her cha

that the queen's private life was all along strict and unble- MARY. mished. It must be said that religion had the over-balance, Something the other world was uppermost with her, and she valued her farther of conscience above her crown. But her zeal was ill-directed; racter. she was under an unhappy management: Gardiner and Bonner, and some few others of resembling bigotry, seem to have pushed her upon severities beyond her temper. That she was not of a vindictive, implacable spirit, may be inferred from her pardoning most of the great men in Northumberland's rebellion. She was well furnished with resolution, and I may say with martial vigour, when occasion called for it; as appears by her behaviour upon Wyat's insurrection: for in her speech at Guildhall, when the danger was not unformidable, she declared herself ready to march in person against that rebel. That the public interest, and the honour of the kingdom was much her concern, may be collected from the stand she made upon the pope's encroachment in obtruding a new legate, and the deep melancholy she fell into upon the loss of Calais.

Besides her founding some religious houses, and returning impropriations, tenths, and first-fruits, to the Church, she built the public schools in Oxford, which continued for that service till the reign of king James I., when they were taken down to make way for a much nobler structure.

Oxford.

During her reign, and possibly by the encouragement of her Two colleges example, there were two colleges founded in this university. founded in Sir Thomas Pope, one of king Henry's abbey visitors, had a grant from the crown of a small college in Oxford, founded by the bishop and prior of Durham, for a nursery to their monastery. To the lands belonging to this house, this gentleman adding some other estate of his own, founded Trinity-college, and settled a maintenance for a president, twelve fellows, twelve scholars, besides officers and servants.

Sir Thomas White's was a nobler benefaction: this worthy person, who was lord mayor of London, built and founded St. John Baptist's College. This foundation is endowed with lands for a president, fifty fellows and scholars, not to mention the officers and servants belonging to the chapel. The college preferments are generally filled from Merchant Tailors' School, in London, of which company the founder was a member. Antiq. To proceed cardinal Pole survived the queen but sixteen Oxon,

Wood's

POLE, hours: he had been for some time languishing under a double Abp. Cant. quartan, and though his recovery was unlikely, yet it is thought the news of the queen's death precipitated his own.

Cardinal Pole's death and charucter.

Biblioth.
Cotton.
Vespasian.
F. Ill.
Records,
num, 75.

Bacatell.

Vit. Poli. P. 33.

Some few days before his death, when he despaired of the queen's recovery, and had little or no prospect of his own, he sent a letter to the princess Elizabeth, by Holland, his chaplain, dean of Worcester. The design of it was to satisfy the princess, that he had acted nothing against her, and that no part of the unacceptable usage she had met with was owing to his advice. The message the dean was charged withal, it is likely, was to fortify the contents of the letter, in case of any objection. And since the princess was the next in the succession, and so very near mounting the throne, it is highly probable the dean was to recommend the supporting the Roman Catholic religion; to show the danger of unsettling the Church, and argue from the topics of interest and duty. The reader shall have the cardinal's own words in the records.

As to his character, it may be partly collected from what has been already delivered. However, some things not falling within the course of the history may be reported here. At the calling the council of Trent, Paul III. made Pole one of his legates there, and joined him in commission with the cardinals Monte and Santacroce, afterwards higher distinguished by the names of Julius III. and Marcellus II. Paul III. had a great opinion of Pole's learning and judgment. He often consulted this cardinal, and made use of his pen in affairs of religion. For instance, Pole drew the pope's answer to the interim proposed by the Germans; he likewise penned the reply to the imperial ambassador's remonstrance against the council's being translated from Trent to Bononia. He was a very exemplary person: nothing could be more regular and better guarded than his conduct. The retiredness of his temper, and his inclination for study, did not govern him so far as to make him unfit for public business. He was of a modest unpretending behaviour, and his good nature made him willing to overlook the advantages of his birth and station. However, the port of his family, and his figure on public occasions, was not unbecoming his quality. Notwithstanding his interest at court, he never solicited the queen on his own behalf. He declined the opportunities of enriching himself by his legatine character; would neither accept presents, nor suffer his ser

vants to receive any and as to the surplusage of his revenues, MARY. he turned it to charity and pious uses. He made Prioli, a Id. noble Venetian, with whom he had maintained a long and intimate acquaintance, his executor. This gentleman undertook the trust, but refused to receive any advantage of Pole's bounty, reserving nothing to himself of what belonged to the cardinal, excepting his breviary and diurnal.

As to the prosecutions of the reformed, the cardinal seems to have been overruled in his temper, and gone off in some measure from those gentle methods he had formerly recommended. Whether he was overset by the court of Rome, and gave way for the pope's satisfaction, is somewhat uncertain. But let this be as it will, it is certain he cannot be excused from being concerned in the persecution. For instance, he gave a commission for the trial of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, at Oxford, and connived at the cruelties of Harpsfield and Thornton, in his own diocese.

And, farther, he granted a commission to this Nicholas Harpsfield, archdeacon of Canterbury; Robert Collins, bachelor of law, commissary-general for the diocese of Canterbury; Richard Fossett and Hugh Turnbole, doctors in divinity; to John Mills, Hugh Glasier, and John Warren, bachelors in divinity, and prebendaries of Canterbury; to inquire into, and try persons of heretical pravity; and in case they were convicted, to oblige them to abjure. And if they continued obstinate, to deliver them over to the secular power, "si facti atrocitas ita exposceret." This commission is dated from Lambeth, 28th of March, 1558.

About four months after, the cardinal returned a significavit into the court of Chancery, signifying, that John Cornford, Christopher Brown, John Hurst, Catherine Knight, and Alice Snoth, had been brought before the commissaries above-mentioned, and convicted of heresy: upon this process he remits them to the justice of the secular magistrate.

It must be allowed, however, he preserved two-and-twenty at one time, who otherwise would, in all likelihood, been destroyed by Bonner; for they were seized in Essex, and brought up prisoners to London. But the cardinal interposed for their rescue, and contrived them a gentle and ambiguous confession of faith. This form running with an easy latitude, and lying smooth upon their conscience, they made their submission, and

Id.

407.

Regist.
Pole. fol. 29.

See Records,

num. 76.

POLE,

Abp. Cant.

Fox, vol. 3. p. 783, 785, 786.

were discharged. That these persons had all been sentenced to the stake that they all, I say, had been thus disposed of, appears by Bonner's own letter. What then prevented their doom? Why, Bonner was afraid of losing the cardinal's friendship by such barbarities. His eminency, it seems, had formerly shown his dislike of Bonner's proceedings. This sanguinary prelate, therefore, sends to him now to know his pleasure.

After all, it is true, he was far from having a good opinion of the Reformation: the divisions amongst the Protestants, and their want of discipline; their disregard of the priesthood, and seizing the church revenues; these things, together with the prepossessions of his education, might probably incline him to think the interest of religion could not be supported without an adherence to the pope, and the countenance of so powerful a see as that of Rome.

But, though his judgment misled him in this matter, it is plain he was governed by motives of conscience. Had money or ambition swayed him, he would certainly have complied with the measures in the two late reigns. Had he then fallen in heartily with the court, no one could have opened a fairer prospect to wealth and greatness than himself; in this case, he would probably have stood foremost in his prince's favour, and gained a preference to Cranmer and Cromwell.

This cardinal died in the nine-and-fiftieth year of his age; the corpse, after having lain in state about six weeks at Lambeth, was conveyed to Canterbury, and solemnly interred in archbishop Becket's chapel.

He wrote several books, besides that "Pro Unitate Ecclesiastica," and his "Reformatio Angliæ."

To mention two of them in print: the first, "De Consilio, lib. 1.," the other, "De summi Pontificis Officio, et PotesAnd thus I shall take leave of this reign, and the

tate."
cardinal.

AT the conclusion of Mary's reign the readers of Collier will probably like to see how far his views of her character and conduct have been confirmed or invalidated by subsequent historians on the Papal and Protestant sides.

The best informed divines of all orders at the present day seem to have arrived, by all the arguments of reason and experience, at a steady preference for toleration in religion, and a settled abhorrence of persecution for conscience sake. They now look back with a mixed sensation of amazement and horror at the deplorable sophistry of scholastic casuists, who could once convert the revelation of divine love into a source of diabolic cruelty. Diabolic we term it, in the most definite sense of the word; for we believe

persecution, in all its countless manifestations, to be the result of infernal malice, and
nothing better. Its artificial disguises, indeed, have been gorgeous and resplendent
enough; for Satan's favourite apparition is as an angel of light: but let no man deceive
himself, whenever and wherever he finds the spirit of persecution, there let him recog-
nize the arch Antichrist-the implacable accuser of the brethren. In reading the page
of Church history I know of no test of Antichrist so infallible and all-penetrating as
this of persecution. The God of the Bible is a God of love, the Gospel of Christ is
a Gospel of love, the tradition of the Fathers is a tradition of love. Even Voltaire had
divinity or humanity enough to perceive this, and nobly has he pleaded it in his work on
toleration; a book written in the brightest of his lucid intervals,-a book which should
redeem his name from the infamy that lours over his tomb. But plain and self-
evident as the maxims of toleration appear to those who cultivate the love of God and
man, in the calm sphere of philosophy and philanthropy, numberless zealots, both of the
Papist and Protestant Churches, have been seduced to the opposite vice. Having
a zeal towards God, not according to knowledge, but infinitely misguided, they have
imprecated fire from heaven on their enemies, or kindled that of earth to exterminate
the sincerest of their fellow-creatures. Such has been the conduct of the Christian dis-
ciples who knew not of what spirit they were, and who, under pretenee of emulating the
self-devoted Saviour of men, have followed him that was a murderer from the beginning
to the eternal home of murderers. The fatal tendencies to persecution which exhibited
themselves in the Papal Church were, by a necessary consequence, communicated to
the Protestant Church likewise. Emerging from an atmosphere of hatred and bloody
compulsion, Protestantism carried the same contagious pestilence,-she, too, has blood
upon her robes. Misanthropy and all its anathemas were repaid with interest on those,
who had forgotten that in vice, as in gravitation, action and reaction are equal. In
Catholicism, indeed, persecution was more direct, palpable, resolutely professed, and
elaborately organised, while in Protestantism it assumed the insidious forms of political
oppression, pregnant with crushing disabilities. Both Churches have in this respect
sinned grievously, and both Churches alike have been signally punished. Let their
punishment teach them the lesson of love for which it was administered: let them now
vie with each other in holy devotion and charity, and by mutual tears of repentance
wash out the blood of the martyrs, with which they have been so lamentably defiled.
In order that the reader may be able to form a just estimate of the reign of Mary,
I shall impartially quote the testimonies on both sides. The following are the remarks
of the Roman Catholic historian, Dodd, illustrated by the annotations of Mr. Tierney.
Near two years of queen Mary's reign were passed, and nothing was attempted that
looked like persecution for conscience sake. "Many of the reformed, who had neither
outraged the papists, nor appeared for the lady Jane, had either the liberty to go beyond
sea, or, if they happened to be seized, were dismissed without much difficulty, at their
friends' intercession." However, "it must be confessed, that eagerness of temper, and
injudicious aversion, carried some of the reformed to practices by no means defensible '."
Both at home and abroad they gave many instances of their uneasy, factious, and rebel-
lious disposition. William Thomas, esquire, who had been clerk of the council in the
late reign, and one of Wyat's adherents, was executed for attempting to assassinate, or
advising others to assassinate, the queen. "At his execution he justified his treason,
and said he died for his country 2." The queen's preacher was shot at, in the pulpit, at
St. Paul's-cross. One Fetherstone was put upon personating king Edward VI., and
giving a disturbance to the queen's title. Father Peto and Father Eltson, two of the
queen's chaplains, were mobbed, and pelted with stones, as they walked in the streets.
Robert Mendrain shaved a dog's head, in contempt, and to deride ecclesiastical ton-
sure. A cat was was hung up in Cheapside with a wafer in her paws, to ridicule the
blessed sacrament. When it was presumed that the queen was with child, and public
prayers were ordered upon that occasion, several of the reformers who lived in London,
and exercised their religion privately, prayed, indeed, for the queen, though after another

' Collier, ii. 375. 380.

2 Ibid., 362; Wood, Athen. Oxon. i. 90.

MARY.