earl of Tyrone, then without waiting for authority for this settlement he embarked in haste for England. Scarcely arrived in London, he repaired to the palace of the queen; she was at her toilet; he entered and threw himself upon his knees before her, kissing her hands. When he issued forth, he appeared radiant, congratulating himself after suffering far from home stormy troubles and inward griefs, and finding once more peace and quietude in his own country. {421} On the morrow everything was changed. The Earl received orders to remain a prisoner in his apartment. Sir John Harrington, who had accompanied Essex to Ireland, was summoned to appear before the queen: "she chafed much, walked to and fro, looked with discomposure in her visage," says Sir John, "and when I kneeled to her she clutched at my girdle, saying, 'By God's son I am no queen, that man is above me! Who gave him command to come here so soon? I did send him on other business.' She bid me go home, I did not stay to be bidden twice. If all the Irish rebels had been at my heels, I should not have made better speed." On the morrow, Essex was summoned before the council. He replied with gravity and moderation, but was consigned to the care of the keeper of the seals. All the affection of the queen for the Earl appeared to have turned to anger. She forbade the friends, the physicians, and particularly the wife of the prisoner, to have any access to his person. He was ill, and had been detained for eight months, when, in the month of May, 1600, he wrote to the queen, reminding her of her former favour, of which his enemies had been so jealous that they continued to hate him habitually, "now that he was forgotten and thrown into a corner, like a dishonoured corpse." On the 26th of August, liberty was restored to him, but orders were given to him not to appear at court. Terrible is the intoxication of love of power and royal favour! Essex was learned; he had a taste for arts and literature; he might have retired into the country, and concealed the check he had received, but he desired to tempt fortune once more. His secretary, Cuffs, an enterprising man, without principle, urged him to attempt the rule of his enemies by a bold stroke. {422} He was beloved by the population of London. An insurrection might rid him of Cecil, Raleigh, Cobham, the party of the court, as they were called, the earl opened the doors of his house to all malcontents, and assembled together the officers who had served under him. He involved in his cause King James VI., asserting that Cecil and his friends were endeavoring to banish him from the succession, in favour of the Infanta of Spain, Clara-Eugenia, daughter of Philip II., married to the Archduke Albert. Secret advices warned the Earl that his projects were known to the council. He resolved to act. He was surrounded by his friends on Sunday, the 8th of February, 1601, preparing to march to the City to rouse to insurrection the populace assembled at the cross of St. Paul's, at the moment of the sermon, and thus to open up a way for himself to the queen with the assistance of the mob. The keeper of the seals, and Lord Egerton and Sir William Knollys, arrived at his house at the same moment, demanding an explanation of this noisy assemblage. "There is a plot against my life: letters have been forged in my name; men have been hired to murder me in my bed," exclaimed Essex violently; then, as the magistrates promised justice, he invited them to enter an inner apartment; the door was closed upon them. Essex hastened to the City with Lord Rutland, Lord Southampton and a few others. The streets were deserted; no sermon had been delivered at the cross of St. Paul's. The citizens remained shut up in their houses. The aldermen had received the orders of the queen. Essex called every one to arms; none responded. He had great difficulty in re-entering his house, which he in vain endeavoured to defend. {423} At the sight of the cannon leveled against the walls, he, as well as his friends, surrendered, and he was conducted to the Tower with the Earl of Southampton. When the accused appeared before the peers, on the 19th of February, Essex asserted that he had only obeyed the law of nature in defending his reputation and his life. The indictment of the crown was supported by Francis Bacon, whose career was soon to present so strange a mixture of greatness and infamy. He owed his elevation to the friendship and the protection of the Earl of Essex. He was less violent than his compeer, Coke, who accused the Earl of having desired to raise an insurrection. "He would have called a Parliament, and a bloody Parliament would that have been, where my Lord of Essex, that now stands all in black, would have worn a bloody robe; but now, in God's just judgment, he of his earldom shall be Robert the Last, that of a kingdom thought to be Robert the First." All the arguments of Essex were demolished by Bacon, although the latter reminded him of the language which he had himself used regarding the party which he now supported. No witness was confronted with the accused, whose condemnation to death was unanimously pronounced by the peers.

When the usual question was put to the two earls, whether they knew of any reason why they should not be condemned, Essex did not complain of the fate which awaited him. He was weary of life, he said, but he interceded keenly for his friend. Lord Southampton. He was urged to ask mercy of the queen. {424} "Do not accuse me of pride," said the Earl, "but I could not ask for mercy in that way, though with all humility I pray her Majesty's forgiveness; I would rather die than live in misery; I have cleared my accounts, and have forgiven all the world." A confession signed by Essex was circulated, but many people believed it to be forged. It was also asserted that he had expressly asked to be executed in secret, although that fact was formally denied by King Henry IV. "Quite on the contrary," said the monarch, "he would have desired nothing so much as to die in public." The popularity of the Earl of Essex was dreaded, and the prolonged emotion which his death caused proved that this dread was not without foundation. He was beheaded on the 25th of February, 1601, at eight o'clock in the morning, in an outer court of the Tower. He was not thirty-three years of age. Sir Walter Raleigh witnessed the execution from a window, as well as that of several of the friends of the Earl. He did not know that the day would come in like manner when other eyes would in their turn come to contemplate his death. The Earl of Southampton remained in prison until the accession of King James, with whom he was soon in great favour.

If the King of Scotland had now found himself, as his mother had been, under the rule of the English law, he would have incurred serious dangers. His correspondence with Essex had compromised him so much that he felt compelled to send ambassadors to London to exonerate himself with Elizabeth. Sir Robert Cecil was in the service of the King of Scotland, faithful to the instinct of the courtier, who turns to the rising sun. {425} The queen was appeased and increased the pay of her successor. If the chroniclers do not wrong her, she had shortly before been concerned in a strange plot, in which the king had narrowly escaped perishing by the hand of the sons of the Earl of Gowrie, beheaded for rebellion in 1584. The queen and her destined successor had little liking for each other, and bitter recollections estranged them. In despatching his emissaries to London, the King of Scotland had recommended them to proceed prudently between the two precipices of the queen and the people. The emissaries were sufficiently skilful to secure the best of guides. It was then that Sir Robert Cecil began with King James a correspondence which would have cost him his head if his mistress had been aware of it. Less skilful, Sir Walter Raleigh and Cobham did not contrive to gain in time the good graces of the future monarch, a fatal imprudence, as one of them afterwards found.

The war continued in Ireland, supported by a considerable body of Spaniards. Lord Mountjoy had besieged them in Kinsale and pressed them vigorously, when the Earl of Tyrone advanced, at the head of six thousand Irish, to second his allies. He was repulsed after a desperate fight; the Spaniards were obliged to capitulate and re-embark in their vessels. Mountjoy pursued Tyrone from retreat to retreat, until he was compelled to surrender, towards the end of 1602. The expenses of the war had been enormous; the Queen had convoked Parliament for the last time in the month of October, 1601. She was sick and depressed in spirits; but she appeared before the Houses more magnificently attired than ever, and obtained considerable supplies. {426} The Commons, however, had determined to cause their favours to be paid for. They protested violently against the monopolies granted or sold by the Crown, which allowed the possessors to fix the price of articles of first necessity as suited them. The sale of wine, oil, salt, tin, steel and coal, were all objects of these monopolies. It was asked why bread was not among the number. "If no remedy is found for these," said a member, "bread will be there before the next Parliament." The discussion, formal and categorical in its nature, lasted four days. The ministers endeavoured to defend the prerogative, but Parliament held firm; the spirit of the Puritans had constantly gained ground during recent years, and the queen was compelled to yield. A promise was given to abolish the existing monopolies, and not to grant fresh ones. This engagement was not strictly kept, but the worst features of the evil diminished. Elizabeth no longer governed as of old. The energy of her will yielded to the growing feebleness of her body. She had always contrived to know the moment when it was necessary to make concessions; and she felt, besides, with bitter sorrow, that her popularity had diminished among the nation. The day of complete decline was approaching. The anxieties of absolute power, remorse for past cruelties, and regret for the death of the Earl of Essex, weighed upon that head, bent with age and sickness. Elizabeth did not seek confidants. Secret in her griefs as in her resolves, she bore alone the burden of her weariness; but the beginning of the year 1603 saw her strength diminishing day by day. {427} She no longer showed herself in public, alleging the sorrow which she experienced at the recent death of the Countess Nottingham. She no longer slept, and scarcely ate; "She remains seated upon cushions," wrote the French Ambassador, at the beginning of March, "refusing to take any medicine or to go to bed." She no longer rose, yet she did not lie down; her eyes remained fixed upon the ground, and days elapsed without her saying a word. On the 21st of March her women put her to bed, and she listened attentively to the prayers of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift. On the morrow, the 22nd of March, Cecil, the Lord Admiral, and Lord Keeper of the Seals, approached her to ask her to name her successor. She trembled. "I told you my seat has been the seat of Kings; I will have no rascal to succeed me." The lords looked at each other, uncertain as to the meaning of her words. "I tell you that I will have no rascal. I must have a king, and who could that be but my cousin of Scotland?" "Is your Grace quite determined?" asked Cecil. She made a sign indicating yes, asking that she should be left in peace. She had again seen the archbishop, and was speechless when the lords of the council returned. "May your Grace deign to make a sign to indicate if you have chosen the the King of Scotland for your successor," they asked again. She raised herself, and joined her hands above her head as though to form a crown. Then she sank back upon her pillows and died in the night of the 24th of March, 1603, without having uttered a word. She was nearly seventy, and had wielded the sceptre for forty-five years.

Queen Elizabeth had willed and accomplished great things. She had governed England despotically, but was skilful, nevertheless, in observing the national tendencies and in yielding to them when resistance became dangerous. Under the influence and upon the advice of her faithful minister, Lord Burleigh, she had often been the arbitrator of Europe, constantly the patron and protector of the persecuted Protestants. She had tarnished the brilliancy of her reign, and for ever sullied her glory, by weaknesses and bad passions, while obstinately refusing to devote herself to the duties and to share in the legitimate happiness of a woman's life. Courageous, proud, farsighted, and persevering, she had displayed many great intellectual faculties and moral qualities, but rarely or never the tender and modest virtues which both inspire and retain private affections. She had long contrived to inspire sentiments of another nature. When in the midst of her glorious career, Elizabeth, asking a lady of her court how she preserved the affection of her husband, the latter replied, "By assuring him of mine, madam," the queen exclaimed, "It is thus that I possess the love of my many husbands, the people of England, by causing them to feel that which I bear to them." She had indeed possessed the love of her people, and she had made common cause with them during long years, and through great trials. When she died, the evils and dangers inherent in absolute power had done their worst. The English nation began to grow weary of the domination of its great queen, and to contemplate political and religious liberties which had no place in the mind or heart of Elizabeth Tudor.

Chapter XXI.

Social And Literary Progress Of England Under Elizabeth.

When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, she found England profoundly divided by religious questions, impoverished by the excessive exactions of her father and sister, still agitated by the bloody dissensions of the great nobles and the popular riots under the reigns which had just elapsed. She governed for forty-five years, amidst religious dissensions yet subsisting, although stifled by her powerful hand. She oppressed the Catholics, and their number, which at her accessions perhaps balanced that of the Protestants, rapidly diminished under the measures which she applied them. Men who cannot practise their religion, or quit the kingdom, who cannot leave their homes without authorization, who are incessantly exposed to vexation and acts of injustice, not to mention the terrible risk of an accusation of treason, abandon their worship if they are weak, or take refuge in exile if they are energetic and zealous. Upon this ruin of the liberty of her Catholic subjects, Elizabeth firmly established the Anglican Church; but the protection with which she surrounded it, while injuring the rights of the Catholics and the nonconforming Protestants, did not prevent the Catholic nucleus from subsisting in England, or the Puritan faith from developing itself. {430} With all their exaggerations, their narrow minds, the severity of their principles, the Puritans were to become for their country the salt of the earth. They were to save it successively from despotism and moral corruption, from the ruin both of liberty and of manners. Few things contributed more towards this progress of the Protestant faith in its austere simplicity, than the reading of the Bible in the English tongue. The translation of Miles Coverdale had replaced that of Wycliffe, and the venerable translator, imprisoned in his youth under Henry VIII., a bishop under Edward VI., and again persecuted under Mary, had dearly paid for the privilege of placing within the reach of his brethren the bread of life; but with the progress of literature and science, his translation was found to be bad and full of errors. Parker, the first Archbishop of Canterbury under the reign of Elizabeth, caused the undertaking of a new version, which was ardently carried out by a commission of learned men. It was completed in 1572, and published under the name of the Bible of Bishop Grindall, the latter having, in 1575, succeeded Parker as Primate. Grindall was, in favour of the reading of the Scriptures and even of the Puritans, who developed under his episcopate, notwithstanding the harshness of the queen towards them, and the severe measures everywhere employed to bring about uniformity of worship. Notwithstanding the fines of twenty pounds sterling per month, declared against those who did not attend the services of their parish church, the "Brownists," a Puritan sect of the strongest tinge, originated at this period and endured without flinching a violent persecution. {431} Many of the Fathers of the American Republic frequented the assemblages of the Brownists, before taking the course of abandoning their country to worship God in liberty. After the death of Grindall, in 1583, the Puritans found an implacable foe in the new Archbishop, Whitgift. The struggle began between the Primate and the nonconformist clergy; it lasted for a long time; but during the last years of the life of Elizabeth it had relaxed. The Puritans at that time grounded, upon the succession to the throne of a Presbyterian prince, hopes which were to be cruelly deceived.

If Queen Elizabeth oppressed at home those of her subjects who did not purely and simply accept the religious doctrines which she offered to them, she always supported upon the Continent the political and religious efforts of the Reformers. We have seen with what prudence she acted, and how her powerful instinct of government, her taste for absolute power and her horror of rebellion, often compelled Cecil to urge her into the way of that great policy which tended to make England the protector and chief of Protestantism in Europe. Throughout all the duplicities, timid councils, and meannesses of Queen Elizabeth towards the French Huguenots or the Dutch Protestants, it must yet be admitted that it was the continental reformers alone who obtained her constant favour, and it was solely through an economy hitherto unknown in the royal expenditure, that she could cope with so many repeated demands. Her father, Henry VIII., had confiscated the property of the monasteries, and that of the subjects whom he caused to be executed, and he had overwhelmed his people with unheard of taxes. {432} Her brother and her sister, from different motives, had left their finances in the saddest disorder. Under the wise direction of Cecil, and thanks to the economy of Queen Elizabeth, the treasury of England was enabled to satisfy the constant calls from without, and to provide for the requirements within, notwithstanding the decrease in the public burdens. The developement of commerce and industry was encouraged. "The money which is in the pockets of my subjects is as useful to me as that in my treasury,"—a great economical maxim, which the kings, her predecessors, had neither known nor practiced.

Elizabeth had taken steps to second the industrial efforts of her people. In order to give an impetus to national manufactures, a sumptuary law, from 1581 to 1582, prohibited to certain persons silk clothing and precious laces manufactured abroad: at the same time, as the exportation of wool formed the greater part of the commerce of England, the rearing of sheep was everywhere encouraged. Pasture-grounds had increased in all directions, replacing in many parts the ploughed lands, and the cloth manufactories every day employed more hands. Linen cloth also began to be manufactured. The persecutions of Philip II. in the Low Countries brought to England skilled workmen, who gave fresh life to different branches of manufacture. It was at this period the happiness and honour of England to receive those who fled from the tyranny of the Spaniards, and she was subsequently to be the refuge of the French Huguenots after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. {433} Commerce and industry prospered, in fact, at home under the reign of Elizabeth; but the predominent achievement of this period was the formation of the English navy, which at her accession was yet only in its infancy, but which had become queen of the seas before her death. The protectionist system, practised in all its rigour by King Henry VIII., soon gave way to the wise liberality of Cecil. An act of the first Parliament of Elizabeth relaxed the navigation laws, authorized trading by foreign vessels on certain conditions, and favoured the development of great commercial companies. In 1566 the Royal Exchange of London was built under the auspices of Sir Thomas Gresham, and the relations with the Low Countries, Germany, and the kingdoms of the North suddenly took a fresh impulse, making up for the progressive decrease of the fisheries. "No more fish is eaten," said Cecil regretfully.

A new trade for England, the monopoly of which had hitherto been left to Spain and Portugal, was the odious slave-trade. An English sailor, John Locke was the first to embark in this traffic. Hawkins engaged in it with success, taking possession of a shipload of negroes upon the coast of Guinea, and selling them in St. Domingo; but this detestable commerce was not to attain its full development until later: it was the Spaniards and their colonies, not the unhappy blacks, whom the English sailors of the time of Elizabeth regarded as their legitimate prey.

Under the reign of Queen Elizabeth began the great voyages of discovery, which gave rise to the abuses of buccaneering, but at the same time opened up a vast field to human enterprise and research. Martin Frobisher first entered the field in 1567. He desired to find a new passage to India; but he was stopped in the vicinity of Hudson's Bay, where he took possession of certain territories in the name of England, and discovered the strait which still bears his name. From this the first idea was conceived of a passage by the north-west, subsequently sought for ardently by John Davis, who, as well as his forerunner, also gave a name to a strait. Frobisher made three voyages to this region, where he thought that he had found gold, but he was finally employed in the service of the queen, commanded one of the vessels which repulsed the Spanish Armada, and was killed, in 1594, while attacking a fortress near Brest, which held out for the Leaguers against Henry IV.

While Frobisher was seeking the polar passage, Drake accomplished the journey round the world, an undertaking which had as yet only been attempted by the Portuguese Fernando Magellan, who gave his name to a celebrated strait. His voyage was secretly authorized by Elizabeth, in defiance of the claim of the Spaniards to the islands and seas of America, which they said, were solemnly conceded to them by the Pope. Drake took no heed of their claims, pillaged the coasts, captured ships, and accumulated by his acts of piracy enormous wealth, of which he brought her share to the sovereign, who treated him honourably in return, though without recognizing his missions. The little vessel in which Drake sailed was preserved at Deptford until it crumbled through decay.

The projects of Sir Walter Raleigh were not exclusively directed, like those of Hawkins and Drake, to the parts of the world occupied by the Spaniards. He had conceived the hope of enriching his country and himself otherwise than by buccaneering, and had attempted several successive expeditions towards the southern part of North America. He had already failed twice and lost his brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in one of his voyages, when he set sail, in 1584, with the authorization of the queen, to take possession, with full ownership, of the lands he might discover, upon the condition of reserving a fifth part of the produce of the mines for the crown. It was in this expedition that he accidentally discovered the territory which now composes, in the United States, Virginia and North Carolina, possessions which Queen Elizabeth deigned to distinguish by the name of Virginia. The letters patent granted to Raleigh were confirmed by an act of Parliament, and in the following year Sir Richard Greville, a relative of Sir Walter's, conducted to the new colony eight hundred emigrants, who established themselves on the island of Roanoke. They were nearly dead from hunger and privations, when, in the following year. Sir Francis Drake, returning from an expedition against the Spanish territories, received them on board his ship. Two other attempts at colonization had the same result, and Virginia remained abandoned to the savages without having yielded any other result to England than the discovery of tobacco, which for a long time bore the name of Virginian grass.

We have seen that at the moment of the attack of the Spanish Armada the royal navy was of little importance; but the commercial navy was considerable. The proportion had increased by a third in fifty years. Whale-fishing, which began to develop in 1575, soon occupied a large number of vessels. The protracted war with Spain and Portugal having hindered the arrival of the productions of India, a company of traders was formed in the city of London to undertake voyages to the East Indies. In December, 1600, Queen Elizabeth granted them a charter; this was the origin, the modest germ of the great East India Company. The political and religious animosity which nourished the buccaneering expeditions against Spain, and the cruel revenge which the Spaniards took upon the English sailors who fell into their hands, served to develop the taste for remote enterprises, and to form that race of bold sailors who have so powerfully contributed to the grandeur and independence of their country.

While material and social progress took so new a flight, the splendour of literature under the reign of Elizabeth has not yet faded. The intellectual movement preceded all others. It burst forth towards the end of the civil war, and amidst the desolation which intestine strife brings in its wake. Scotland even took part in this glory, although civil war still reigned there. From 1494 to 1584 seven colleges were founded at Oxford and eight at Cambridge. The university of Aberdeen in 1494, that of Edinburgh in 1582, two colleges of the university of St. Andrew's between 1512 and 1537, the university of Trinity College at Dublin in 1591, assured in Great Britain the development of learning. The suppression of the monasteries retarded this movement momentarily, but the reformers did not lose sight of the danger. {437} Cranmer in particular made serious efforts to remedy the evil. The schools called grammar-schools, then instituted in great numbers, spread elementary education and a certain degree of intellectual culture; but the higher instruction, and, in particular, the study of the classical languages, received a blow from which they were long in recovering. Great disorder reigned in the universities; morals were lax and the standard of study very deficient. The revival of letters began with the study of foreign languages. We have seen that Queen Mary, like Queen Elizabeth, had studied French, Italian and Spanish, as well as Latin and Greek. From this usage, more and more diffused, sprang a strange abuse of foreign words, which introduced something like a new tongue into the English language. Under the reign of Elizabeth the lords and fine ladies at court spoke a language designated by the word "Euphuism," composed of the harmonious syllables of all languages, which is now difficult to understand, and especially to read. Traces of it may yet be found in the poems of Spenser.

Amidst this momentary decline of learning, a natural result of violent convulsions, it is impossible not to recognize the fact that the sixteenth century furnished, in England, as elsewhere, a great number of distinguished men as learned as they were gifted by nature. Without going beyond the reign of Elizabeth, we may mention Roger Ascham, her tutor, born in Yorkshire in 1515, whom the queen retained beside her in the capacity of secretary until his death in 1568. His most esteemed work is entitled The Schoolmaster. {438} The tutor of King James VI. of Scotland has left a more celebrated name. The historian and poet, George Buchanan, born at Killearn, in 1506, was originally a soldier. He lived for a long time in France, in Portugal, in Piedmont, leading a life interspersed with adventures, until he returned to Scotland in 1560. Being nominated by Queen Mary to a post of public instruction, he did not cease to attack her ardently and to write violent pamphlets against her. Parliament nominated him tutor to the young king, whom he instructed with considerable care. When he was accused of having made a pedant of him, he replied, "That is the best thing I could make of him." His History of Scotland possesses real interest, although it is characterized by much partiality. He died at Edinburgh in 1582. Doctor Hooker had no taste for taking part in the great agitations of his time. Born in 1554, domestic dissensions, caused by the temper of his wife, led him to seek a peaceful and retired life. He had been master of the temple in London, but a preacher, his colleague, an ardent Puritan, made existence so hard for him that he retired to a country living, where he wrote his great work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Policy, a book full of judgment, moderation, and learning, a model of the most beautiful English style. He died in 1600, being only forty-seven years of age, at the moment when he had just finished his book. The courtiers did not abandon exclusively to the learned the cultivation of letters. Lord Surrey, beheaded during the last days of Henry VIII., has left some charming verses. The Lion King-of-Arms of Scotland, Sir David Lyndsay, of the Mount, was also a poet. {439} The type of knight and gentleman, Sir Philip Sydney, nephew of the Earl of Leicester, and son-in-law of Walsingham, who has left in a life-time of thirty-two years an accomplished model and an ineffaceable remembrance to posterity, wrote in prose and in verse. His romantic allegory of Arcadia, is the most important of his works. He dedicated it to his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, a worthy friend of such a brother. It was said of her that to love her was to receive a liberal education. She died young, like himself, having published the book which her brother had left, and which had an immense success. We have mentioned the learned and lettered courtiers. We now come to the real poets. England numbers two under the reign of Elizabeth: the one charming, elegant, prolific; the other, unique in the history of the world: Spenser and Shakespeare. Edmund Spenser was born in London in 1533. He wrote at first some poems of little importance, but he devoted several years to the composition of the Faery Queene, of which Sydney was the first patron, and which was completed under the auspices of Raleigh. We might have placed Spenser among the courtiers, if that had not been to do too much honour to the latter, for his patrons often employed him, and he finally obtained considerable estates in Ireland out of the confiscated lands of the Earl of Desmond. The Faery Queene was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, who is constantly celebrated in the poem. She granted a pension to Spenser, and the success of the work was greater from the fact, that the court took pleasure in searching for the persons concealed beneath the allegorical names. An inexhaustible imagination, the most elevated sentiments, and the most charming descriptions, cause one to forget the peculiar taste of the time, the confusion and complication of incidents, as well as the strange form of versification. {440} Read without pausing, the Faery Queene may appear tiresome, but a great number of detached portions will always remain masterpieces. Spenser died in 1598, after being obliged to fly from Ireland, then a prey to insurrection.

Let us finally mention the great comedian, the great philosopher, the great poet, who was in his life time butcher's apprentice, poacher, actor, theatrical manager, and whose name is William Shakespeare. He was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in 1564. In twenty years, amidst the duties of his profession, the care of mounting his pieces, of instructing his actors, he composed thirty-two tragedies and comedies, in verse and prose, rich with an incomparable knowledge of human nature, and an unequalled power of imagination, terrible and comic by turns, profound and delicate, homely and touching, responding to every emotion of the soul, divining all that was beyond the range of his experience, and for ever remaining the treasure of ages. All this being accomplished, Shakespeare left the theatre and the busy world at the age of forty-five, to return to Stratford-on-Avon, where he lived peacefully in the most modest retirement, writing nothing, and never returning to the stage, ignored and unknown, if his works had not for ever marked out his place in the world. A strange example of an imagination so powerful, suddenly ceasing to produce, and closing once for all the door to the efforts of genius. Shakespeare died in 1616. After mention of his name, no one will ask whether the reign of Elizabeth is entitled to occupy a great place in the literary history of England and the world.