CHA P. XIII.

MARY'S HESITATION IN HER RELIGIOUS PROJECTS THE
POPE'S MEASURES TO OBTAIN THEIR EXECUTION-CAR-
DINAL POLE'S MISSION AND EXERTIONS.

THE path of honor, of comfort, and of national
peace and prosperity, was never more straight and
perceptible; never more easy and certain, to any
sovereign, than that which opened before Mary,
when she took the throne from her young and brief
competitor, and which invited her safe and pleasant
progress. She had only to believe and worship as
she pleased herself; to let the nation continue in
the changes or improvements which had been esta-
blished within it; and to ensure to every one a mild
and impartial toleration in the religious forms and
tenets which each should prefer; and she would
have been popular and beloved, and her subjects
would have been happy. Her spirit was so emi-
nently patriotic, her affection for her people was
so real, and her good qualities so numerous, that
nothing was wanting to make her reign distin-
guishing to herself and beneficial to her country,
but to avoid all sacerdotal bigotry and violence;
to continue the national independence on a foreign
pontiff; and to interfere with no one's religious
faith and practice. It was the simplest of all rules
which she had to follow-to let the nation be as it
was; and to take a pleasure herself in being the

CHAP.
XIII.

II.

BOOK people. people. But a passion to re-establish popery had become her ruling inclination, the perverting feature of her darkening mind; and to gratify this propensity, which could only be an evil feeling, because it could not be gratified without violence, bloodshed, cruelty, and much human misery, she saddened and shortened her own life, and afflicted a nation, to whose generous enthusiasm she owed all her power of oppressing it.

When Mary had sought the emperor's counsel on her conduct towards her opponents, and as to the Catholic worship, he advised her to punish the chief conspirators, and pardon the rest; but to be cautious as to restoring the antient religion, and to make no change without the sanction of her parliament.' By this suggestion, the queen governed her conduct on this momentous subject.

2

That she conciliated the minds of the people in her first hour of peril, by assurances which either expressed or were meant and understood to imply, that no compulsory alterations should be attempted by her power, has been already noticed; but before a month had elapsed from Edward's death, rumors spread, that she wished such a modified recession, as to bring back church affairs to the state in which her father had left them.3 Her own determined taste was publicly shewn, by having a high mass for the dead solemnized for her brother's soul, which caused many to murmur; but in a few days after

1 Renaud's Dispatches, Nouv. Eclair. p. 53 & 56.

2 See before, Ch, XI. note 92.

3 So Noailles wrote on 7th August, v. 2, p. 105.
Ib. Lett. 9th August, p. 109.

XIII.

she had dismissed all her great supporters to their CHAP. country mansions, she so manifestly indicated an inclination to restore the deposed system, that a priest ventured to sing mass in a chapel near the French ambassador's. This excited a great emotion, and the lord mayor made a formal complaint to the queen, of the offensive action." About the same time, a canon at St. Paul's not only prayed for departed souls, but in his sermon so highly panegyrized the conduct of Bonner, that the audience became tumultuous to pull him from the pulpit, and some one hurled a dagger at his head. To allay the alarm which these precipitate experiments had excited, the queen, as soon as the disturbances became known, expressed to the lord mayor and recorder, at the Tower, her solemn assurance, that albeit her grace's conscience is stayed in matters of religion, yet she meaneth graciously not to compel and constrain other men's consciences otherwise than God shall put in their hearts a persuasion of the truth that she is in, thro the opening of his word unto them by godly, virtuous, and learned preachers."

This royal assurance of a free and wise toleration, the ministerial cabinet on the next day ordered the mayor and aldermen to repeat in a common council which they were to call, 'in the best words the mayor and recorder can devise." We may justly take this to

Noailles lett. 13th August, p. 110. 7 Stowe, 614.

6 Ib.

Journal of Privy Council. Haynes, 168.13th August-uttered unto them by the queen's own mouth in the Tower as yesterday, being the 12th of this instant.' ib. She caused the priest to be taken up, pour admortir ce malheureux peuple;' but afterwards let him escape. Noailles, p. 111.

II.

BOOK be, as the state counsellor named it, 'the queen's determination and pleasure;' and we may consider the flagrant and merciless violation of it, which soon distinguished this reign, as the unfeeling act of her ecclesiastical instigators. Her public proclamation followed,10 in which she declared, as she had a right to do, that she could not hide that religion which she hath ever professed from her infancy hitherto, and is minded to observe and maintain for herself.'" She added, what was no specific harm to any one, that she 'much desired, and would be glad, if the same were of all her subjects quietly and charitably entertained;' and she expressly declared, her highness mindeth not to compel any her subjects thereunto, until such time as further order by common assent may be taken therein.'12 This moderate conduct would have satisfied the nation, if the promise had been fairly and fully kept. She left all future changes to the decision of the parliament; and the parliament had, in all the reigns of her predecessors, been the legislative sovereign of the nation.

But a commanding actor, more impatient and

10 Wilk. Conc. v. 4. p. 86. The general repugnance to her resumption of popery was so strong, that the French envoy mentions the common feeling, that 20,000 men should fall, before they would change 'leur nouvelle institution.' Noailles, p. 111.

11 Heylin, Hist. p. 23.

12 Heyl. ib. On All Saints day, Bonner's chaplain, attempting to preach in a parish church, en l'honneur de saints,' according to the day, so dissatisfied the congregation of nearly 100 persons, that they nearly killed him. Noailles, 238. One of the first acts of retrogradation which Gardiner obtained from her was her mandate to him, of 20th August, to compel the scholars of Cambridge to resume their antient statutes and ordinances, notwithstanding any new injunctions that had been introduced since her father's death. See it in Ellis, second series, v. 2. p. 244. It was in October that Gardiner threatened Judge Hales for receiving indictments against priests in Kent for saying mass. 3 Harl. Misc. 175.

more determined, had now taken the field, and was moving his most active engines to operate on a mind which had still goodness enough to hesitate about enforcing on others her own prepossessions, as she clearly saw that the most painful compulsions must be exerted to effectuate her secret wishes.

13

The news of Edward's death, of Jane's failure, and of Mary's rapid establishment, had been transmitted from France to the POPE. It was so unexpected, and so complete, and promised such personal benefit to himself and to his see, that he burst into tears of joy.13 He was too much excited, and too gratified, to be inactive; and with a natural eagerness to profit immediately from the favoring event, and to promote its good results, he dispatched his own chamberlain instantaneously to England, with great secrecy, to see, and learn, and do whatever at that moment was most advantageous and practicable. That Commendone introduced himself to the ecclesiastical prime minister, we may readily infer; but he gained the more satisfying point, of a private interview with Mary 1 herself, unknown to her court and people. In this secret and dangerous conference, she confessed to him her attachment to the old system, and a particular point to be communicated only to the pontiff; 15 but she earnestly intreated him

14

13 The letter in the pope's name to Pole, of 6th August 1553, mentions this circumstance: La qual nova porto a Sua Beatitudine tanto allegrezza che si profuse in lacrime.' Quir. Ep. v. 4. p. 109.

Pope's own letter of 20th September to Pole, ib. 111: Those things which her majesty told him in secret.' Pole's Instructions, ap. Strype's Cranm. p. 929.

15 That particular point that she would have had shewed only to the pope's holiness.' Pole, ib. From the pope's intimation at the end of his letter, we may infer that this was the abrogation of the hostile bulls

CHAP.

XIII.