NORTHUMBERLAND having got the deed appointing his daughter-in-law the Lady Jane Grey to the throne, began to get rather nervous as to the effect of making known to the people such a preposterous arrangement. He was afraid to advertise the king's death, and walked about the palace at Greenwich, biting his nails, thinking what he should do, or shut himself up in a small apartment, which, from the colour of its walls, was known as the brown study. He subsequently sent for the Lord Mayor of London, half a dozen aldermen, and a dozen citizens, to whom he communicated, one at a time, but always in a whisper, the decease of the sovereign. "Mind you don't tell," was the precautionary observation he made to each; and a will was then produced, in which the boy-king had appointed Lady Jane Grey his successor. The cockneys expressed their readiness to swear allegiance to the lady, if it was "all right;" and Northumberland pledged his honour as a peer, that he would make it so. This happened on the 1st of July, and two days afterwards Lady Jane was forwarded by water to the Tower of London, some of the corporation, who had been gained over by her father-in-law, rowing in the same boat with her. After her safe arrival, the death of King Edward was publicly announced, and Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed amid very slight applause, accompanied by murmurs of the name of Mary. Poor Jane was sadly genÉe by the position into which she was thrust, for she was a quiet, unaspiring, lovely creature, whose only fault seems to have been that she read Plato in the original Greek, * which appears to us the very alpha and omega of absurdity.

In the meantime, Mary, whose sanguinary disposition, and love for cutting off heads in her father's style, fully entitled her to the name of the "chip of the old block," was raising friends to resist the views of Northumberland. Mary, whose Catholic predilections were known, promised those who were favourable to the Reformation, that she would make no change in the religion fixed by Edward; and thus, though she was understood to have mass celebrated at home, she silenced the scruples of the masses. The proclamation of Lady Jane Grey had been contrived at a packed meeting of the council, on the 10th of July; but it is said that a vintner's lad—or more probably a boy going round with the beer—entered a protest—possibly through an open window—to the arrangement. A policeman was instantly sent after him, and he was at once set in the pillory, where the tops of his ears paid the penalty of a juvenile offence, which he would not have committed had he arrived at the years of discretion. This little incident, trifling as it was, showed that there was a feeling abroad unfavourable to the elevation of Jane; for the pot-boy is always an authority on the subject of public measures. His opportunities of listening to the discussions of the people are great; and though he may hear much frothy declamation, as well as witness a vast tendency to half-and-half principles, in the course of his experience, he is nevertheless capable of judging, to a considerable extent, of the feelings of the multitude.

Northumberland, seeing that opinion was taking a powerful turn in Mary's favour, became fearfully perplexed, and hearing that an adverse force was being collected, came to the resolution that "somebody" must go and oppose the enemy. Who that "somebody" should be, was a very puzzling question, for Northumberland did not like the business himself, and was afraid to trust anyone else with a matter of so much consequence. At length he offered the task to Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane Grey; but that young lady began to cry very bitterly at the idea of her poor papa, who was "wholly unaccustomed to public fighting," being sent into battle. Whether it was an arrangement between father and daughter it is impossible to say; but it was well known that Suffolk was not over valorous, and even if he did not "cry off," Lady Jane did so for him, by keeping up a constant cry until they found her father a substitute. Northumberland, perceiving that Suffolk had made up his mind not to go, was looking about him for somebody else, when a general interrogatory of, "Why don't he go himself?" seemed to suggest itself to the council. With a reluctance that indicated the feelings in his mind of "Well, I suppose I must," he started off with a small army, which experienced a cold reception in its progress, and the silence of the spectators giving them the air of mutes, invested with the dolefulness of a funeral procession the march of the troops as far as Bury.

Northumberland had no sooner turned his back on the council than they turned their backs on him, by proclaiming Mary as Queen of England; and on a party being sent to besiege the Tower, Lady Jane Grey, by the advice of her own papa, resigned all pretensions to the sovereign dignity. Suffolk not only evinced no disposition to defend his daughter's claims, but turning his sword into a steel-pen, hastened to sign the decrees that were being issued in the name of Mary.

Poor Northumberland, who was waiting for succours which never came, and who was accordingly being victimised by the expenses of his soldiers, who acted as suckers of a different kind, heard of what had taken place in London, and having fallen back upon Cambridge, sent for a herald, or town crier, with whom he bargained for the proclamation of Mary, at the market-place. It has been atrociously hinted, by an old offender, whose family we spare by the suppression of his name, that Northumberland took this humiliating course in the hope that Mary would be molli-fied. He had scarcely finished the proceeding we have described, when he received a sharp letter from the council in London, desiring him to disband his army; but looking round, he perceived that it had disbanded itself, for all his followers had deserted him. They had, in fact, gone over to the other side, with a canting recantation of their opinions, and a whining declaration that they never should have thought of taking arms against their lawful queen "had not Northumberland made them do it." The unhappy duke himself was hanging about the streets of Cambridge the next day, not knowing whether to give himself up or "run for it," when the Earl of Arundel, coming up and tapping him on the shoulder, observed, "You must come along with me—you're my prisoner." Northumberland burst into a loud bellow, fell upon his knees, and begged for his life; but Arundel, contemptuously desiring an underling to "bring him along," lodged the captive in the Tower. Poor Lady Jane, whose representations of the part of queen had been limited to ten days, was already locked up, and, in fact, the State prison was full to overflowing of her unfortunate partisans. Her father, the Duke of Suffolk, obtained his pardon on the 31st of July, through Mary, who, on the 3rd of August, 1553, made her triumphant entry into London, accompanied by her little sister, afterwards the great Elizabeth. On the 18th of the same month, Northumberland, his eldest son John, Earl of Warwick, and two or three others, were brought to trial at Westminster Hall, when they pleaded the general issue; but the chief prisoner, finding it useless to throw himself upon the country, threw himself on the floor, asking, in the most abject terms, for mercy. This prostration was of no avail, for sentence of death was speedily passed upon him; the sycophant Suffolk (Lady Jane Grey's own father) being one of the judges who presided at the trial. The Earl of Warwick behaved with more spirit than his parent, and upon hearing that he was to die as a traitor, which would involve the confiscation of his property, he coolly requested that his unfortunate creditors might not be victimised. "Don't pay me off, without paying them off, also," were the chivalrous words of the young nobleman. The Marquis of Northampton, when called upon for his defence, said that he had been out with the hounds and engaged in field sports while the conspiracy was going on, so that he had been quite upon another scent; but this availed nothing for the sly old fox, who was immediately found guilty. Sir John Gates, as well as Sir Henry Gates, both of whom were fearfully unhinged, were also condemned; and Northumberland made a long penitential speech from the scaffold when, as if caught by the example, Sir John Gates opened out with extraordinary eloquence. Poor Gates having been brought to a close by a hint from the headsman, the axe and the curtain fell together upon this fearful tragedy.

Mary soon began to show her papist predilections, and after making Gardiner Chancellor, she proceeded to establish a most rigorous censorship of the press, like a person who, having evil designs, is anxious to get the watch-dog muzzled as speedily as possible. She prohibited all persons from speaking against her, for a time; but putting a prohibition on the press is like throwing coals on a volcano, which gets smothered for a while, but is sure to burst out with a stronger light on account of the attempt to extinguish it.

The fanaticism of Mary is said to have been caused by the wretchedness of her early life, during which a brutal father was continually threatening to chop off her head or make a nun of her. That unnatural parent was one of those monsters to whom it seems marvellous that children were ever given at all, for he could never appreciate the blessings they were calculated to afford, and he was for ever engaged in trying to mar their happiness. The stock from which she came was, however, so abominably bad, that there is nothing surprising in her cruelty; for when children happen to go wrong, it may be taken as a general rule that they get from their birth one half, and from their bringing-up the other half, of their iniquity. Mary proved herself a worthy descendant of a most unworthy sire, and turned the State prisons at once into warehouses for storing up the fuel of future martyrdom. Cranmer, Latimer, and others were stored away with this view, while the queen herself prepared for a coronation of unusual pageantry at Westminster.

The calm and philosophical Anne of Cleves—who will be remembered as the queen that Henry refused to have at any price—was a visitor to the show, and came to it in the same "fly" with the Princess Elizabeth. The latter, as sister to the queen, carried the crown in the procession, and was complaining of its weight in a whisper—for she was always flirting with somebody—to Noailles, the French Ambassador. "Be patient," replied the polite Parisian; "it will be lighter when it is on your head;" and an interchange of winks proved that the illusion was understood by the future sovereign of England. A parliament was assembled in less than a week, and the legislature that had lately been in favour of protestantism to the fullest extent, now relapsed into all the forms of popery. Both Houses opened with the celebration of mass, and Taylor, the Bishop of Lincoln, who objected to such flagrant apostacy, was fairly kicked downstairs, like a bill thrown out of the Upper House, where tergiversation was the order of the day throughout the session. Another bishop, of the name of Harley, the low comedian of the episcopal bench, whom Burnet calls a "drie dogge," was also ejected for exhibiting the same honourable consistency; but Harley restored the good nature of the House by throwing a little humour into his forced exit.

A convocation of the clergy was shortly afterwards held, to get rid of the Reformation as far as it had gone, and bring catholicism back again. Some of the bishops conformed to the new regulations laid down for them; but some few, who happened to be married, found that though shaking off an opinion was easy enough, getting rid of a wife was far more difficult. The celibacy of the clergy was, of course, insisted upon; but Holgate, Archbishop of York, however happy he might have been never to have linked himself with Mrs. Holgate at all, soon discovered that a divorce from that good lady was not so easily accomplished as talked about. Several bishops who had got entangled in the connubial noose, were nearly finding it a halter for their necks, inasmuch as they were all deprived of their sees, and some even of their lives, for having committed the offence of matrimony. An attempt was made to save them, by urging that the punishment accompanied the crime, and that it was hard to make those suffer who must already have endured a great deal; but the plea was not allowed to prevail, and deprivation was inflicted on all as an equal punishment. Several of the bishops conformed; and it has been said, in extenuation of their weakness, that their insincerity was not in changing from Protestant to Catholic, but had consisted in their originally veering round against their wills from Catholic to Protestant. It matters little whether, in turning from popery to the Reformation, they had been robbing Peter to pay Paul, or whether, in changing once more, they were guilty of some additional cheat, in order to restore what they had taken from Peter; but it is not to be denied, that on one occasion or the other they had been guilty of gross apostacy.

On the 13th of November, 1553, Cranmer, Lady Jane Grey, her husband Lord Guildford Dudley, and his brother Ambrose Dudley, were all condemned to die as traitors, by judges many of whom were the very people who had set on poor Jane to play the game, in which she had never taken the smallest interest. After sentence had been passed, execution was stayed. But Cranmer had no sooner been let out upon the charge of treason, than it was found on searching the office there was something else against him, whereupon he was taken and locked up once more upon an accusation of heresy. Lady Jane Grey had the freedom of the Tower presented to her in the shape of a permission to walk about the gardens, while Guildford Dudley and Ambrose were granted a few moderate indulgences—amounting, perhaps, to a set of skittles, a bat, trap and ball, or a couple of hockey-sticks.

This moderation was, however, accompanied by other acts of cruelty; and poor Judge Hales, who had really done nothing but refuse to change his religion, was, though he had stoutly defended the title of the queen, thrown into prison. The poor fellow went out of his mind, and though he was liberated, he had got so fearfully impressed with the idea of being burnt, that he thought to make himself fire-proof by running into the water; but it was so deep, and he stayed there so very long, that he unfortunately drowned himself.

Mary, who had been disappointed of several husbands—for nobody who saw her would think of having her—now resolved to make use of her position as Queen of England to draw some unhappy victim into a marriage. Comparatively old, exceedingly hard, and totally void of all the milk of human kindness, she was naturally very inflammable, and she had already fallen in love with young Ned Courtenay, a son of the Marquis of Exeter; but the predilection of that young gentleman for her half-sister Elizabeth had somewhat cooled the ardour of Mary, who found it was useless to set her cap at the young Earl of Devon, which was the title she had restored to the courteous Courtenay.

The project of a marriage continued to fill the head of the queen, but as it was evident there would be "nobody coming to marry her," and, indeed, "nobody coming to woo," unless she looked out pretty sharply for herself, she threw aside all scruples of delicacy, and began to advertise through the medium of her ambassadors. The Emperor Charles of Spain had been affianced to her thirty years ago, and though she might once have been accustomed to sing "Charlie's my darling," in her youthful days, that prince had, long ago, grown old enough to know better than to marry her. He nevertheless thought she might be a good match for his son Philip, or rather that the latter might be a match for the lady, inasmuch as the Spanish prince was crafty, cruel, and bigoted. Mary made a last effort to get a husband of her own choice by sending a proposal to Cardinal Pole, who would have nothing to do with her. Thus, even her indelicate eagerness to rush to the pole did not secure her election, and she was obliged to take Philip "for better, for worse," or rather for worse, for want of a better.

When the Commons heard of her intention they respectfully recommended her to wed an Englishman, but the idea that it was necessary for Mary to "first catch the Englishman" does not seem to have occurred to them. She announced her intention of marrying Philip partly out of old associations, but the oldness of the association was all on her own side, for the gentleman was young in comparison to the lady. It was not to be expected that Philip would make what he might justly have considered an "alarming sacrifice" without some equivalent, and it was agreed that he should have the honour and title of King of England, though he was not to interfere in the government. In case Mary survived him, he was to settle upon her £60,000 a year, but as he always flattered himself that he should, as he said, "see the old girl out," he looked upon this arrangement as merely nominal.

The English people had in those days, as they still have in these, an objection to Spanish marriages, and one Sir Thomas Wyatt, who had been in Spain, gave such a fearful picture of Philip, that the people of Kent, learning to regard him as something between "Old Bogie" and "Spring-heeled Jack," resolved to oppose his landing. Wyatt collected a considerable force at Rochester and marched upon London, when taking the first to the left, then the second to the right, they found themselves masters of Southwark. He had intended to give battle in Bermondsey, and put a cannon at the corner of the street, but it did not go off so well as he expected. In the meantime the queen's forces began pouring upon him some of the juice of the grape, from the Tower, and intimating to his followers that it might affect their heads, he withdrew as far as Kingston. His object was to march upon London by the other road, and he got about as far as Hammersmith when an accident happened to his largest buss, or blunderbuss—as he called his heaviest gun—and he wasted several hours in getting it, once more, upon its wheels again. By daylight he had got as far as Hyde Park, when he found that the royal forces were in the inclosure of St. James's, waiting to receive him, and having a large reserve in the hollow that now forms the reservoir.

The battle commenced with a noisy overture, consisting of the firing of cannons, loaded only with powder, and doing no harm to anybody. Wyatt's followers had dwindled very materially as he came into town; several of his soldiers having discovered, at Kew, it was not their "cue to fight," and others experiencing at Turaham Green, sufficient to turn 'em pale, and turn 'em back, at the very thought of meeting the enemy. Wyatt was nevertheless undaunted, and rushed upon the enemy, who, falling quietly back, let him regularly in among the troops, with the full intention of never letting him out again. Without looking behind, he charged, at full gallop, along Charing Cross, and continuing his furious career up the Strand, pulled up, at last, at Ludgate Hill, which he found closed against him. Finding no sympathy among the citizens he attempted to back out, and had got as far as the Temple, where, strange to say, his opponents gave him no law, and the unhappy old Pump, being at last caught in Pump Court, surrendered to Sir Maurice Berkeley.

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Poor Wyatt was soon afterwards condemned to death, and executed, as well as about four hundred of his followers, but several were brought with ropes round their necks before the queen, who permitted them to find in the halter a loop-hole for escape, by an humble prayer for pardon.

Mary, exceedingly angry at the attempt to shake her throne, vented her animosity on her little sister Elizabeth, who was brought on a litter to London, though she was so ill that the journey might have killed her, had not youth, a good constitution, and some stout porters carried her through the dangerous ordeal. She was accused of having been a party to Wyatt's rebellion, and was taken to the Tower, though not without giving a good deal of trouble to the proper officer, for she insisted on sitting down every now and then upon a stone step in the yard, though the rain was falling heavily.

Mary, whose reign may be considered as the original "reign of terror"—though the brutality that distinguished it was confined to a few, while in the French edition the whole nation thirsted for blood—who exercised en dÉtail the cruelties that France subsequently practised en gros, sentenced to death, in rapid rotation, all who did not quite agree with her. The unfortunate Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, were both executed on the same day, and, indeed, the victims were so numerous that we should be inclined to say, "for further particulars see small bills," if we thought that any of the true bills found against the parties were still extant.

A curious commentary on the value of trial by jury was furnished about this time by the extraordinary case of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton—the father of Throgmorton Street, and friend of Sir Thomas Wyatt—who, after making his defence, obtained, to the surprise of everybody, a verdict of acquittal. Sir Thomas Bromley, the chief justice, began to cough and "hem!" and "ha!" as if there must be some mistake, and as though he would have said, "Gentlemen of the jury, do you know what you are doing?" The twelve honest men replied that it was "all right," they "knew what they were about," and persisted in their decision, until the chief justice, who thought every jury box ought to be a packing-case, hinted that the matter was one in which the Crown was interested, and that the Crown would stand no nonsense. The jurymen being still firm, they were hurried off to prison, and were only released upon paying enormous fines—which proved, at least, that the Government set a tremendous price upon their honesty.

On the 19th of July, 1554, Philip landed at Southampton on his way to fulfil his marriage contract with Mary; but he had taken the precaution to send on before him the Count of Egmont, who was intended to be mistaken for his master, and thus serve as a sort of pilot engine, in case of any collision with the populace. The expedient was very necessary, for the pilot engine—we mean Egmont—got some very hard knocks from several old buffers with whom he came in contact, and Philip, seeing the kind of reception he might expect, came, accompanied by a very long train, by way of escort, to his new station. On the 25th of the same month he was married to the queen, at Winchester, and the pair, whom we must call, by courtesy, "the happy couple," came to London, where a series of festivities, including the rapid descent of Il Diavolo. Somebody along a rope from the top of St. Paul's, * had been prepared in honour of the Royal marriage.

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The object of Philip in marrying Mary had been simply the crown, and his conduct, if not his words, very plainly told her so. Her fondness for him became quite a bore, particularly when he found that she could not get Parliament to agree to the projects he made her propose for his own aggrandisement. She had not long been the wife of Philip when an attack of dropsy was added to her other interesting points, and her heartless husband made her a butt—or, as Strype says, a water-butt—for his unfeeling ridicule. In order to obtain a little popularity, Philip made his wife release Elizabeth, and Courtenay, Earl of Devon, from the Tower, as well as a few other favourites of the public; but the people never took to the husband of the queen, while the quarrels between the Spanish and the English were perpetual. On New-Year's Day, 1555, there was a row among them at Westminster, when a Spanish friar got into the Abbey, and pulled away at the alarum with tremendous fury. He frightened the city almost into fits, and, for thus trifling with the rope, Philip doomed him to the halter, in order to gratify the people, who by no means chimed in with this extraordinary freak of bell-ringing.

The year 1555 was signalised by the revival of all the statutes against heretics, and the Protestants were kept burning night and day, in the neighbourhood of Smithfield. We will not dwell longer than necessary upon this disgraceful portion of our national annals. Among many distinguished persons who suffered death were Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, who all exhibited firmness worthy of a better fate, and it is said of Cranmer that he put his right hand into the fire first, for having, some time before, signed some documents of recantation, in the nope of saving his life at the expense of his consistency. In three years about three hundred individuals perished at the stake, through refusing to put their characters at stake by vacillation in the moment of danger.

After the death of Cranmer, Cardinal Pole was installed in the see of Canterbury, for Mary's rage against the Protestants was extreme, and she hoped that the fires of Smithfield would be kept alive by that exalted prelate, though in expecting to stir them up with the long Pole she was somewhat disappointed, for the new archbishop was rather moderate than otherwise in his ecclesiastical policy.

The queen's object was to control England in the war between France and Spain, but Pole, even at the risk of becoming in his turn a scaffold Pole, resisted the royal will to the extent of his power. The fact is that Philip, who had never married for love, was determined to be as plain with his wife as she was plain to him, and told her that unless he could make the union profitable, he should make a slipknot of the nuptial tie, and get away from it altogether. Alarmed at the prospect of being left "a lone woman" on the throne, she sought and found a pretext for declaring a war against France by getting up one of those confessions which in those days a judicious use of the torture could always procure at a few hours' notice.

Some unhappy agitators were detected in a small conspiracy, when the fact or falsehood of their having been encouraged by Henry of France was, after the intense application of the screw, regularly screwed out of them. They were made to fabricate stories to suit the purposes of the queen, and indeed their invention was literally put to the rack by the cruelties to which they were subjected. War against France was now declared, but the revenue was in such a miserable state that Mary was obliged to beg, borrow and steal in every direction for the necessary funds to commence hostilities. Having at last got together an army of ten thousand men, she found that the troops must be fed, and she accordingly seized all the corn she could find, threatening at the same time to thrash the owners like their own wheat if they had the impudence to ask for the value of the stolen property.

The well-known impolicy of interfering in other people's quarrels was powerfully illustrated by the fate of the English interposition in the dispute between France and Spain, for after a few trifling advantages, one of which was the taking of Ham before breakfast by Philip himself, England sustained a loss, which was at that time regarded as one of the most serious character. Valour, under the guise of the great Duke of Guise, wrested Calais from its masters, and restored it to the French, whose hearts rebounded with boundless joy at the acquisition of this valuable fortress.

The exchequer was reduced to such a beggarly condition by the expenses of the late unfortunate war, that the queen, who never called upon her Parliament unless she wanted something, was compelled to summon the Commons. With their usual squeezability they permitted to flow into the public coffers sufficient to keep the royal head above water; and one Copley, who ventured a few words by way of remonstrance, was pusillanimously committed to that custody from which the old English expression of "cowardy cowardy custard" (query, custod.) has been supposed to derive its origin.

Part of the produce of the recent subsidy was laid out in ships, and as the ships came to no good, it was said at the time that this appropriation of the money was very like making ducks and drakes of it. The fleet, after passing over the bosom of the ocean, came to Brest, but the breastworks were so strong, that the British force had not the heart to make an attack upon them. Some miscellaneous pillage was perpetrated in the neighbourhood by the English who nevertheless came off second best; and Philip, who was getting rather tired of the business, was willing to treat with a view to a treaty.

While thinking how he should retire from foreign hostilities, he received from England tidings that held out the certain prospect of domestic peace, for he got the news of the death of his wife Mary. Miserable and middle-aged, detested and dropsical, this wretched woman was tormented by every kind of reflection, from that presented by the mirror of her own mind, to the dismal prospect shadowed forth in her own looking-glass. She had lost Calais; but, as the audacious Strype has boldly suggested, she might have become callous to that, had she not known the fearful fact, that her husband Philip declared he had had his fill of double cursedness, and intended to try in Spain what a timely return to single blessedness might do for him.

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All these troubles proved, like herself, unbearable, and on the 17th of November, 1558, she expired, after a short and yet too long a reign of five years, four months, and eleven days. She had reached the forty-third year of her age, and must have made the most of her time, in one way at least; for no woman of her age had obtained so much odium of a durable quality, as she in her comparatively short life had acquired.

If we were to draw a faithful character of this princess, we need do nothing more than upset our inkstand over our paper, and cause the saturated manuscript to be transferred to our pages in one enormous black blot; for we are sure that no printer's type could furnish a type of the person whom we have the horribly black job of handing down—or rather knocking down—to posterity. Those indefatigable readers who are desirous of having the appropriate epithets which Mary's character deserves, are requested to take down the dictionary, and having selected from it all the adjectives expressive of badness that the language contains, place them in a string or a series of strings, before the name of Mary.

To look for her virtues would require the aid of one of those solar microscopes which give visibility to the merest atom, and the particle, if even discovered, might be deposited in the mental eye without its being susceptible of anything having entered it. She seems to have possessed some sincerity; but this only gave a certain degree of vigour to her evil propensities. She was perhaps susceptible of some attachments, but so is a boa constrictor, though few would conceive it a privilege to be held in the firm embraces of that paragon of tenacity towards those with whose fate it happens to twine itself. She had a certain vigour of mind, just as a tiger has a certain vigour of spring, a parallel the force of which her victims very frequently experienced.

The loss of Calais was, perhaps, one of the most important events of Mary's reign! and it is said to have had such an effect upon her, that she declared, when she died the word Calais would be found engraved upon her heart: though we are quite sure, that if the word had been found at all, it would not have presented itself as an engraving, but as a lithograph. For two hundred years the town had been in the possession of the English, and it was through a miserable economy in cutting down the garrison during the winter months, and trying to work the thing at a reduced expense, that the whole concern fell into the power of the enemy. This paltry system proved, of course, unprofitable in the end; for when the Duke of Guise made his attack, those points that required two or three stout fellows to defend them, were left to the fatal imbecility of "a man and a boy,"—a couple never yet known to heartily co-operate. It is the unhappy blunder of a man and a boy being left to pull together as unsympathetically as an elephant and an ass, that has impeded the progress of so many of our public works; and it was, unquestionably, the trial of the "man and boy" system at Calais during the winter months, that, in the early part of 1558, caused the loss of the city. The English had been in the habit of trusting during the cold weather to the snow, and the overflowing of the marshes, to keep out the French; but the Duke of Guise was not afraid of getting his feet wet, and besides, as he wittily observed, "I can always rely on the strength of my pumps to keep the water out." He ultimately made a resolute splash, and, though often up to his middle in mud, he drove the English clean out of the citadel.

It may be worth while to mention, that Mary's reign was the first in which friendly relations with Russia were established, through some English traders who found themselves, or rather lost themselves, at Archangel, in the course of a wild-goose search for a north-east passage. The Czar, after asking them what they were doing there, and telling them they had come fearfully out of their way, received them very kindly; but it does not seem that any north-east passage, beyond the old court which used to lead from Holbora Hill to Clerkenwell, was at that time discovered.

Few, if any, salutary laws were passed in her reign, though a bad one was repealed, which had ruined the wool trade, by prohibiting any one from making wool who had not served seven years' apprenticeship. There was of course a great cry and very little wool in consequence of this absurd enactment, which was so decidedly impolitic that we can give Mary very little credit for having done away with it.