CHAPTER XXX.

1558.

On the first day of the last year of this unhappy reign Calais was suddenly invested by a French army: and in four weeks the English were expelled from all the possessions which they had held upon the Continent from the time of Edward the Third. Their rapid overthrow was according to a new plan in warfare, devised by Coligni, long meditated by an irritated nation, entrusted to Guise: to take the field in winter with a force silently collected, at a time when the great Spanish power that hung on the Flemish frontier was in winter quarters, when by the annual custom of an unwise economy the English garrisons were reduced through the dismission of a great part of them, and when tempests might be expected to hold the English fleets on the other side of the Channel. The attempt found England more unready than usual: under such a general it proved irresistible: and the brave defence. of Wentworth and Grey de Wilton shed a pale gleam over a disaster that appeared to be incomparable. Thenceforth, as it regarded France and her satellite Scotland, the rest of the reign was spent in a miserable war of efforts of recovery: in gathering armaments that seldom sailed, in bidding musters that were thinly

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kept by men of hangdog look,* in negotiating for foreign mercenaries who never came. From this last particular it may be suspected that the Romanensian revolution, if it had lasted longer, would have sought to maintain itself by the aid of hired cutthroats: as the Reforming revolution under Edward the Sixth had maintained itself.†

On the day that the last fort of the Calais pale went down, a new Parliament met, January 20. The Queen had boldly interfered in the elections by letters to the sheriffs to return men of her religion: and the same sweeping changes as in the former Parliaments of the reign indicated the management of the court, or the reluctance of former members to serve again for there were not above fifty in this House of Commons who had sat in the last. The Queen opened the session in person, taking her chariot at Whitehall, whence with the lords, the bishops and a train of priests she proceeded to the abbey for Mass, and so with trumpets to the parliament house.|| The Lords beheld again the presence of a mitred abbot and prior, of Westminster and of St. John of Jerusalem: and Feckenham may be discerned more than once entering the House of Commons by invitation, to show cause why there should be a

"The people went to the musters with kerchefs on their heads, they went to the wars hanging down their heads, they came from them as men dismayed and forlorn." Sir T. Smith, Strype's Life, 149.

+ The foreign letters of this year contain many negotiations about hiring German mercenaries into England, probably for service on the Scottish border. For. Cal. pp. 364, 369, and onwards to 391.

"The Queen to the sheriffs of counties to use their best means to procure the election and men of knowledge and experience to serve in the new Parliament, especially such as the Council shall recommend." Jan. 2. Dom. Cal. p. 96.

§ So I gather out of the Blue Book published in 1879, Return of Members for England and Wales, 1st Part.

|| Machyn, 163.

sanctuary in Westminster.* But the regulation of sanctuary, the question of erecting places of sanctuary in the kingdom, the denial of benefit of clergy to persons accessory to murder, were not matters of high moment: and the other ecclesiastical measures proposed or affected were insignificant. Most notable in this Parliament was it that after two such years of slaughter for religion as were passed, and in full prospect of another year of Smithfield, Canterbury, and Colchester, neither Lords nor Commons gave the slightest sign of any desire to stop the persecution. Instead of revoking the cruel enactments of their predecessors, who revived the old heresy laws, they renewed several former laws against unlawful assemblies, and in so far they rather bore the other way. To stay or mitigate the sufferings of their fellow countrymen, to protest against the state of things, or to show the perception of a state of things unusual, not a voice was raised among the temporal estates. The main business was to meet the Queen's necessities with money, and to arm the kingdom. The Queen in person closed the session, March 7.

In the Convocations of both Provinces, which rar. with this Parliament, the same efforts of national revenge and recovery were manifest. The clergy granted twice as much as the laity, the heavy subsidy of eight shillings in the pound to be paid in four years, and followed the example of the laity in charging themselves with horse and armour for the defence of the kingdom. In the former part of this imposition they received, as usual, the confirmation of Parliament: but in the latter part, which was something new, it has been remarked that they sought no temporal sanction, but acted independently in their own synodical way.† On * Commons' Journals.

+ "In a memorable Convocation in the 4 and 5 year of Philip and

the other hand the clergy stipulated with the fathers that no priests be taken to serve in the wars: and of the rest of the business a great part arose out of the paucity of priests. Thus it was moved that small contiguous benefices might be served by one priest, and that the Pope should allow bishops to give Holy Orders as well at any other times as on the Sundays after the Ember Weeks. Of the persecution by which the paucity was much created, no more was said by the clergy than had been spoken by the laity in the Parliament. In the southern Convocation the Bishop of London was the locum tenens of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was seldom present. The prolocutor was the London Harpsfield.*

The splendid ceremonies, the provision of preachers, the restitution of the goods of the Church, so far as the Queen's example might persuade it, and the restoration of the professed religious life, still went on together. The Bishop of Chester, Scot, preached at St. Paul's Cross in February in the audience of sixteen

Mary, the clergy taking notice of an Act of Parliament then newly passed by which the subjects of the temporalty having lands to the yearly value of five pounds and upwards were charged with finding horse and armour according to the proportion of their yearly revenues, did by their sole authority in the Convocation impose upon themselves and the rest of the clergy of the land the finding of a like number of horses, armour and other necessaries for war, according to their yearly income, proportion for proportion, and rate for rate, as by that statute had been laid on the temporal subjects. And this they did by their own sole authority, as was before said, ordering the same to be levied on all such as were refractory by sequestration, deprivation, suspension, excommunication, without relating to any subsequent confirmation by Act of Parliament, which they conceived they had no need of." Heylin, Examen. (1. cxviii.), quoted in Wilkins, iv. 170. The archbishop's decree for carrying out of this is given, Wilkins, 171. It is interesting to observe that this precedent was not forgotten in the days of Elizabeth and Parker. Wilkins, iv. 256.

* Wilkins, iv. 155. Wilkins refers to Pole's Register, fol. 59, as his original. But there is no account of any convocation in Pole's Register.

bishops, the lord mayor and aldermen, and many judges: when he proclaimed a general procession for the next Wednesday on which day a multitude of bishops, priests and clerks, the civic pomp, all the crafts in their liveries, all the children of schools and hospitals, went about London, and, perhaps, bewailed the loss of Calais. The Bishop of Lincoln, Watson, preached in the same month and ten bishops, the civic pomp, a great audience listened to a goodly sermon. A goodly sermon was made at the burial of Lady White, when the corporation and all the crafts attended, there were three Masses, and as great a dinner as ever was seen the same at the burial of a Muscovy merchant, when a Grey friar was the preacher: the same at other burials. As goodly a sermon as ever was made was as ever was made was preached at Paul's Cross before the lord mayor and the bishops at the beginning of Lent by the Abbot of Westminster.* During the vacancy of the see of Salisbury Doctor Harding and several other approved preachers were ordered by the Queen to preach throughout the diocese. In parts not well affected to the religion Doctor Langdale of Cambridge was commissioned by Lord Montague to preach.† The keeper of the palace of Whitehall, Mary's receiver of the recovered goods of churches, had doubtless finished his work long before: but his death, whose name was Sturton, may be remarked here among the many funerals of Mary's fatal year. A burial guild, the Brotherhood of Jesus, which held a subterranean chapel in St. Paul's, seems to have been now renewed, and often receives mention in the records of the year. Twenty-four of the

brethren in black satin hoods conducted one of the

* These examples are taken out of Machyn's Diary, p. 165, &c. + Domest. Cal. of State Papers, pp. 102, 103.

Machyn, 165. See also the first chapter in this volume.