Volume Iv Part 2 (2/2)

The whole nation fronted him in arms. The sovereign whom the voice of the young king named as his successor pa.s.sed from the throne to the Tower, and a sovereign whose t.i.tle rested on parliamentary statute took her place.

[Sidenote: The religious reaction.]

At the opening of August Mary entered London in triumph. Short and thin in figure, with a face drawn and colourless that told of constant ill-health, there was little in the outer seeming of the new queen to recall her father; but her hard, bright eyes, her manlike voice, her fearlessness and self-will, told of her Tudor blood, as her skill in music, her knowledge of languages, her love of learning, spoke of the culture and refinement of Henry's Court. Though Mary was thirty-seven years old, the strict retirement in which she had lived had left her as ignorant of the actual temper of England as England was ignorant of her own. She had founded her resistance to the changes of the Protectorate on a resolve to adhere to her father's system till her brother came of age to rule, and England believed her to be longing like itself simply for a restoration of what Henry had left. The belief was confirmed by her earlier actions. The changes of the Protectorate were treated as null and void. Gardiner, Henry's minister, was drawn from the Tower to take the lead as Chancellor at the Queen's Council-board. Bonner and the deposed bishops were restored to their sees. Ridley with the others who had displaced them was again expelled. Latimer, as a representative of the extreme Protestants, was sent to the Tower; and the foreign refugees, as anti-sacramentarians, were ordered to leave England. On an indignant protest from Cranmer against reports that he was ready to abandon the new reforms the Archbishop was sent for his seditious demeanour to the Tower, and soon put on his trial for treason with Lady Jane Grey, her husband, and two of his brothers. Each pleaded guilty; but no attempt was made to carry out the sentence of death. In all this England went with the Queen. The popular enthusiasm hardly waited in fact for the orders of the Government. The whole system which had been pursued during Edward's reign fell with a sudden crash. London indeed retained much of its Protestant sympathy, but over the rest of the country the tide of reaction swept without a check. The married priests were driven from their churches, the images were replaced. In many parishes the new Prayer Book was set aside and the ma.s.s restored. The Parliament which met in October annulled the laws made respecting religion during the past reign, and re-established the form of service as used in the last year of Henry the Eighth.

[Sidenote: Mary's aim.]

Up to this point the temper of England went fairly with that of the Queen. But there were from the first signs of a radical difference between the aim of Mary and that of her people. With the restoration of her father's system the nation as a whole was satisfied. Mary on the other hand looked on such a restoration simply as a step towards a complete revival of the system which Henry had done away. Through long years of suffering and peril her fanaticism had been patiently brooding over the hope of restoring to England its older religion. She believed, as she said at a later time to the Parliament, that ”she had been predestined and preserved by G.o.d to the succession of the Crown for no other end save that He might make use of her above all else in the bringing back of the realm to the Catholic faith.” Her zeal however was checked by the fact that she stood almost alone in her aim, as well as by cautious advice from her cousin, the Emperor; and she a.s.sured the Londoners that ”albeit her own conscience was stayed in matters of religion, yet she meant not to compel or strain men's consciences otherwise than G.o.d should, as she trusted, put in their hearts a persuasion of the truth that she was in, through the opening of his word unto them by G.o.dly, and virtuous, and learned preachers.” She had in fact not ventured as yet to refuse the t.i.tle of ”Head of the Church next under G.o.d” or to disclaim the powers which the Act of Supremacy gave her; on the contrary she used these powers in the regulation of preaching as her father had used them. The strenuous resistance with which her proposal to set aside the new Prayer Book was met in Parliament warned her of the difficulties that awaited any projects of radical change. The proposal was carried, but only after a hot conflict which lasted over six days and which left a third of the Lower House still opposed to it. Their opposition by no means implied approval of the whole series of religious changes of which the Prayer Book formed a part, for the more moderate Catholics were pleading at this time for prayers in the vulgar tongue, and on this question followers of More and Colet might have voted with the followers of Cranmer. But it showed how far men's minds were from any spirit of blind reaction or blind compliance with the royal will.

[Sidenote: The Spanish Marriage.]

The temper of the Parliament indeed was very different from that of the Houses which had knelt before Henry the Eighth. If it consented to repeal the enactment which rendered her mother's marriage invalid and to declare Mary ”born in lawful matrimony,” it secured the abolition of all the new treasons and felonies created in the two last reigns. The demand for their abolition showed that jealousy of the growth of civil tyranny had now spread from the minds of philosophers like More to the minds of common Englishmen. Still keener was the jealousy of any marked revolution in the religious system which Henry had established. The wish to return to the obedience of Rome lingered indeed among some of the clergy and in the northern s.h.i.+res. But elsewhere the system of a national Church was popular, and it was backed by the existence of a large and influential cla.s.s who had been enriched by the abbey lands.

Forty thousand families had profited by the spoil, and watched anxiously any approach of danger to their new possessions, such as submission to the Papacy was likely to bring about. On such a submission however Mary was resolved: and it was to gain strength for such a step that she determined to seek a husband from her mother's house. The policy of Ferdinand of Aragon, so long held at bay by adverse fortune, was now to find its complete fulfilment. To one line of the house of Austria, that of Charles the Fifth, had fallen not only the Imperial Crown but the great heritage of Burgundy, Aragon, Naples, Castille, and the Castillian dependencies in the New World. To a second, that of the Emperor's brother Ferdinand, had fallen the Austrian duchies, Bohemia and Hungary.

The marriage of Catharine was now, as it seemed, to bear its fruits by the union of Mary with a son of Charles, and the placing a third Austrian line upon the throne of England. The gigantic scheme of bringing all western Europe together under the rule of a single family seemed at last to draw to its realization.

[Sidenote: Its political grounds.]

It was no doubt from political as well as religious motives that Mary set her heart on this union. Her rejection of Gardiner's proposal that she should marry the young Courtenay, Earl of Devon, a son of the Marquis of Exeter whom Henry had beheaded, the resolve which she expressed to wed ”no subject, no Englishman,” was founded in part on the danger to her throne from the pretensions of Mary Stuart, whose adherents cared little for the exclusion of the Scotch line from the succession by Henry's will and already alleged the illegitimate births of both Mary Tudor and Elizabeth through the annulling of their mothers'

marriages as a ground for denying their right to the throne. Such claims became doubly formidable through the marriage of Mary Stuart with the heir of the French Crown, and the virtual union of both Scotland and France in this claimant's hands. It was only to Charles that the Queen could look for aid against such a pressure as this, and Charles was forced to give her aid. His old dreams of a mastery of the world had faded away before the stern realities of the Peace of Pa.s.sau and his repulse from the walls of Metz. His hold over the Empire was broken.

France was more formidable than ever. To crown his difficulties the growth of heresy and of the spirit of independence in the Netherlands threatened to rob him of the finest part of the Burgundian heritage.

With Mary Stuart once on the English throne, and the great island of the west knit to the French monarchy, the balance of power would be utterly overthrown, the Low Countries lost, and the Imperial Crown, as it could hardly be doubted, reft from the house of Austria. He was quick therefore to welcome the Queen's advances, and to offer his son Philip, who though not yet twenty-six was already a widower, as a candidate for her hand.

[Sidenote: Opposition of Parliament.]

The offer came weighted with a heavy bribe. The keen foresight of the Emperor already saw the difficulty of holding the Netherlands in union with the Spanish monarchy; and while Spain, Naples, and Franche Comte descended to Philip's eldest son, Charles promised the heritage of the Low Countries with England to the issue of Philip and Mary. He accepted too the demand of Gardiner and the Council that in the event of such a union England should preserve complete independence both of policy and action. In any case the marriage would save England from the grasp of France, and restore it, as the Emperor hinted, to the obedience of the Church. But the project was hardly declared when it was met by an outburst of popular indignation. Gardiner himself was against a union that would annul the national independence which had till now been the aim of Tudor policy, and that would drag England helplessly in the wake of the House of Austria. The ma.s.s of conservative Englishmen shrank from the religious aspects of the marriage. For the Emperor had now ceased to be an object of hope or confidence as a mediator who would at once purify the Church from abuses, and restore the unity of Christendom; he had ranged himself definitely on the side of the Papacy and of the Council of Trent; and the cruelties of the Inquisition which he had introduced into Flanders gave a terrible indication of the bigotry which he was to bequeath to his House. The marriage with Philip meant, it could hardly be doubted, a submission to the Papacy, and an undoing not only of the religious changes of Edward but of the whole system of Henry. Loyal and conservative as was the temper of the Parliament, it was at one in its opposition to a Spanish marriage and in the request which it made through a deputation of its members to the Queen that she would marry an Englishman. The request was a new step forward on the part of the Houses to the recovery of their older rights. Already called by Cromwell's policy to more than their old power in ecclesiastical matters, their dread of revolutionary change pushed them to an intervention in matters of state. Mary noted the advance with all a Tudor's jealousy. She interrupted the speaker; she rebuked the Parliament for taking too much on itself; she declared she would take counsel on such a matter ”with G.o.d and with none other.” But the remonstrance had been made, the interference was to serve as a precedent in the reign to come, and a fresh proof had been given that Parliament was no longer the slavish tool of the Crown.

[Sidenote: Wyatt's rising.]

But while the nation grumbled and the Parliament remonstrated, one party in the realm was filled with absolute panic by the news of the Spanish match. The Protestants saw in the marriage not only the final overthrow of their religious hopes, but a close of the religious truce, and an opening of persecution. The general opposition to the match, with the dread of the holders of Church lands that their possessions were in danger, encouraged the more violent to plan a rising; and France, naturally jealous of an increase of power by its great opponent, promised to support them by an incursion from Scotland and an attack on Calais. The real aim of the rebellion was, no doubt, the displacement of Mary, and the setting either of Jane Grey, or, as the bulk of the Protestants desired, of Elizabeth, on the throne. But these hopes were cautiously hidden; and the conspirators declared their aim to be that of freeing the Queen from evil counsellors, and of preventing her union with the Prince of Spain. The plan combined three simultaneous outbreaks of revolt. Sir Peter Carew engaged to raise the west, the Duke of Suffolk to call the midland counties to arms, while Sir Thomas Wyatt led the Kentishmen on London. The rising was planned for the spring of 1554.

But the vigilance of the Government drove it to a premature explosion in January, and baffled it in the centre and the west. Carew fled to France; Suffolk, who appeared in arms at Leicester, found small response from the people, and was soon sent prisoner to the Tower. The Kentish rising however proved a more formidable danger. A cry that the Spaniards were coming ”to conquer the realm” drew thousands to Wyatt's standard.

The s.h.i.+ps in the Thames submitted to be seized by the insurgents. A party of the train-bands of London, who marched with the royal guard under the old Duke of Norfolk against them, deserted to the rebels in a ma.s.s with shouts of ”A Wyatt! a Wyatt! we are all Englishmen!”

[Sidenote: Its failure.]

Had the Kentishmen moved quickly on the capital, its gates would have been flung open and success would have been a.s.sured. But at the critical moment Mary was saved by her queenly courage. Riding boldly to the Guildhall she appealed with ”a man's voice” to the loyalty of the citizens, and denounced the declaration of Wyatt's followers as ”a Spanish cloak to cover their purpose against our religion.” She pledged herself, ”on the word of a Queen, that if it shall not probably appear to all the n.o.bility and commons in the high court of Parliament that this marriage shall be for the high benefit and commodity of all the whole realm, then will I abstain from marriage while I live.” The pledge was a momentous one, for it owned the very claim of the two Houses which the Queen had till now haughtily rejected; and with the remonstrance of the Parliament still fresh in their ears the Londoners may well have believed that the marriage-project would come quietly to an end. The dread too of any change in religion by the return of the violent Protestantism of Edward's day could hardly fail to win Mary support among the citizens. The mayor answered for their loyalty, and when Wyatt appeared on the Southwark bank the bridge was secured against him. But the rebel leader knew that the issue of the revolt hung on the question which side London would take, and that a large part of the Londoners favoured his cause. Marching therefore up the Thames he seized a bridge at Kingston, threw his force across the river, and turned rapidly back on the capital. But a night march along miry roads wearied and disorganized his men; the bulk of them were cut off from their leader by a royal force which had gathered in the fields at what is now Hyde Park Corner, and only Wyatt himself with a handful of followers pushed desperately on past the palace of St. James, whence the Queen refused to fly even while the rebels were marching beneath its walls, along the Strand to Ludgate. ”I have kept touch,” he cried as he sank exhausted at the gate. But it was closed: his adherents within were powerless to effect their promised diversion in his favour; and as he fell back the daring leader was surrounded at Temple Bar and sent to the Tower.

[Sidenote: The marriage.]

The failure of the revolt was fatal to the girl whom part at least of the rebels would have placed on the throne. Lady Jane Grey, who had till now been spared and treated with great leniency, was sent to the block; and her father, her husband, and her uncle, atoned for the ambition of the House of Suffolk by the death of traitors. Wyatt and his chief adherents followed them to execution, while the bodies of the poorer insurgents were dangling on gibbets round London. Elizabeth, who had with some reason been suspected of complicity in the insurrection, was sent to the Tower; and only saved from death by the interposition of the Council. The leading Protestants fled in terror over sea. But the failure of the revolt did more than crush the Protestant party; it enabled the Queen to lay aside the mask of moderation which had been forced on her by the earlier difficulties of her reign. An order for the expulsion of all married clergy from their cures, with the deprivation of nine bishops who had been appointed during the Protectorate and who represented its religious tendencies, proved the Queen's resolve to enter boldly on a course of reaction. Her victory secured the Spanish marriage. It was to prevent Philip's union with Mary that Wyatt had risen, and with his overthrow the Queen's policy stood triumphant. The whole strength of the conservative opposition was lost when opposition could be branded as disloyalty. Mary too was true to the pledge she had given that the match should only be brought about with the a.s.sent of Parliament. But pressure was unscrupulously used to secure compliant members in the new elections, and a reluctant a.s.sent to the marriage was wrung from the Houses when they a.s.sembled in the spring. Philip was created king of Naples by his father to give dignity to his union; and in the following July Mary met him at Winchester and became his wife.

[Sidenote: Philip.]

As he entered London with the Queen, men noted curiously the look of the young king whose fortunes were to be so closely linked with those of England for fifty years to come. Far younger than his bride, for he was but twenty-six, there was little of youth in the small and fragile frame, the sickly face, the sedentary habits, the Spanish silence and reserve, which estranged Englishmen from Philip as they had already estranged his subjects in Italy and his future subjects in the Netherlands. Here however he sought by an unusual pleasantness of demeanour as well as by profuse distributions of gifts to win the national goodwill, for it was only by winning it that he could accomplish the work he came to do. His first aim was to reconcile England with the Church. The new Spanish marriage was to repair the harm which the earlier Spanish marriage had brought about by securing that submission to Rome on which Mary was resolved. Even before Philip's landing in England the great obstacle to reunion had been removed by the consent of Julius the Third under pressure from the Emperor to waive the restoration of the Church lands in the event of England's return to obedience. Other and almost as great obstacles indeed seemed to remain.

The temper of the nation had gone with Henry in his rejection of the Papal jurisdiction. Mary's counsellors had been foremost among the men who advocated the change. Her minister, Bishop Gardiner, seemed pledged to oppose any submission to Rome. As secretary of state after Wolsey's fall he had taken a prominent part in the measures which brought about a severance between England and the Papacy; as Bishop of Winchester he had written a famous tract ”On True Obedience” in which the Papal supremacy had been expressly repudiated; and to the end of Henry's days he had been looked upon as the leading advocate of the system of a national and independent Church. Nor had his att.i.tude changed in Edward's reign. In the process for his deprivation he avowed himself ready as ever to maintain as well ”the supremacy and supreme authority of the king's majesty that now is as the abolis.h.i.+ng of the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome.”

[Sidenote: The submission to Rome.]

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