Chapter XXX - England Under Mary

by Charles Dickens

　　The Duke of Northumberland was very anxious to keep the youngKing's death a secret, in order that he might get the twoPrincesses into his power. But, the Princess Mary, being informedof that event as she was on her way to London to see her sickbrother, turned her horse's head, and rode away into Norfolk. TheEarl of Arundel was her friend, and it was he who sent her warningof what had happened.

　　As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of Northumberland and thecouncil sent for the Lord Mayor of London and some of the aldermen,and made a merit of telling it to them. Then, they made it knownto the people, and set off to inform Lady Jane Grey that she was tobe Queen.

　　She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amiable, learned,and clever. When the lords who came to her, fell on their kneesbefore her, and told her what tidings they brought, she was soastonished that she fainted. On recovering, she expressed hersorrow for the young King's death, and said that she knew she wasunfit to govern the kingdom; but that if she must be Queen, sheprayed God to direct her. She was then at Sion House, nearBrentford; and the lords took her down the river in state to theTower, that she might remain there (as the custom was) until shewas crowned. But the people were not at all favourable to LadyJane, considering that the right to be Queen was Mary's, andgreatly disliking the Duke of Northumberland. They were not putinto a better humour by the Duke's causing a vintner's servant, oneGabriel Pot, to be taken up for expressing his dissatisfactionamong the crowd, and to have his ears nailed to the pillory, andcut off. Some powerful men among the nobility declared on Mary'sside. They raised troops to support her cause, had her proclaimedQueen at Norwich, and gathered around her at the castle ofFramlingham, which belonged to the Duke of Norfolk. For, she wasnot considered so safe as yet, but that it was best to keep her ina castle on the sea-coast, from whence she might be sent abroad, ifnecessary.

　　The Council would have despatched Lady Jane's father, the Duke ofSuffolk, as the general of the army against this force; but, asLady Jane implored that her father might remain with her, and as hewas known to be but a weak man, they told the Duke ofNorthumberland that he must take the command himself. He was notvery ready to do so, as he mistrusted the Council much; but therewas no help for it, and he set forth with a heavy heart, observingto a lord who rode beside him through Shoreditch at the head of thetroops, that, although the people pressed in great numbers to lookat them, they were terribly silent.

　　And his fears for himself turned out to be well founded. While hewas waiting at Cambridge for further help from the Council, theCouncil took it into their heads to turn their backs on Lady Jane'scause, and to take up the Princess Mary's. This was chiefly owingto the before-mentioned Earl of Arundel, who represented to theLord Mayor and aldermen, in a second interview with those sagaciouspersons, that, as for himself, he did not perceive the Reformedreligion to be in much danger - which Lord Pembroke backed byflourishing his sword as another kind of persuasion. The LordMayor and aldermen, thus enlightened, said there could be no doubtthat the Princess Mary ought to be Queen. So, she was proclaimedat the Cross by St. Paul's, and barrels of wine were given to thepeople, and they got very drunk, and danced round blazing bonfires- little thinking, poor wretches, what other bonfires would soon beblazing in Queen Mary's name.

　　After a ten days' dream of royalty, Lady Jane Grey resigned theCrown with great willingness, saying that she had only accepted itin obedience to her father and mother; and went gladly back to herpleasant house by the river, and her books. Mary then came ontowards London; and at Wanstead in Essex, was joined by her half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth. They passed through the streets ofLondon to the Tower, and there the new Queen met some eminentprisoners then confined in it, kissed them, and gave them theirliberty. Among these was that Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, whohad been imprisoned in the last reign for holding to the unreformedreligion. Him she soon made chancellor.

　　The Duke of Northumberland had been taken prisoner, and, togetherwith his son and five others, was quickly brought before theCouncil. He, not unnaturally, asked that Council, in his defence,whether it was treason to obey orders that had been issued underthe great seal; and, if it were, whether they, who had obeyed themtoo, ought to be his judges? But they made light of these points;and, being resolved to have him out of the way, soon sentenced himto death. He had risen into power upon the death of another man,and made but a poor show (as might be expected) when he himself laylow. He entreated Gardiner to let him live, if it were only in amouse's hole; and, when he ascended the scaffold to be beheaded onTower Hill, addressed the people in a miserable way, saying that hehad been incited by others, and exhorting them to return to theunreformed religion, which he told them was his faith. There seemsreason to suppose that he expected a pardon even then, in returnfor this confession; but it matters little whether he did or not.His head was struck off.

　　Mary was now crowned Queen. She was thirty-seven years of age,short and thin, wrinkled in the face, and very unhealthy. But shehad a great liking for show and for bright colours, and all theladies of her Court were magnificently dressed. She had a greatliking too for old customs, without much sense in them; and she wasoiled in the oldest way, and blessed in the oldest way, and doneall manner of things to in the oldest way, at her coronation. Ihope they did her good.

　　She soon began to show her desire to put down the Reformedreligion, and put up the unreformed one: though it was dangerouswork as yet, the people being something wiser than they used to be.They even cast a shower of stones - and among them a dagger - atone of the royal chaplains who attacked the Reformed religion in apublic sermon. But the Queen and her priests went steadily on.Ridley, the powerful bishop of the last reign, was seized and sentto the Tower. Latimer, also celebrated among the Clergy of thelast reign, was likewise sent to the Tower, and Cranmer speedilyfollowed. Latimer was an aged man; and, as his guards took himthrough Smithfield, he looked round it, and said, 'This is a placethat hath long groaned for me.' For he knew well, what kind ofbonfires would soon be burning. Nor was the knowledge confined tohim. The prisons were fast filled with the chief Protestants, whowere there left rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt, and separationfrom their friends; many, who had time left them for escape, fledfrom the kingdom; and the dullest of the people began, now, to seewhat was coming.

　　It came on fast. A Parliament was got together; not without strongsuspicion of unfairness; and they annulled the divorce, formerlypronounced by Cranmer between the Queen's mother and King Henry theEighth, and unmade all the laws on the subject of religion that hadbeen made in the last King Edward's reign. They began theirproceedings, in violation of the law, by having the old mass saidbefore them in Latin, and by turning out a bishop who would notkneel down. They also declared guilty of treason, Lady Jane Greyfor aspiring to the Crown; her husband, for being her husband; andCranmer, for not believing in the mass aforesaid. They then prayedthe Queen graciously to choose a husband for herself, as soon asmight be.

　　Now, the question who should be the Queen's husband had given riseto a great deal of discussion, and to several contending parties.Some said Cardinal Pole was the man - but the Queen was of opinionthat he was not the man, he being too old and too much of astudent. Others said that the gallant young Courtenay, whom theQueen had made Earl of Devonshire, was the man - and the Queenthought so too, for a while; but she changed her mind. At last itappeared that Philip, Prince of Spain, was certainly the man -though certainly not the people's man; for they detested the ideaof such a marriage from the beginning to the end, and murmured thatthe Spaniard would establish in England, by the aid of foreignsoldiers, the worst abuses of the Popish religion, and even theterrible Inquisition itself.

　　These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy for marrying youngCourtenay to the Princess Elizabeth, and setting them up, withpopular tumults all over the kingdom, against the Queen. This wasdiscovered in time by Gardiner; but in Kent, the old bold county,the people rose in their old bold way. Sir Thomas Wyat, a man ofgreat daring, was their leader. He raised his standard atMaidstone, marched on to Rochester, established himself in the oldcastle there, and prepared to hold out against the Duke of Norfolk,who came against him with a party of the Queen's guards, and a bodyof five hundred London men. The London men, however, were all forElizabeth, and not at all for Mary. They declared, under thecastle walls, for Wyat; the Duke retreated; and Wyat came on toDeptford, at the head of fifteen thousand men.

　　But these, in their turn, fell away. When he came to Southwark,there were only two thousand left. Not dismayed by finding theLondon citizens in arms, and the guns at the Tower ready to opposehis crossing the river there, Wyat led them off to Kingston-upon-Thames, intending to cross the bridge that he knew to be in thatplace, and so to work his way round to Ludgate, one of the oldgates of the City. He found the bridge broken down, but mended it,came across, and bravely fought his way up Fleet Street to LudgateHill. Finding the gate closed against him, he fought his way backagain, sword in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, being overpowered, hesurrendered himself, and three or four hundred of his men weretaken, besides a hundred killed. Wyat, in a moment of weakness(and perhaps of torture) was afterwards made to accuse the PrincessElizabeth as his accomplice to some very small extent. But hismanhood soon returned to him, and he refused to save his life bymaking any more false confessions. He was quartered anddistributed in the usual brutal way, and from fifty to a hundred ofhis followers were hanged. The rest were led out, with haltersround their necks, to be pardoned, and to make a parade of cryingout, 'God save Queen Mary!'

　　In the danger of this rebellion, the Queen showed herself to be awoman of courage and spirit. She disdained to retreat to any placeof safety, and went down to the Guildhall, sceptre in hand, andmade a gallant speech to the Lord Mayor and citizens. But on theday after Wyat's defeat, she did the most cruel act, even of hercruel reign, in signing the warrant for the execution of Lady JaneGrey.

　　They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unreformed religion;but she steadily refused. On the morning when she was to die, shesaw from her window the bleeding and headless body of her husbandbrought back in a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill where he hadlaid down his life. But, as she had declined to see him before hisexecution, lest she should be overpowered and not make a good end,so, she even now showed a constancy and calmness that will never beforgotten. She came up to the scaffold with a firm step and aquiet face, and addressed the bystanders in a steady voice. Theywere not numerous; for she was too young, too innocent and fair, tobe murdered before the people on Tower Hill, as her husband hadjust been; so, the place of her execution was within the Toweritself. She said that she had done an unlawful act in taking whatwas Queen Mary's right; but that she had done so with no badintent, and that she died a humble Christian. She begged theexecutioner to despatch her quickly, and she asked him, 'Will youtake my head off before I lay me down?' He answered, 'No, Madam,'and then she was very quiet while they bandaged her eyes. Beingblinded, and unable to see the block on which she was to lay heryoung head, she was seen to feel about for it with her hands, andwas heard to say, confused, 'O what shall I do! Where is it?'Then they guided her to the right place, and the executioner struckoff her head. You know too well, now, what dreadful deeds theexecutioner did in England, through many, many years, and how hisaxe descended on the hateful block through the necks of some of thebravest, wisest, and best in the land. But it never struck socruel and so vile a blow as this.

　　The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but was little pitied.Queen Mary's next object was to lay hold of Elizabeth, and this waspursued with great eagerness. Five hundred men were sent to herretired house at Ashridge, by Berkhampstead, with orders to bringher up, alive or dead. They got there at ten at night, when shewas sick in bed. But, their leaders followed her lady into herbedchamber, whence she was brought out betimes next morning, andput into a litter to be conveyed to London. She was so weak andill, that she was five days on the road; still, she was so resolvedto be seen by the people that she had the curtains of the litteropened; and so, very pale and sickly, passed through the streets.She wrote to her sister, saying she was innocent of any crime, andasking why she was made a prisoner; but she got no answer, and wasordered to the Tower. They took her in by the Traitor's Gate, towhich she objected, but in vain. One of the lords who conveyed heroffered to cover her with his cloak, as it was raining, but she putit away from her, proudly and scornfully, and passed into theTower, and sat down in a court-yard on a stone. They besought herto come in out of the wet; but she answered that it was bettersitting there, than in a worse place. At length she went to herapartment, where she was kept a prisoner, though not so close aprisoner as at Woodstock, whither she was afterwards removed, andwhere she is said to have one day envied a milkmaid whom she heardsinging in the sunshine as she went through the green fields.Gardiner, than whom there were not many worse men among the fierceand sullen priests, cared little to keep secret his stern desirefor her death: being used to say that it was of little service toshake off the leaves, and lop the branches of the tree of heresy,if its root, the hope of heretics, were left. He failed, however,in his benevolent design. Elizabeth was, at length, released; andHatfield House was assigned to her as a residence, under the careof one Sir Thomas Pope.

　　It would seem that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a main cause ofthis change in Elizabeth's fortunes. He was not an amiable man,being, on the contrary, proud, overbearing, and gloomy; but he andthe Spanish lords who came over with him, assuredly diddiscountenance the idea of doing any violence to the Princess. Itmay have been mere prudence, but we will hope it was manhood andhonour. The Queen had been expecting her husband with greatimpatience, and at length he came, to her great joy, though henever cared much for her. They were married by Gardiner, atWinchester, and there was more holiday-making among the people; butthey had their old distrust of this Spanish marriage, in which eventhe Parliament shared. Though the members of that Parliament werefar from honest, and were strongly suspected to have been boughtwith Spanish money, they would pass no bill to enable the Queen toset aside the Princess Elizabeth and appoint her own successor.

　　Although Gardiner failed in this object, as well as in the darkerone of bringing the Princess to the scaffold, he went on at a greatpace in the revival of the unreformed religion. A new Parliamentwas packed, in which there were no Protestants. Preparations weremade to receive Cardinal Pole in England as the Pope's messenger,bringing his holy declaration that all the nobility who hadacquired Church property, should keep it - which was done to enlisttheir selfish interest on the Pope's side. Then a great scene wasenacted, which was the triumph of the Queen's plans. Cardinal Polearrived in great splendour and dignity, and was received with greatpomp. The Parliament joined in a petition expressive of theirsorrow at the change in the national religion, and praying him toreceive the country again into the Popish Church. With the Queensitting on her throne, and the King on one side of her, and theCardinal on the other, and the Parliament present, Gardiner readthe petition aloud. The Cardinal then made a great speech, and wasso obliging as to say that all was forgotten and forgiven, and thatthe kingdom was solemnly made Roman Catholic again.

　　Everything was now ready for the lighting of the terrible bonfires.The Queen having declared to the Council, in writing, that shewould wish none of her subjects to be burnt without some of theCouncil being present, and that she would particularly wish thereto be good sermons at all burnings, the Council knew pretty wellwhat was to be done next. So, after the Cardinal had blessed allthe bishops as a preface to the burnings, the Chancellor Gardineropened a High Court at Saint Mary Overy, on the Southwark side ofLondon Bridge, for the trial of heretics. Here, two of the lateProtestant clergymen, Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, and Rogers, aPrebendary of St. Paul's, were brought to be tried. Hooper wastried first for being married, though a priest, and for notbelieving in the mass. He admitted both of these accusations, andsaid that the mass was a wicked imposition. Then they triedRogers, who said the same. Next morning the two were brought up tobe sentenced; and then Rogers said that his poor wife, being aGerman woman and a stranger in the land, he hoped might be allowedto come to speak to him before he died. To this the inhumanGardiner replied, that she was not his wife. 'Yea, but she is, mylord,' said Rogers, 'and she hath been my wife these eighteenyears.' His request was still refused, and they were both sent toNewgate; all those who stood in the streets to sell things, beingordered to put out their lights that the people might not see them.But, the people stood at their doors with candles in their hands,and prayed for them as they went by. Soon afterwards, Rogers wastaken out of jail to be burnt in Smithfield; and, in the crowd ashe went along, he saw his poor wife and his ten children, of whomthe youngest was a little baby. And so he was burnt to death.

　　The next day, Hooper, who was to be burnt at Gloucester, wasbrought out to take his last journey, and was made to wear a hoodover his face that he might not be known by the people. But, theydid know him for all that, down in his own part of the country;and, when he came near Gloucester, they lined the road, makingprayers and lamentations. His guards took him to a lodging, wherehe slept soundly all night. At nine o'clock next morning, he wasbrought forth leaning on a staff; for he had taken cold in prison,and was infirm. The iron stake, and the iron chain which was tobind him to it, were fixed up near a great elm-tree in a pleasantopen place before the cathedral, where, on peaceful Sundays, he hadbeen accustomed to preach and to pray, when he was bishop ofGloucester. This tree, which had no leaves then, it beingFebruary, was filled with people; and the priests of GloucesterCollege were looking complacently on from a window, and there was agreat concourse of spectators in every spot from which a glimpse ofthe dreadful sight could be beheld. When the old man kneeled downon the small platform at the foot of the stake, and prayed aloud,the nearest people were observed to be so attentive to his prayersthat they were ordered to stand farther back; for it did not suitthe Romish Church to have those Protestant words heard. Hisprayers concluded, he went up to the stake and was stripped to hisshirt, and chained ready for the fire. One of his guards had suchcompassion on him that, to shorten his agonies, he tied somepackets of gunpowder about him. Then they heaped up wood and strawand reeds, and set them all alight. But, unhappily, the wood wasgreen and damp, and there was a wind blowing that blew what flamethere was, away. Thus, through three-quarters of an hour, the goodold man was scorched and roasted and smoked, as the fire rose andsank; and all that time they saw him, as he burned, moving his lipsin prayer, and beating his breast with one hand, even after theother was burnt away and had fallen off.

　　Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, were taken to Oxford to dispute witha commission of priests and doctors about the mass. They wereshamefully treated; and it is recorded that the Oxford scholarshissed and howled and groaned, and misconducted themselves in ananything but a scholarly way. The prisoners were taken back tojail, and afterwards tried in St. Mary's Church. They were allfound guilty. On the sixteenth of the month of October, Ridley andLatimer were brought out, to make another of the dreadful bonfires.

　　The scene of the suffering of these two good Protestant men was inthe City ditch, near Baliol College. On coming to the dreadfulspot, they kissed the stakes, and then embraced each other. Andthen a learned doctor got up into a pulpit which was placed there,and preached a sermon from the text, 'Though I give my body to beburned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.' When youthink of the charity of burning men alive, you may imagine thatthis learned doctor had a rather brazen face. Ridley would haveanswered his sermon when it came to an end, but was not allowed.When Latimer was stripped, it appeared that he had dressed himselfunder his other clothes, in a new shroud; and, as he stood in itbefore all the people, it was noted of him, and long remembered,that, whereas he had been stooping and feeble but a few minutesbefore, he now stood upright and handsome, in the knowledge that hewas dying for a just and a great cause. Ridley's brother-in-lawwas there with bags of gunpowder; and when they were both chainedup, he tied them round their bodies. Then, a light was thrown uponthe pile to fire it. 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley,' saidLatimer, at that awful moment, 'and play the man! We shall thisday light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trustshall never be put out.' And then he was seen to make motions withhis hands as if he were washing them in the flames, and to strokehis aged face with them, and was heard to cry, 'Father of Heaven,receive my soul!' He died quickly, but the fire, after havingburned the legs of Ridley, sunk. There he lingered, chained to theiron post, and crying, 'O! I cannot burn! O! for Christ's sakelet the fire come unto me!' And still, when his brother-in-law hadheaped on more wood, he was heard through the blinding smoke, stilldismally crying, 'O! I cannot burn, I cannot burn!' At last, thegunpowder caught fire, and ended his miseries.

　　Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to his tremendousaccount before God, for the cruelties he had so much assisted incommitting.

　　Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. He was brought outagain in February, for more examining and trying, by Bonner, Bishopof London: another man of blood, who had succeeded to Gardiner'swork, even in his lifetime, when Gardiner was tired of it. Cranmerwas now degraded as a priest, and left for death; but, if the Queenhated any one on earth, she hated him, and it was resolved that heshould be ruined and disgraced to the utmost. There is no doubtthat the Queen and her husband personally urged on these deeds,because they wrote to the Council, urging them to be active in thekindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known not to be afirm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him with artful people,and inducing him to recant to the unreformed religion. Deans andfriars visited him, played at bowls with him, showed him variousattentions, talked persuasively with him, gave him money for hisprison comforts, and induced him to sign, I fear, as many as sixrecantations. But when, after all, he was taken out to be burnt,he was nobly true to his better self, and made a glorious end.

　　After prayers and a sermon, Dr. Cole, the preacher of the day (whohad been one of the artful priests about Cranmer in prison),required him to make a public confession of his faith before thepeople. This, Cole did, expecting that he would declare himself aRoman Catholic. 'I will make a profession of my faith,' saidCranmer, 'and with a good will too.'

　　Then, he arose before them all, and took from the sleeve of hisrobe a written prayer and read it aloud. That done, he kneeled andsaid the Lord's Prayer, all the people joining; and then he aroseagain and told them that he believed in the Bible, and that in whathe had lately written, he had written what was not the truth, andthat, because his right hand had signed those papers, he would burnhis right hand first when he came to the fire. As for the Pope, hedid refuse him and denounce him as the enemy of Heaven. Hereuponthe pious Dr. Cole cried out to the guards to stop that heretic'smouth and take him away.

　　So they took him away, and chained him to the stake, where hehastily took off his own clothes to make ready for the flames. Andhe stood before the people with a bald head and a white and flowingbeard. He was so firm now when the worst was come, that he againdeclared against his recantation, and was so impressive and soundismayed, that a certain lord, who was one of the directors ofthe execution, called out to the men to make haste! When the firewas lighted, Cranmer, true to his latest word, stretched out hisright hand, and crying out, 'This hand hath offended!' held itamong the flames, until it blazed and burned away. His heart wasfound entire among his ashes, and he left at last a memorable namein English history. Cardinal Pole celebrated the day by saying hisfirst mass, and next day he was made Archbishop of Canterbury inCranmer's place.

　　The Queen's husband, who was now mostly abroad in his owndominions, and generally made a coarse jest of her to his morefamiliar courtiers, was at war with France, and came over to seekthe assistance of England. England was very unwilling to engage ina French war for his sake; but it happened that the King of France,at this very time, aided a descent upon the English coast. Hence,war was declared, greatly to Philip's satisfaction; and the Queenraised a sum of money with which to carry it on, by everyunjustifiable means in her power. It met with no profitablereturn, for the French Duke of Guise surprised Calais, and theEnglish sustained a complete defeat. The losses they met with inFrance greatly mortified the national pride, and the Queen neverrecovered the blow.

　　There was a bad fever raging in England at this time, and I am gladto write that the Queen took it, and the hour of her death came.'When I am dead and my body is opened,' she said to those aroundthose around her, 'ye shall find Calais written on my heart.' Ishould have thought, if anything were written on it, they wouldhave found the words - Jane Grey, Hooper, Rogers, Ridley, Latimer,Cranmer, and three hundred people burnt alive within four years ofmy wicked reign, including sixty women and forty little children.But it is enough that their deaths were written in Heaven.

　　The Queen died on the seventeenth of November, fifteen hundred andfifty-eight, after reigning not quite five years and a half, and inthe forty-fourth year of her age. Cardinal Pole died of the samefever next day.

　　As Bloody Queen Mary, this woman has become famous, and as BloodyQueen Mary, she will ever be justly remembered with horror anddetestation in Great Britain. Her memory has been held in suchabhorrence that some writers have arisen in later years to take herpart, and to show that she was, upon the whole, quite an amiableand cheerful sovereign! 'By their fruits ye shall know them,' saidOur Saviour. The stake and the fire were the fruits of this reign,and you will judge this Queen by nothing else.