act passed in the 37th year of Henry's reign. This act was much abused; for though one professed object of it was the encouragement of learning, many places of learning were actually suppressed under it. The king, however, afterwards founded a considerable number of grammar-schools, which still exist and are popularly known as King Edward's Schools. 167.-SONNETS. EDWARD VI. "Sweet is the holiness of youth"-so felt Time-honoured Chaucer when he framed the lay Of pious Edward kneeling as he knelt In meek and simple infancy, what joy Thy heart! What hopes inspired thy genius, skilled The lucid shafts of reason to employ, Piercing the Papal darkness from afar! REVIVAL OF POPERY. Melts into silent shades the youth, discrowned For change, to whom the new looks always green! Runs through blind channels of an unknown tongue. WORDSWORTH. 168. THE REIGN OF MARY. [PENNY CYCLOPÆDIA. Mary I. Queen of England, was the daughter of Henry VIII., by his first wife Catherine of Aragon, and was born at Greenwich, on the 18th (Burnet says 19th) of February, 1516. She was the only one of several children borne by her mother that lived; and on this account, according to Burnet, and because her father was then "out of hopes of more children," he in 1518 "declared his daughter princess of Wales, and sent her to Ludlow to hold her court there, and projected divers matches for her." It was first settled that she should be married to the dauphin by a treaty with the king of France, dated 9th November, 1518, which however was soon after broken. Then it was arranged, 22nd June, 1522, that her hand should be given to the emperor Charles V. On Charles declining to fulfil this bargain, some overtures of a Scottish marriage followed in September, 1524. Finally, in April, 1527, it was agreed that the princess should be given in marriage either to the French king Francis, or to his second son, the duke of Orleans; but before it was determined whether she should be married to the father or the son, the affair of her mother's divorce, implying her own illegitimacy, came to be agitated, and stopped all match-making for some years. Mary was brought up from her infancy in a strong attachment to the antient religion, under the care of her mother, and Margaret, countess of Salisbury, the effect of whose instructions was not impaired by the subsequent lessons of the learned Ludovicus Vives, who, though somewhat inclined to the reformed opinions, was appointed by Henry to be her Latin tutor. After her mother's divorce, Mary was deprived of her title of princess of Wales, which was transferred to the princess Elizabeth soon after she came into the world; and during all the time that Anne Boleyn lived, Mary, who clung to her mother's cause and her own, remained in a state of estrangement from her father. In the mean time, according to Lord Herbert, negotiations for disposing of her in marriage were twice entered into by her near relation the emperor, without her father's consent having been asked; in 1533 he offered her to James V. of Scotland, and in 1535 to her old suitor the dauphin. But immediately after the execution of Queen Anne in 1536, a reconcilement took place between Henry and his eldest daughter, who, with great reluctance, was now prevailed upon to make a formal acknowledgement both of Henry's ecclesiastical supremacy-utterly refusing "the bishop of Rome's pretended authority, power, and jurisdiction within this realm heretofore usurped "-and of the nullity of the marriage of her father and mother, which she declared was "by God's law and man's law incestuous and unlawful." (See the "Confession of me, the Lady Mary," as printed by Burnet, "Hist. Ref.," from the original, "all written with her own hand.") By the new act of succession, however, passed this year, she was again, as well as her sister Elizabeth, declared illegitimate, and for ever excluded from claiming the inheritance of the crown as the king's lawful heir by lineal descent. While she was thus circumstanced, "excluded," as Lord Herbert expresses it," by act of parliament from all claim to the succession except such as the king shall give her" by the powers reserved to him of nominating his own successor after failure of the issue of Queen Jane, or of any other queen whom he might afterwards marry, she was in 1538 offered to Don Louis, prince of Portugal, and the next year to William, son of the duke of Cleves. Meanwhile continuing to yield an outward conformity to all her father's capricious movements in the matter of religion, she so far succeeded in regaining his favour, that in the new act of succession, passed in 1544, the inheritance to the crown was expressly secured to her next after her brother Edward and his heirs, and any issue the king might have by his then wife Catherine Parr. Mary's compliance with the innovations in religion in her father's time had been dictated merely by fear or self-interest; and when, after the accession of her brother, his ministers proceeded to place the whole doctrine, as well as discipline, of the national church upon a new foundation, she openly refused to go along with them; nor could all their persuasions and threats, aided by those of her brother himself, move her from her ground. Full details of the various attempts that were made to prevail upon her may be found in Burnet's "History," and in King Edward's "Journal." Mention is made in the latter, under date of April, 1549, of a demand for the hand of the Lady Mary by the Duke of Brunswick, who was informed by the council that "there was talk for her marriage with the infant of Portugal, which being determined, he should have answer." About the same time it is noted that "whereas the emperor's ambassador desired leave, by letters patents, that my Lady Mary might have mass, it was denied him." On the 18th of March of the following year, the king writes: "The Lady Mary, my sister, came to me at Westminster, where, after salutations, she was called, with my council, into a chamber; where was declared how long I had suffered her mass, in hope of her reconciliation, and how now being no hope, which I perceived by her letters, except I saw some short amendment, I could not bear it. She answered, that her soul was God's, and her faith she would not change, nor dissemble her opinion with contrary doings. It was said, I constrained not her faith, but wished her not as a king to rule, but as a subject to obey; and that her example might breed too much inconvenience." In fact throughout this reign the princess Mary was the centre of the intrigues of the Catholic party, and the hope of her succession their main strength and support. In the summer of this same year a project was entered into by her friends at home and abroad for removing her from England, where her faith at least, if not her person, was probably supposed to be in some danger. On the 29th of August, her brother writes: "Certain pinnaces were prepared to see that there should be no conveyance over sea of the Lady Mary secretly done. Also appointed that the lord chancellor, lord chamberlain, the vice-chamberlain, and the secretary Petre should see by all means they could whether she used the mass; and if she did, that the laws should be executed on her chaplains." Mary's firm adherence to the Roman faith finally induced Edward, under the interested advice of his minister Northumberland, to attempt at the close of his life to exclude her from the succession, and to make over the crown by will to the Lady Jane Grey, an act which was certainly without any shadow of legal force. Although Lady Jane however was actually proclaimed, scarcely any resistance was made to the accession of Mary, the commencement of whose reign accordingly is dated from the 6th of July, 1553, the day of her brother's death. Mary was scarcely seated on the throne, when she proceeded to re-establish the ancient religion. In the course of the month of August, Bonner, Gardiner, and three other bishops, who had been deposed for nonconformity in the late reign, were restored to their sees, and the mass began again to be celebrated in many churches. In the following month archbishop Cranmer and bishop Latimer were committed to the Tower; and in November the parliament passed an act repealing all the acts, nine in number, relating to religion, that had been passed in the late reign, and replacing the church in the same position in which it had stood at the death of Henry VIII. These measures, and the other indications given by the court of a determination to be completely reconciled with Rome, were followed by the insurrection, commonly known as that of Sir Thomas Wyatt, its principal leader, which broke out in the end of January, 1554, but was in a few days effectu ally put down; its suppression being signalised by the executions of the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey and her husband the Lord Guildford Dudley, of her father the duke of Suffolk, and finally, of Wyat himself. On the 25th of July, Mary was married in the cathedral church of Winchester to the prince of Spain, afterwards Philip II., the son of the emperor Charles V.; and the reunion with Rome was speedily completed by a parliament which assembled in the beginning of November, and which passed acts repealing the attainder of Cardinal Pole, who immediately after arrived in England with the dignity of papal legate, restoring the authority of the pope, repealing all laws made against the see of Rome since the 20th of Henry VIII., reviving the ancient statutes against heresy, and in short re-establishing the whole national system of religious policy as it had existed previous to the first innovations made by Henry VIII. By one of the acts of this session of parliament also Philip was authorised to take the title of king of England during the queen's life. All these acts appear to have been passed with scarcely any debate or opposition in either house, except occasionally upon mere points of detail and form. The remainder of the history of the reign of Mary is occupied chiefly with the sanguinary persecutions of the adherents to the reformed doctrines. The Protestant writers reckon that about two hundred and eighty victims perished at the stake, from the 4th of February, 1555, on which day John Rogers was burnt at Smithfield, to the 10th of November, 1558, when the last auto-da-fé of the reign took place by the execution in the same manner of three men and two women at Colchester. Dr. Lingard admits that after expunging from the Protestant lists "the names of all who were condemned as felons or traitors, or who died peaceably in their beds, or who survived the publication of their martyrdom, or who would for their heterodoxy have been sent to the stake by the reformed prelates themselves, had they been in possession of the power," and making every other reasonable allowance, it will still be found that in the space of four years almost two hundred persons perished in the flames for religious opinion." Among the most distinguished sufferers were Hooper bishop of Gloucester, Ferrar of St. David's, Latimer of Worcester, Ridley of London, and Cranmer archbishop of Canterbury. Gardiner, bishop of Winchester and lord chancellor, was Mary's chief minister till his death in November, 1555, after which the direction of affairs fell mostly into the hands of Cardinal Pole, who after Cranmer's deposition was made archbishop of Canterbury; but the notorious Bonner, Ridley's successor in the see of London, has the credit of having been the principal instigator of these atrocities, which, it may be remarked, so far from contributing to put down the reformed doctrines, appear to have had a greater effect in disgusting the nation with the restored church than all other causes together. At the same time that the new opinions in religion were thus attempted to be extinguished by committing the bodies of those who believed in them to the flames, the queen gave a further proof of the sincerity of her own faith by restoring to the church the tenths and first-fruits, with all the rectories, glebe-lands, and tithes that had been annexed to the crown in the times of her father and brother. She also re-established several of the old religious houses, and endowed them as liberally as her means enabled her. Tired both of the country and of his wife, Philip left England, in the beginning of September, 1555, and continued absent for about a year and a half. The bond however by which this marriage attached the English court to Spain and the Empire remained the same as ever; and when, after a short cessation of hostilities, war recommenced in the spring of 1557 between Spain and France, Mary was prevailed upon to join the former against the latter power. The principal consequence of this step, in so far as this country was concerned, was the loss of the only remaining English continental possession, the town and territory of Calais, which surrendered to the duke of Guise, in January, 1558, after a siege of a few days. This event, which was regarded as a national disgrace worse than any mere loss, excited the bitterest feelings of dissatisfaction with the policy of the court; and Mary herself is said never to have recovered from the blow. Some ineffectual efforts were made to retaliate upon France by force of arms; but at last negotiations for a peace between the three belligerent powers were opened at Cambray, in the midst of which queen Mary died, worn out with bodily and mental suffering, on the 17th of November, 1558, in the forty-third year of her age and the sixth of her reign. She is affirmed to have said on her deathbed, that if her breast should be opened after her decease, Calais would be found to be written on her heart. Mary left no issue, and was succeeded on the throne by her half-sister Elizabeth. 169.-THE DEATH OF LADY JANE GREY. HUME. [Lady Jane Grey, born in 1537, was of the blood royal of England, being the great-granddaughter of Henry VII., whose daughter Mary married first Louis XII. of France, secondly Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, by whom she had a daughter, Frances Brandon, married to Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset. Of this marriage Lady Jane Grey was the eldest daughter: there was no male issue. She was distinguished from childhood by her talents; and her acquirements were certainly, for her age, very unusual. Greek, Latin, Italian, and French, she spoke, and wrote with correctness and fluency; and she understood Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic. Great beauty, sweetness of temper, piety, and skill in the usual female accomplishments, combined to render her the delight of all, except her parents, whose severity would in modern times be termed brutal, yet did not alienate her willing obedience. Filial obedience proved her ruin. Her father, then created Duke of Suffolk, presuming on his own power and favour, and the declining health of Edward VI, undertook in concert with the powerful Duke of Northumberland to transfer the crown into their own line. With this view a marriage was concluded between Lady Jane Grey and Northumberland's fourth son Lord Guilford Dudley, in May 1553; and Edward VI. was persuaded by his interested advisers to set aside the rights of his sisters Mary and Elizabeth, and his cousin Mary of Scotland; and, in consideration of her eminent virtues and royal descent, to settle the crown upon Lady Jane Grey, or Dudley. The king died July 6th: and it was not until the 10th that this unfortunate lady even knew of the plot in which she was involved. She was very reluctant to accept the crown; but was at last overpersuaded by the importunities of her parents, and the entreaties of her husband, whom she tenderly loved. The two dukes had no party among the people; and ten days placed Mary in undisputed possession of the throne. Lady Jane and her husband were confined in the Tower, apparently without intention of taking their lives in the first instance. But Wyat's insurrection determined their fate.] The violent and sudden change of religion inspired the Protestants with great discontent; and even affected indifferent spectators with concern, by the hardships to which so many individuals were on that account exposed. But the Spanish match was a point of more general concern, and diffused universal apprehensions for the liberty and independence of the nation. To obviate all clamour, the articles of marriage were drawn as favourable as possible for the interest and security, and even grandeur of England. It was agreed that though Philip should have the title of king, the administration should be entirely in the queen; that no foreigner should be capable of enjoying any office in the kingdom; that no innovation should be made in the English laws, customs, and privileges; that Philip should not carry the queen abroad without her consent, nor any of her children without the consent of the nobility; that sixty thousand pounds a year should be settled as her jointure; that the male issue of this marriage should inherit, together with England, both Burgundy and the Low Countries; and that if Don Carlos, Philip's son by his |