LITMIR.BIZ

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and her eyes inspired a feeling, not merely of reverence, but of fear, wherever she turned them. Her spirit he adds, was lofty and magnanimous, never discomposed by danger, showing in all things a blood truly royal.[56]

      Her piety, he continues, and her patience under affliction, cannot be too greatly admired. Sustained, as she was, by a lively faith and conscious innocence, he compares her to a light which the fierce winds have no power to extinguish, but which still shines on with increasing lustre.[57] She waited her time, and was plainly reserved by Providence for a great destiny.—We are reading the language of the loyal Catholic, grateful for the services which Mary had rendered to the faith.

      Yet it would be uncharitable not to believe that Mary was devout, and most earnest in her devotion. The daughter of Katharine of Aragon, the granddaughter of Isabella of Castile, could hardly have been otherwise. The women of that royal line were uniformly conspicuous for their piety, though this was too often tinctured with bigotry. In Mary, bigotry degenerated into fanaticism, and fanaticism into the spirit of persecution. The worst evils are probably those that have flowed from fanaticism. Yet the amount of the mischief does not necessarily furnish us with the measure of guilt in the author of it. The introduction of the Inquisition into Spain must be mainly charged on Isabella. Yet the student of her reign will not refuse to this great queen the praise of tenderness of conscience and a sincere desire to do the right. Unhappily, the faith in which she, as well as her royal granddaughter, was nurtured, taught her to place her conscience in the keeping of ministers less scrupulous than herself; and on those ministers may fairly rest much of the responsibility of measures on which they only were deemed competent to determine.

      Mary's sincerity in her religious professions was placed beyond a doubt by the readiness with which she submitted to the sacrifice of her personal interests whenever the interests of religion seemed to demand it. She burned her translation of a portion of Erasmus, prepared with great labor, at the suggestion of her confessor. An author will readily estimate the value of such a sacrifice. One more important, and intelligible to all, was the resolute manner in which she persisted in restoring the Church property which had been confiscated to the use of the crown. "The crown is too much impoverished to admit of it," remonstrated her ministers. "I would rather lose ten crowns," replied the high-minded queen, "than place my soul in peril."[58]

      Yet it cannot be denied, that Mary had inherited, in full measure, some of the sterner qualities of her father, and that she was wanting in that sympathy for human suffering which is so graceful in a woman. After a rebellion, the reprisals were terrible. London was converted into a charnel-house; and the squares and principal streets were garnished with the unsightly trophies of the heads and limbs of numerous victims who had fallen by the hand of the executioner.[59] This was in accordance with the spirit of the age. But the execution of the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey—the young, the beautiful, and the good—leaves a blot on the fame of Mary, which finds no parallel but in the treatment of the ill-fated queen of Scots by Elizabeth.

      Mary's treatment of Elizabeth has formed another subject of reproach, though the grounds of it are not sufficiently made out; and, at all events, many circumstances may be alleged in extenuation of her conduct. She had seen her mother, the noble-minded Katharine, exposed to the most cruel indignities, and compelled to surrender her bed and her throne to an artful rival, the mother of Elizabeth. She had heard herself declared illegitimate, and her right to the succession set aside in favor of her younger sister. Even after her intrepid conduct had secured to her the crown, she was still haunted by the same gloomy apparition. Elizabeth's pretensions were constantly brought before the public; and Mary might well be alarmed by the disclosure of conspiracy after conspiracy, the object of which, it was rumored, was to seat her sister on the throne. As she advanced in years, Mary had the further mortification of seeing her rival gain on those affections of the people which had grown cool to her. Was it wonderful that she should regard her sister, under these circumstances, with feelings of distrust and aversion? That she did so regard her is asserted by the Venetian minister; and it is plain that, during the first years of Mary's reign, Elizabeth's life hung upon a thread. Yet Mary had strength of principle sufficient to resist the importunities of Charles the Fifth and his ambassador, to take the life of Elizabeth, as a thing indispensable to her own safety and that of Philip. Although her sister was shown to be privy, though not openly accessory, to the grand rebellion under Wyatt, Mary would not constrain the law from its course to do her violence. This was something, under the existing circumstances, in an age so unscrupulous. After this storm had passed over, Mary, whatever restraint she imposed on her real feelings, treated Elizabeth, for the most part, with a show of kindness, though her name still continued to be mingled, whether with or without cause, with more than one treasonable plot.[60] Mary's last act—perhaps the only one in which she openly resisted the will of her husband—was to refuse to compel her sister to accept the hand of Philibert of Savoy. Yet this act would have relieved her of the presence of her rival; and by it Elizabeth would have forfeited her independent possession of the crown—perhaps the possession of it altogether. It may be doubted whether Elizabeth, under similar circumstances, would have shown the like tenderness to the interests of her successor.

      PHILIP'S PROPOSALS OF MARRIAGE.

      But, however we may be disposed to extenuate the conduct of Mary, and in spiritual matters, more especially, to transfer the responsibility of her acts from herself to her advisers, it is not possible to dwell on this reign of religious persecution without feelings of profound sadness. Not that the number of victims compares with what is recorded of many similar periods of persecution. The whole amount, falling probably short of three hundred who perished at the stake, was less than the number who fell by the hand of the executioner, or by violence, during the same length of time under Henry the Eighth. It was not much greater than might sometimes be found at a single Spanish auto da fé. But Spain was the land in which this might be regarded as the national spectacle—as much so as the fiesta de toros, or any other of the popular exhibitions of the country. In England, a few examples had not sufficed to steel the hearts of men against these horrors. The heroic company of martyrs, condemned to the most agonizing of deaths for asserting the rights of conscience, was a sight strange and shocking to Englishmen. The feelings of that day have been perpetuated to the present. The reign of religious persecution stands out by itself, as something distinct from the natural course of events; and the fires of Smithfield shed a melancholy radiance over this page of the national history, from which the eye of humanity turns away in pity and disgust.—But it is time to take up the narrative of events which connected for a brief space the political interests of Spain with those of England.

      Charles the Fifth had always taken a lively interest in the fortunes of his royal kinswoman. When a young man he had paid a visit to England, and while there had been induced by his aunt, Queen Katharine, to contract a marriage with the Princess Mary—then only six years old—to be solemnized on her arriving at the suitable age. But the term was too remote for the constancy of Charles, or, as it is said, for the patience of his subjects, who earnestly wished to see their sovereign wedded to a princess who might present him with an heir to the monarchy. The English match was, accordingly, broken off, and the young emperor gave his hand to Isabella of Portugal.[61]

      Mary, who, since her betrothal, had been taught to consider herself as the future bride of the emperor, was at the time but eleven years old. She was old enough, however, to feel something like jealousy, it is said, and to show some pique at this desertion by her imperial lover. Yet this circumstance did not prevent the most friendly relations from subsisting between the parties in after years; and Charles continued to watch over the interests of his kinswoman, and interposed, with good effect, in her behalf, on more than one occasion, both during the reign of Henry the Eighth and of his son, Edward the Sixth. On the death of the latter monarch, he declared himself ready to assist Mary in maintaining her right to the succession;[62] and, when this was finally established, the wary emperor took the necessary measures for turning it to his own account.[63]

      He formed a scheme for uniting Philip with Mary, and thus securing to his son the possession of the English crown, in the same manner as that of Scotland had been secured by marriage to the son of his rival, Henry the Second of France. It was, doubtless, a great error to attempt to bring under one rule nations so dissimilar in every particular, and having interests so incompatible as the Spaniards and the English. Historians

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