her. She was credulous: and the pomps and ceremonies of her religion, which consumed her time, and exalted her into a baseless confidence, were greatly multiplied by her closest confidant, who was by nature a solitary. From the beginning her reign was obscured by deplorable incidents: the Dudleian interlude, the subsequent plots and risings. She was half a Spaniard, and after her marriage she was surrounded by Spaniards; and although certainly it cannot be proved that either her husband or his theologians advised severe measures against the English, yet they confirmed in her the senseless opinion of the heretical pravity of all alike who differed from her. She was addicted to the Papacy at the very time when the Papacy passed into a rigidity which the mental faculties of the human race could not endure. And yet nothing is wholly calamitous that is not base. The purity of Mary's intentions, the loftiness of her motives, the magnanimity of her character shone forth amid the clouds that gathered round her double throne. Her policy checked the ruinous rapine of the previous reign: perhaps it stayed innovations which may have been threatened. It was the justification of the Reformation and in a sense it completed it.

Mary received good advice from the Emperor. "Tell her," said Charles, "not to be hasty at the beginning in altering what she may find amiss: to be conciliatory; to wait for the determinations of Parliament, preserving always her own conscience, having her Mass privately in her chamber without any demonstration: at present making no edicts contrary to those which are established in the realm: so let her proceed by little and little to bring things into a better frame. Let her not only have for her end the good of the realm, but let her make others perceive that the good of the

realm is her end. Above all things let her be a good Englishwoman."

In partial accordance with such advice, the Queen held a meeting of the Council in the Tower, August 12, and with her own mouth declared that, "though her own conscience was fixed in matters of religion, she meant not to compel or strain the conscience of others otherwise than by persuasion, as by the opening of God's word by godly, virtuous and learned preachers." † She might, it may be, have pursued the path of persuasion for some time longer, until the meeting of Parliament; but unfor

* "Qu'elle tienne singulier regard de, pour le commencement, non se trop haster avec zèle de reduire les choses qu'elle trouvera n'etre en bons termes mais qu'elle s'accommode avec toute doulceur, se conformant aux definitions du parlement, sans riens faire touttesfois de sa personne qui soit contra sa conscience et la religion, oyant seulement la messe a part dans sa chambre sans autre demonstration, dissimulant au surplus, sans que, pour maintenant, elle fasse constitutions contraires a celles qui sont pour le présent au dit royaulme, et sans se laisser a ce, pour ce commencement, induire et persuader par aulcuns particuliers; ains qu'elle attende jusques elle aye opportunité de rassembler le parlement, gaignant ce qu'elle pourra la volonté de ceux qui y entreviennent pour, avec la participation dudit parlement, pouvoir ce que l'état du royaulme pourra comporter: reduisant peu a peu les choses aux meilleurs termes qu'elle pourra pour le benéfice d'icelluy, et que non seulement elle tienne cette fin principale du bien du royaulme, mais qu'elle fasse de sorte que touts ceulx de par de là entendent qu'elle n'a aultre fin. Et que sur touttes choses elle soit, comme elle doibt estre, bonne Anglaise." Charles to his ambassadors, 22 July, 1553. Papiers d'état de Granvelle, iv. 55.

+ Council Book, given below. The Council Acts for this reign have been consulted by those of the historians who have used them, in the extracts of Starkey, preserved in the Harleian MSS. vol. 641, entitled "Extracts of the Acts of Council during the bloody reigns of King Philip and Queen Mary." There are many omissions concerning the Church in these extracts: which are to some extent supplied by Haynes, State Papers, vol. i. Some other portions of the Acts are also printed in vol. xviii. of the Archæolegia, p. 173. Many transcripts have also been made by Mr. Pocock, in his Burnet, Bk. III, vol. iii. The original Acts are in the Privy Council Office in Downing Street, in two volumes, the one a small folio from July 14 to Aug. 19, 1553: the other going on to the end of 1557, a larger book.

tunately, the very next day after this declaration to the Council, the first effort of persuasion that she made brought about the first serious collision that occurred between the two systems of religion. To the conspicuous station of Paul's Cross, which had rung so lately with the voices of the Reformation, she sent a godly, learned and virtuous preacher in Prebendary Bourne, Archdeacon of London: who chose to discourse to a large auditory on the unjust imprisonment of Bishop Bonner in the late reign. "For a sermon which he preached upon the same text, taken from the Gospel of the day, which I have taken," said Bourne, "in this very place upon this very day four years afore passed, was the Bishop of London, who is here present, most unjustly cast into the vile dungeon of the Marshalsea, among thieves." The people began to murmur and throng together, as the discourse proceeded in this strain. Fierce cries arose: a dagger was hurled at the preacher: a rush was made to drag him out of the pulpit: and he owed his escape to the intervention of Rogers and Bradford, his fellows in the chapter of S. Paul's.* Hereupon the Council met in the

"Item, the 13 day of August preached master Bourne at Paul's Cross at the commandment of the Queen's grace, and there was pulled out of the pulpit by vagabonds, and one threw his dagger at him." Grey Friars' Chron. 83. "There was great uproar and shouting at his sermon, as it were like mad people, what young people and women, as was heard an hurly burly, and casting up caps: if my lord mayor and lord Courtney had not been there, there had great mischief been done." Machyn's Diary, 41. Fox relates that Rogers and Bradford rescued Bourne, and got him into Paul's school. It is curious that in their subsequent troubles Rogers and Bradford were charged with causing the riot. Five or six persons were arrested: (see next note); and two, a priest and a barber, were put in the pillory of whom the former, who was parson of St. Ethelburga in Bishopsgate, was put in again soon after for “ more words," which he spoke against the Queen. Machyn, 42. Among the congregation, disguised as a merchant, was Commendon, the secret agent of the papacy, of whom anon. He saw who threw the dagger. "Un soldat, se levant du milieu de l'assemblée avec un 'poignard a la main, le jeta contre le predicateur" Gratiani, Vie de Commendon, p. 68. (Fléchier.)

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Tower, on the same day; called before them the Lord Mayor and Aldermen ; and delivered to them the Queen's declaration with the serious addition that all preaching was to be stopped forthwith in the London churches, unless it were by preachers whom the Queen should license. For the tumult many persons were apprehended, and some of them severely punished; and the Lord Mayor was allowed two days to decide whether he could keep the city in quiet, or would deliver his sword to the Queen. Thus Mary met with opposition at once: and took her resolution. The prohibition of preaching was immediately extended to the diocese of Norwich, which

*

13 Aug. "This day upon occasion of a tumult at St. Paul's Cross was this order taken by the Council with the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen of the City of London: first, to call tomorrow next a common council and assembly, wherein to charge every householder in their liberties to keep his children, apprentices, and other servants in such order and awe as they follow their work on week days, and keep their parish churches the holy days, and otherwise to be suffered to attempt nothing tending to the violation of the common peace: and that for the contrary every of them to stand charged for their children and servants, declaring also in the said assembly in the best words the mayor and recorder can devise the Queen's highness determination and pleasure uttered unto them by the Queen's own mouth in the Tower and yesterday, being the 12 of this instant which was that albeit the Queen's conscience is stayed in matters of religion, yet she meaneth graciously not to compel nor strain other men's consciences otherwise than God shall (as she trusteth) put in their hearts a persuasion of the truth she is in through the opening of his word unto them by godly virtuous and learned preachers. 2. They be ordered every alderman in his ward severally to send forthwith for the curate of every parish church within their liberties, and to warn them not only to forbear to preach themselves, but not to suffer any other man to preach or make any open or solemn reading of scripture in their churches, unless the said preachers be such as be specially licensed thereto by the queen's Highness." Council Book, Harleian MS. 643. It goes on to order that five or six of the rioters should be "apprehended and put to ward till further should be known of the Queen's pleasure." It is added subsequently that William Rutter and Humphrey Pullden were committed for words spoken against Bourne's sermon.- -14 Aug. The Lord Mayor and his brethren have to the sixteenth to say whether they can "keep the city without seditious tumults"; and if not, the Mayor to yield up his sword to the Queen, "and shew the lets and impediments of their inability." Ib.

was known to be strongly affected to the reformed religion:* and this mandate had scarcely been despatched when a royal Proclamation was issued to apply the like measure to every part of the kingdom. In this decisive manifest Mary, though repeating some of her former moderate expressions, intimated that persuasion would not always be the only means that she would employ: protesting that she would not hide the religion which God and the world knew that she professed, she now said that she was not minded to compel any of her subjects thereunto until further order should have been taken by common consent: and commanded them to live meantime in peace and charity, "leaving those new-found devilish terms of papist and heretic, and such like." With that she forbad preaching and expounding in churches or elsewhere, playing of interludes, and printing of fond ballads, rhymes and treatises, which, as she complained, were put forth by some printers for the sake of vile gain. No one was henceforth "to preach, or by way of reading in churches to interpret or teach any Scriptures, or any manner of points of doctrine concerning religion, except they had her grace's special license in writing for the same." This was an exact

*16 Aug. "A letter to the Bishop, and in his absence the Chancellor of Norwich, for order to be taken in that diocese that no man whatsoever, be he priest, deacon, or other, be suffered from henceforth to preach, or expound the scriptures openly in any church, chapel, or other place without special licence of the Queen's Majesty." Council Book as above. So Fox, and Heylin who adds that like letters were sent to the other bishops: but this seems doubtful. According to Fox, Mary was bound by promise to the men of Suffolk, who were the first to rally to her side after Edward's death, not to alter religion. He adds that a gentleman named Dodds of Suffolk, who now came up, and reminded her of her promise, was put in the pillory. Burnet repeats this. Strickland (ch. iv.) calls the whole story "an extraordinary misapprehension." Such it may have been, not only in Fox, but in the men of Suffolk; for it seems unlikely that Mary should have made such a promise, or indeed that she should have been asked to do so as the price of support. + August 18, Wilkins iv. 86.