Not far from Abingdon, on the London road, was a house belonging to a gentleman named Christopher Ashton. Here, on their way to and fro between the western counties and the capital, members of parliament, or other busy persons, whom the heat of the times tempted from their homes, occasionally called; and the character of the conversation which was to be heard in that house, may be gathered from the following depositions. On the 4th of January, Sir Nicholas Arnold looked in, and found Sir Henry Dudley there.

"Well, Sir Nicholas, what news?" said Ashton.

"None worth hearing," Arnold answered.

"I am sure you hear they go about a coronation," Dudley said.

"I hear no such matter," said Arnold. "The news that are worth the hearing, are in such men's heads that will not utter them, and the rest are not to be credited."[549]

"There be news come out of Flanders, as I heard from Sir Peter Mewtas," said Ashton, laughing, to another visitor:[550] "The king has written to the queen that he will not come hither a great while, or, as men think, any more; and the queen was in a rage, and caused the king's picture to be carried out of the privy chamber, and she in a wonderful storm, and could not be in any wise quieted."[551]

"They have put me in the Tower for their pleasures," said Sir Anthony Kingston; "but so shall they never do more."[552]

At another time Sir Henry Peckham was alone with Ashton. Peckham[553] had been one of the sharers in the forfeited estates of the Duke of Norfolk. He was obliged to relinquish his grant, with but small compensation, and he complained of his treatment. Ashton bade him "be of good cheer."

"If you will keep my counsel," Ashton said, "I will tell you news that will bring your land again or it be long."

Peckham promised to be secret.

"Sir Anthony Kingston," Ashton continued, "and a great many of the western gentlemen, are in a confederacy to send the queen's highness over to the king, and make the Lady Elizabeth queen, and to marry the Earl of Devonshire to the said Lady Elizabeth. The laws of the realm will bear it, that they may do it justly; and Sir Anthony Kingston hath required me to hearken to King Henry VIII.'s will; for there is sufficient matter for our purpose, as Sir Anthony doth tell me. I pray, if you can, help me to it."

Peckham said it was to be had in the Rolls. Ashton did not like to put himself in the way of suspicion by asking to see it publicly, and begged Peckham to obtain a copy for him elsewhere.

"I will show you a token," he then said, and took out half a broken penny; "the other half is with Sir Anthony, and whensoever I do send this same to Sir Anthony, then will he be in readiness with ten thousand men within three days upon receipt of this token." If Lord Pembroke's men made resistance on the Marches, Kingston would cut them off, and would be in London in twenty days at furthest. And "when this is done," Ashton continued, "your father shall be made a duke; for I tell you true, that the Lady Elizabeth is a jolly liberal dame, and nothing so unthankful as her sister is; and she taketh this liberality of her mother, who was one of the bountifullest women in all her time or since; and then shall men of good service and gentlemen be esteemed."

Peckham, who had not anticipated so dangerous a confidence, looked grave and uneasy; Ashton said he hoped he would not betray him. "No," Peckham answered, and gave him his hand with his promise.

"I will tell you more, then," his friend went on; "we shall have that will take our part, the Earl of Westmoreland, who will not come alone, and we shall have my Lord Williams."[554] "That cannot be," Peckham said; "he hath served the queen right well, and by her highness was made lord."

"I can better tell than you," Ashton answered; "the Lord Williams is a good fellow, and is as unthankfully dealt with as you, Sir Henry. I tell you that he is sure on our side; and Sir Henry Dudley hath spoken with all the gentlemen that be soldiers, that be about the town, and they be all sure ours, so that we have left the queen never a man of war that is worth a button."[555]

The scene changes. Readers of the earlier volumes of this history will remember Arundel's, in Lawrence Poultney Lane, where Lord Surrey and his friends held their nightly festivities. Times had changed, and so had Arundel's. It was now the resort of the young liberal members of parliament, where the opposition tactics in the House of Commons were discussed and settled upon. Here during the late session had met the men whose names have been mentioned in the preceding conversation, and who had crossed the queen's purposes; Kingston, Peckham, Ashton, Dudley, and with them Sir John Perrot, Sir William Courtenay, Sir Hugh Pollard, Sir John Chichester, and two young Tremaynes of Colacombe in Devonshire, one of whom had been concerned with Wyatt and Carew. Here also came John Daniel, in the service at one time of Lord Northampton, who, not being in parliament, was excluded from the more private consultations, but heard much of the general talk; "how they, with great wilfulness, as might be perceived by their behaviour, did sore mislike such Catholic proceedings as they saw the queen went about, and did intend to resist such matters as should be spoken of in the Parliament House other than liked them."[556]

The party broke up with the dissolution. Some of them, however, came back to London, and Daniel, one afternoon in March, was waiting for his dinner in the public room, when a ruffling cavalier named Ned Horsey came in, humming a catch of "Good man priest, now beware your pallet," "and bringing out a rhyme thereto of 'Fire and faggot,' and 'helm and sallet.'"

"I desire to live no longer than Whitsuntide next," Horsey said to Daniel; "for if I live so long, I mistrust not but my deeds shall be chronicled."

"Tush, my boy," he went on, "be of good cheer; for when thou shalt hear what the matter is, thou wilt take up thy hand and bless thee, and marvel that such young heads could ever bring such a matter as this to pass. I tell thee, the matter hath been a-brewing this quarter of a year at least, when thou wast in the country like a lout. Well, well, man, we shall either be men shortly, or no men; yea, and that very shortly, too."

"Tell me what you mean," said Daniel.

"Alas! good lout," quoth Horsey, "and do you not know, I pray you? hath not Harry Dudley told you of it?"

"No, by the faith of a Christian man," said Daniel, "Harry Dudley told me nothing except that he was going into France. But I pray thee, good Ned Horsey, tell me."

"By God's blood!" said Horsey, "then I will not tell you; for we have all taken an oath on the Testament, that no man should break it to any man, except as told first by Harry Dudley."

Horsey went on to talk of preparations, in which Daniel had been concerned, for an expedition to Southampton. Daniel, being a man of property, had undertaken to provide the horses, and had deposited a sum of money for the purpose; but, from Horsey's words, he perceived that schemes were on foot, which, having something to lose, he had better keep clear of. "His heart," he said, "rys in his body as big as a loaf;" he left the table, went down into the garden, and walked up and down an alley to collect himself; at last he ran into an arbour, where he knelt and said his prayers.

"What, man!" said Sir John Harrington, looking in, "you are well occupied on your knees so soon after dinner."

Daniel made up his mind that his friends were bringing him into a fool's paradise; "as they did brew, so they should bake for him," he thought, "and those heads that had studied it before he came to town should work the end of it." He stole away, therefore, and crossed the river to Southwark, where he took into his confidence a surgeon named Blacklock. Daniel pretended a broken leg, which Blacklock pretended to set: and thus the expedition to Southampton went off without him; the object of it being the despatch of one of the party into France, and the arrangement of the details of the conspiracy with the Captain of the Isle of Wight.

The characters of the persons who were concerned in this new plot against Mary's throne will not require much further elucidation. Sir Henry Dudley was Northumberland's cousin—the same who had been employed by the duke as an agent with the French court; the rest were eager, headstrong, not very wise young men, who, in the general indignation of the country at the barbarity of the government, saw an opportunity of pushing themselves into distinction. Lord Willoughby, Lord Westmoreland, and Lord Oxford were suspected by the queen of being unsound in religion; they had been reprimanded, and Oxford was thought likely to lose his lands.[557] If the first move could be made successfully, the conspirators counted on general support from these noblemen, and indeed from the whole body of the lay peers.

The plan was identical with that of Wyatt and Suffolk and Carew. Kingston was to march on London from Wales, and the force of the western counties was to join him on the Severn. One of the Throgmortons, called "Long John," had been at the French court, and made arrangements with Henry. Throgmorton returned to England, and Henry Dudley crossed the Channel in his place. The French promised to supply ships and money, while Dudley undertook to furnish them with crews from among the refugees or the western privateers, as Carew had done two years before. The Captain of the Isle of Wight, Uvedale, undertook to betray the island and Hurst Castle to the French. Dudley was to attack Portsmouth, where he would find the cannon "pegged;"[558] and when Portsmouth was taken, Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent were expected to rise.

Although known to so many persons, the secret was well kept. On Dudley's disappearance, inquiries were made about him. It was pretended that he was in debt, and had gone abroad to escape from his creditors. Some suspicion attached to the Tremaynes, who had long been connected with the privateers at Scilly. Strangways, the pirate, happened to be taken prisoner, and told something to the council about them which led to their arrest; but though the matter was "true enough," they bore down their accuser by mere courageous audacity of denial; and their resolution and fidelity were held up as an example in the secret meetings of the conspirators.[559] The active co-operation of France was an essential element in the chances of success. From France, however, it became suddenly uncertain whether assistance was to be looked for. The English mediation in the European war had failed, because, after Mary's disappointment, France refused to part with Savoy; and the emperor could not bring himself to make a peace where the sacrifices would be wholly on his own side. But the negotiations between the principals were never wholly let fall; the emperor had now resigned. Philip, with an embarrassed treasury, with his eye on the English crown, and with trouble threatening him from the Turks, was anxious to escape from the exhausting conflict; and at the beginning of February a truce for five years was concluded at Vaucelles, by which Henry was left in undisturbed possession of all his conquests.

Terms so advantageous to the court of France could not be rejected; but past experience forbade, nevertheless, any very sanguine hope that the truce would last out its term. Unquestionably, in the opinion of the French king, it would be broken without scruple could Philip obtain the active help of England; and Henry would not, therefore, relinquish his correspondence with the conspirators. He instructed Noailles only to keep them quiet for the present till Philip's intentions should be revealed more clearly.[560]

The "young heads," of whom Horsey had spoken to Daniel, were not, however, men whom it was easy to keep quiet. Noailles replied, that they were so anxious to make an effort for liberty, and felt so certain of success, that he found great difficulty in restraining them; if the King of France would give them some slight assistance at the outset,[561] they undertook to do the rest themselves.

Dudley, therefore, remained in France, whither he was followed by Ashton and Horsey, and Henry admitted them to a midnight audience. He said that, for the moment, he could not act with them openly; but he would throw no difficulty in their way; if they were as strong as they professed to be (and they said that members of the privy council were in the confederacy), he would have them go forward with their project; and if he found Philip occupied, as he expected that he would be with the Turks in Hungary, he would assist them with men, money, and other things. Meanwhile, he gave Dudley 1500 crowns, distributed considerable sums among his companions, and advised them to go, as Carew had done before, to the coast of Normandy, and keep up their communications with their friends.

The interview and the promises of Henry were betrayed to Wotton, and by him reported in cypher to Mary;[562] but the fear or treachery of one of the party had already placed the government in possession of information, as the first step was about to be taken. Fifty thousand pounds were in the treasury: to embarrass the court, and to provide the insurrection with funds, a party of four or five—Rosey, keeper of the Star Chamber, Heneage, an officer of the Chapel Royal, a man named Derick, and one or two others—were chosen to carry off the money. Before the enterprise could be undertaken, Thomas White—perhaps one of the five, in alarm at the danger—communicated with the council; and on the 18th of March, Throgmorton, Peckham, Daniel, Rosey, and twelve or fourteen others, were seized suddenly, and sent to the Tower. Dudley was traced to Southampton; he was himself beyond pursuit, but Uvedale was discovered, and brought to London; Kingston was sent for, but died on his way up from Wales, probably by his own hand, in despair.

Information was, of course, the great object of the court; and they would shrink from nothing which would enable them to extort confessions. The prisoners knew what was before them, and prepared themselves according to their courage.

Throgmorton, when locked into the room which was allotted to him in the Tower, found that Derick was in the chamber underneath. He loosened a board in the floor, and "required him that, in any case, he should not be the destruction of others besides himself;" "for look," Throgmorton said, "how many thou dost accuse, so many thou dost wilfully murder."

Derick, it seems, was already thinking whether he could not, perhaps, save his own life. None of the party as yet knew how much of their secret had been discovered, or the value, therefore, which the government would place upon a full confession.

"He would do nothing," Derick answered, "but that which God had appointed; and if God would that he should do it, there was no remedy."

When a man has made up his mind that it is God's will that he should be a rogue, he has small chance of recovering himself. Throgmorton tried to reason him into manliness, and thought he had succeeded. Derick even promised to "abide the torture," "whereupon Master Throgmorton did sup his porridge to him, in token of his truth." But the torture was used or threatened, and Derick did not "abide" it; promises of pardon were also used, which the prisoners knew to mean nothing, and yet were worked on by them.[563]

Derick turned approver, so did Rosey, so did Bedyll: Uvedale, who was ill and feeble, yielded to the rack; and, piece by piece, the whole conspiracy was drawn out. The investigation was committed exclusively to the queen's clique, Rochester, Englefield, Waldegrave, Jerningham, and Hastings. The rest of the council refused to meddle,[564] for reasons which, perhaps, the queen hoped to learn from one or other of the prisoners. Throgmorton, however, who could tell the most, would tell nothing, though the rack was used freely to open his lips. How much he suffered may be gathered from a few words which he used to a Mr. Walpole, who was one of his examiners.

"Tell me, I pray you, Mr. Walpole," he said, "if the council may rack me, or put me to torment, after the time I am condemned, or no?"

"They may," Walpole answered, "if it shall please them."

"Then," said Throgmorton, "I fear I shall be put to it again; and, I will assure you, it is terrible pain."[565]

When torture would not answer, promises were tried, and promises apparently of an emphatic kind.

"I pray you, pray for me," Throgmorton said to his brother prisoners; "for I shall not be long with you. I cannot live without I should be the death of a number of gentlemen; and therewithal the said Throgmorton recited a story of the Romans, commending much an old man that was taken prisoner by the enemy, whom the Romans would have redeemed with a great number of young men, which would have been much more worth to the Romans; but this old man would in no case agree thereto, but received his death at the enemies' hand very patiently, considering his old years, and also what profit these young men should be to the Romans."[566]

The inquiry lasted till June, and much was learnt from those who had not Throgmorton's courage. Matters came out implicating Lord Bray and Lord Delaware. Lord Bray was arrested and examined; Lord Delaware was tried and found guilty. But they were powerful, and had powerful friends.[567] The court were forced to content themselves with smaller game. Successive batches of the conspirators were despatched, as their confessions were exhausted or despaired of. Throgmorton, silent to the last, was sentenced on the 21st of April, and suffered on the 28th. On the 19th of May, Captain Stanton was hanged; on the 2nd of June, Derick followed—his cowardice had not saved him—with Rosey and Bedyll. On the 7th of July, Sir Henry Peckham was disposed of, and with him John Daniel, who was guilty, if not of worse, yet of having concealed machinations dangerous to the state.[568]

But the danger did not pass off with the execution of a few youths. An inveterate conviction had taken hold of men of all ranks, that Philip was coming over with an army to destroy English liberty. Paget went to Flanders to entreat him to come back unattended, to dispel the alarm by his presence, and to comfort the queen; but Paget returned with a letter instead of Philip, and the poor queen looked ten years older on the receipt of it. She durst not stir abroad to face the execration with which the people now received her. She passed her time in frenzied extremities of passion, "because she could neither enjoy the presence of her husband, nor the affection of her subjects; and dreading every moment that her life might be attempted by her own attendants."[569] A fleet was fitted out in the Channel. A bishop in the queen's confidence was asked the reason by another bishop. "To overawe rebels," was the answer, "and to carry off Elizabeth into Flanders or Spain."[570] The government was conducted entirely by the legate and the small knot of Catholic fanatics who had adhered to the queen's fortunes in the late reign. Lord William Howard told Noailles that he and the other lords lived in perpetual dread and suspicion; if his honour would allow him, he would throw up his office, and retire, with those who had gone before him, as a poor gentleman, to France.

The general suffering was aggravated by a likelihood of famine. The harvest of 1555 had failed, and bread, with all other articles of food, was daily rising. The conspiracy exasperated the persecution, which was degenerating into wholesale atrocity. On the 23rd of April, six men were burnt at Smithfield; on the 28th, six more were burnt at Colchester; on the 15th of May, an old lame man and a blind man were burnt at Stratford-le-Bow. In the same month three women suffered at Smithfield, and a blind boy was burnt at Gloucester. In Guernsey, a mother and her two daughters were brought to the stake. One of the latter, a married woman with child, was delivered in the midst of her torments, and the infant just rescued was tossed back into the flames.[571] Reason, humanity, even common prudence, were cast to the winds. On the 27th of June, thirteen unfortunates, eleven men and two women, were destroyed together at Stratford-le-Bow, in the presence of twenty thousand people.[572] A schoolmaster, in Norfolk, in July read an inflammatory proclamation in a church. He and three others were instantly hanged. Ferocity in the government and lawlessness in the people went hand in hand. Along the river bank stood rows of gibbets, with bodies of pirates swinging from them in the wind. In the autumn, sixty men were sentenced to be hanged together, for what crime is unknown, at Oxford;[573] and as a symbol at head-quarters of the system of the administration, four corpses of thieves hung as a spectacle of terror before the very gates of St. James's Palace.[574]

On the 20th of August, twenty-three men and women were brought to London from Colchester, tied in a string with ropes to furnish another holocaust. A thousand people cheered them through the streets as they entered the city; and the symptoms of disorder were so significant and threatening, that Bonner wrote to Pole for instructions how he should proceed. The government was alarmed; "the council, not without good consideration," decided that it would be dangerous to go on with the executions; and Pole, checking Bonner's zeal, allowed the prisoners to escape for the time, under an easy form of submission which they could conscientiously make. They were dismissed to their homes, only, however, for several of them to be slaughtered afterwards, under fresh pretexts, in detail;[575] and Pole took an occasion, as will be presently seen, of reprimanding the citizens of London for their unnatural sympathy with God's enemies. That he had no objection to these large massacres, when they could be ventured safely, he showed himself in the following year, when fourteen heretics, of both sexes, were burnt in two days at Canterbury and Maidstone.[576]

Why, it may well be asked, did not the lords and gentlemen of England rise and trample down the perpetrators of these devilish enormities? It is a grave question, to which, nevertheless, some tolerable answer is possible.

On the 21st of January, 1557, the English ambassador in Paris wrote in cypher to Sir William Petre, of "a matter" which he desired should not be communicated to the queen, "lest it should disquiet her." A refugee had informed him, "that there was a great conspiracy in hand against the queen, which without doubt would deprive her of her estate." He had asked for names, but these his informant would not give, saying merely, "the best of England were in it," and "such a number agreed thereupon, that it was impossible but that it would take effect." There was no chance of discovery; "the matter had been in hand for a year or thereabouts," yet no one "had uttered a word of it;" should it become known, the conspirators were so strong that the catastrophe would only be precipitated. They would have moved already, "but for one man who had stayed them for a while."

Entreaties for more explicitness were fruitless. "By no means," wrote Wotton, "would he name any man unto me; but only said that the chiefest of them were such as had never offended the queen's highness before; that the matter should begin in the evening, and the next day by eight in the morning it should be done."

The queen was not to be killed; at least, not immediately. "They will not kill her," the man said, "but deprive her of her estate, and then might she chance to be used as she used Queen Jane;" and he added, "that they who went about the matter would not agree that any foreign prince should have any meddling in it; neither Dudley nor any of the English gentlemen in France were privy to the matter."[577]

That any such combination as this letter described ever really menaced Mary's throne cannot be affirmed with certainty. The last two sentences, however, point to the difficulty which had embarrassed all attempts which had been hitherto ventured. The vice of the previous conspiracies had been the intrigues with France. The better order of English statesmen refused to connect themselves with movements which would give the court of Paris a dangerous influence in England, and would entitle the French king to press the claims of the Queen of Scots upon the English crown. If there was truth in the refugee's story, if there really was a conspiracy of "the best of England," clear of all such mischievous elements, it must have consisted of the body of the nobility, whom Lord William Howard described to Noailles as equally dissatisfied with himself. The heresy acts had been restored by the help of the bishops against the sustained opposition of the majority of the lay peers. For the hundred and fifty years during which those acts had been upon the Statute Book, they had expressed the general feeling of the country, yet during all that time, fewer persons had suffered under them than had been sacrificed during the last twelve months. Having failed to destroy her sister, having been unable to alter the succession, the queen was desperate; the Spaniards were watching their opportunity to interfere by force, and would want no encouragement which she could give them; and every honest English statesman must have watched her with the most jealous distrust. Yet, on the other hand, she was childless; her life must necessarily soon close by the course of nature, and with her life the tyranny would end. If force was attempted, she would not fall without a struggle; the clergy would stand by her, and all whom the clergy could influence. Philip would have the pretext, for which he was longing, for sending Spanish troops; and though liberty might and would prevail in the end, thousands of lives might be sacrificed, and Elizabeth's succession would be stained. The appeal to strength was, and is, the last to which good men will allow themselves to be driven. The lords understood one another: they would not be the first to commence; but if an attempt were made to carry off Elizabeth, or to throw on land a single Spanish battalion, they would know how to act.

Meantime, Dudley, Ashton, Horsey, the brothers Tremayne, and "divers others," were safe in France, and were hospitably entertained there. In England they were proclaimed traitors. At Paris they were received openly at court. The queen wrote to Wotton with her own hand, commanding him to demand their surrender.[578] She sent for Noailles, and required that "those wretches, those heretics, those traitorous execrable villains," who had conspired against her throne should be placed in her hands.[579] Henry, with unembarrassed coolness, promised Wotton that they should be apprehended, while he furnished them with ships, which they openly fitted for sea at the mouth of the Seine; and one of their number, Henry Killegrew, went to Italy to look for Courtenay, who was in honourable exile there, to entreat him to put himself at their head. Courtenay promised to come, so Killegrew reported on his return;[580] his name would have given them strength, his presence weakness; but if he really thought again of mixing himself in conspiracies his intentions were frustrated. The last direct heir of the noblest family in England died at the end of the summer, of an ague caught among the lagoons at Venice.[581] The refugees, however, could do their work without Courtenay. The Killegrews, the Tremaynes, young Stafford, and many more, put to sea with three or four vessels, and treated all Spaniards with whom they could fall in as their natural enemies. Before the summer was out, they had "taken divers good prizes," and "did trust they should take more." "In case the worst fell, the gain thereof would find them all;" and on the 4th of August it was reported that they had taken a fort "on one of her majesty's islands," probably in Scilly, where the dangerous and intricate navigation placed them beyond risk of capture. Making war on their own account, half as pirates, half as crusaders, these youthful adventurers seized the Spanish caracks on their way to Flanders, sailed openly with their prizes into Rochelle or La Hogue, sold them, and bought arms and ammunition. Their finances were soon prosperous. Wild spirits of all nations—Scots, English, French, whoever chose to offer—found service under their flag. They were the first specimens of the buccaneering chivalry of the next generation—the germ out of which rose the Drakes, the Raleighs, the Hawkinses, who harried the conquerors of the New World.

In vain Wotton protested. The French king affected to be sorry. The Constable said that France was large; things happened which ought not to happen, yet could not be helped; the adventurers should be put down, if possible.

"These men brought nothing with them out of England," Wotton doggedly replied, "and were in such good credit with the people in France that nobody would lend them a shilling, and yet had they found ships which they had armed, and manned with good numbers of soldiers. What would the queen's highness think?"

The French court, in affected deference to such complaints, armed vessels, which they pretended were to pursue the privateers to their nest; but, as Wotton ascertained, they were intended really to act as their consorts.[582]

It was plain that the French king did not anticipate any long continuance to the truce of Vaucelles. In fact, Paul IV., whose schemes in Italy that truce had arrested, had succeeded in inducing him to break it. Lest his oath should make a difficulty, the pope had an ever-ready dispensation; and Paul's nephew, Cardinal Caraffa, came to Paris in July to make arrangements for the expulsion of the Spaniards from Naples.[583]

To insure Henry the continued support of the papacy, Paul undertook to create French cardinals on so large a scale as would give him the command of the next election. Henry, in spite of the entreaties of Montmorency, promised, on his side, to send an army to Paul's support; and the pope, without waiting for the arrival of the French troops, seized the Duchy of Paleano, and excommunicated the Colonnas, as the friends of the enemies of the Holy See. Scarcely caring to look for a pretext, he declared the Spanish prince deprived of the kingdom of Naples; and himself attempted to put in force his sentence against the Duke of Alva, who was acting there as Philip's viceroy.

The event had thus actually arrived, of which the expectation the year before had appeared so alarming. The most orthodox sovereign in Europe found himself forced into war with his spiritual father. The parent was become insane; the faithful child was obliged, in consequence, to place him under restraint, with as much tenderness and respect as the circumstances permitted. To the English council Philip explained the hard necessity under which he was placed.[584]

The Duke of Alva crossed the Neapolitan frontier into the States of the Church with twelve thousand men, taking the towns that lay in his way; and protesting while he did it that he was the most faithful servant of the Holy See. Individually a pious Catholic, officially a military machine, Alva obeyed orders with mechanical inflexibility, and, irresistible as destiny, advanced towards Rome. The college of cardinals, who remembered the occupation of the city by Bourbon's army, implored the pope to have pity on them. The pope had been too precipitate in commencing operations without waiting for the French. He was forced to submit his pride, and sue for an armistice, to which Alva, in the moderation of conscious strength, consented.

The French, on the other hand, were preparing to strike a blow in a quarter where as yet they were unlooked for.

The pastoral anxieties of the English legate had extended to Calais, where the Protestants were in considerable numbers. A commission was sent thither which proceeded with the usual severities,[585] and the sufferers, or those among the garrisons in Calais and Guisnes whose sympathy with the Reformation was stronger than their patriotism, placed themselves in correspondence with Sir Henry Dudley, at Paris. The pay of the troops was long in arrear, and they were all mutinous and discontented. Neither Guisnes, Hammes, nor Calais itself were provisioned for more than three or four weeks; and the refugees, caring only to revenge themselves on Mary, were laying a train in connection with several of the "chiefest officers" in the three fortresses, to betray them into the hands of France. The existence of a conspiracy became known by accident to some one, who placed Wotton on his guard; and Wotton, by vigilance and by the help of spies, ascertained gradually the nature of the scheme. In the beginning of October he discovered that Senarpont, the governor of Boulogne, was silently increasing the garrison of the Boullonnois. Then he heard of troops collecting at Rouen, of large preparations of military stores, of sappers' and miners' tools, and "great files, which would cut in two without noise the largest [harbour] chains."[586] Next, it seemed that the leader of the adventurous party, which fourteen years before "took the town of Marano by practise and subtlety," was in Calais in disguise. Finally, he learnt that Henry himself was going to Rouen, to conduct the enterprise in person. The disaffection had penetrated so deeply into the English garrisons that caution was required in dealing with them; while for some weeks either the queen disbelieved the danger, or the council took no steps to obviate it. The Catholic clique had, in fact, not a soldier among them, and possibly knew not in which direction to turn. The honour of his country at last recalled Lord Pembroke to the public service in time to save Calais for a few more months.

By the middle of November eighteen ensigns of French infantry and a thousand horse were at Abbeville. Dudley, with the refugee fleet, was in readiness to blockade the harbour, while Henry was to march upon the town. If possible, he would find the gates open: at all events he would meet with no protracted resistance. But the move had been anticipated. Reinforcements and supplies were sent from England, money was despatched to pay up the arrears of the troops, and Pembroke himself went over in command.[587] No open inquiry was ventured, but the suspected persons were quietly removed. The French withdrew, and the queen's government, through the bad patriotism of the refugees, recovered a momentary strength.

The faint good fortune came opportunely; for in England the harvest had again failed, and the threat of famine had become the reality. On the 23rd of December malt was sold in London for forty shillings a quarter, and white flour at six shillings a bushel. The helpless remedy was attempted of crying up the base money, but the markets answered only by a further rise.[588] In the utter misery of the people, some were feeding upon acorns; some, in London, more piteously, left their infant children at the doors of their wealthy neighbours, to save them from starvation.

A famine was considered to be the immediate work of Heaven, and to be sent for an immediate moral cause. And yet the monasteries were rising from their ruins. Westminster was again an abbey. Feckenham was installed abbot on the 29th of November, with the ancient ceremonies, and walked in sad procession round the cloisters at the head of his friars.[589] The remnant of the monks of Glastonbury had crawled back into the ruins of their home. The queen had spared no effort and no sacrifice where her own power extended; and she had exhorted and advised where she was unable to act. Yet enough had not been done. In Ireland, indeed, the Catholic spirit had life in it. The Earl of Desmond had allowed no stone to be thrown down from the religious houses which had fallen to his share in the distribution. He had sheltered and supported the monks in the bad times, he now replaced them at his private cost;[590] and the example was telling among the chiefs. But in England, unfortunately, the lay owners of the church lands, orthodox and unorthodox alike, were hopelessly impenitent.

This, perhaps, was one cause of God's displeasure—the heretics were another; the heretics, and the sympathy with heresy displayed by the inhabitants of London, which had compelled the temporary release of the prisoners sent up from Essex.

It has been mentioned that the legate took occasion to admonish the citizens for their behaviour. In the present or the following year[591] he issued a pastoral letter, laying before them, and before the educated inhabitants of England generally, their duty at the present crisis; with an explanation, not entirely accurate, of the spirit in which the church had hitherto dealt with them. "That by license and dispensation," he said, "you do enjoy, and keep, and possess such goods and lands of the church as were found in your hands, this was done of the church your mother's tenderness unto you, considering your imbecility and weakness after so sore a sickness that you had in the schism, at the which time your appetite served you to no meat, but to that fruit that came from the lands of the church; and by that you lived, which she was content you should keep still, and made promise it should not be taken from you. And so it was left in your hand, as it were an apple in a child's hand given by the mother, which she, perceiving him to feed too much of, and knowing it should do him hurt if he himself should eat the whole, would have him give her a little piece thereof, which the boy refusing, and whereas he would cry out if she would take it from him, letteth him alone therewith. But the father, her husband, coming in, if he shall see how the boy will not let go one morsel to the mother that hath given him the whole, she asking it with so fair means, he may peradventure take the apple out of the boy's hand, and if he cry, beat him also, and cast the apple out of the window."

The maternal tenderness, under this aspect of the secularisation, had been more weak than wise.

"As the English laity had dishonoured the ministers of the church above all people," continued the legate, "so must they now honour them above all people, remembering Christ's words—'He that despiseth you despiseth Me.' They must obey the priests, therefore, implicitly; they must be careful to pay their tithes honestly; what they denied their priests they denied their God; and they must show their repentance especially where they had especially offended, touching the injuries they had done to the ministers of God, whom God had set over them, to be honoured as they would their natural father."

"And this," he said, coming to the heart of the matter, "this you cannot do if you favour heretics, who being the very enemies of God and man, yet specially their enmity extendeth against priests. Here is another point that you must show worthy of a repentant mind: that whereas you have sore offended God by giving favour to heretics, now temper your favour under such manner that if you can convert them by any ways unto the unity of the church, then do it, for it is a great work of mercy. But if ye cannot, and ye suffer or favour them, there cannot be a work of greater cruelty against the commonwealth than to nourish or favour any such. For be you assured, there is no kind of men so pernicious to the commonwealth as they be; there are no thieves, no murderers, no adulterers, nor no kind of treason, to be compared to theirs, who, as it were, undermining the chief foundation of all commonwealths, which is religion, maketh an entry to all kinds of vices in the most heinous manner." ... "You specially of the City of London, you being the first that received the fruit of grace in the new plantation, the seed of benediction being first cast upon you, to make you a ground to bring forth all fruit of sanctity and justice; ... shall I say, that after all this done, more briars and thorns hath grown here among you than in all the realm besides? I cannot say so, nor I will not; albeit it might so seem, for a greater multitude of these brambles and briars were cast in the fire here among you than in any place besides; but many of them being grown in other places, and brought in and burned among you, may give occasion that you have a worse name without your desert. The thing standeth not in the name—bethink you yourselves how it standeth.... Wherefore cometh this, that when any heretic shall go to execution, he shall lack no comforting of you, and encouraging to die in his perverse opinion? that when he shall be put in prison he shall have more cherishing?... As it is now, this may not be suffered.... For their boldness in their death, it is small argument of grace to be in them; Christ himself showing more heaviness and dolour at his dying hour than did the thieves that hung beside him, which did blaspheme Christ, setting nought by him, specially one of them, showing no further fear. So do the heretics at their deaths like the blasphemer."[592]

Cruel and savage as the persecution had become, it was still inadequate. The famine lasted, and therefore God was angry.

The new year opened with the appointment of a commission, consisting of Bonner, Thirlby, and twenty other peers, gentlemen, and canon lawyers, on whom the court could rely. "Wicked persons" had invented slanders against the queen's person, and had sown "pestilent heresies" in the realm. The queen, therefore, "minding to punish such enormities," and having especial trust in the wisdom of these persons, gave them power to institute inquiries at their pleasure into the conduct and opinions of every man and woman in all parts of the kingdom. The protection of the law was suspended. The commissioners might arrest any person at any place. Three of them were enough to form a court; and mayors, sheriffs, and magistrates were commanded to assist at their peril.

The object of the commission was "to search and find out" the sellers of heretical books, or those who in any way professed heresy or taught it; to ascertain who refused to attend mass, to walk in procession, to use holy water, or in any way betrayed disrespect for the established religion. Those who "persisted in their bad opinions" were to be given up to their ordinary, to be punished according to law. The commissioners were themselves empowered to punish with fine or imprisonment those who yielded, or those whose offences were in the second degree, taking care to collect the fines which they inflicted, and to certify the exchequer of their receipts. They were not embarrassed by a necessity of impanelling juries; they might call juries if they pleased; they might use "all other means and politic ways that they could devise." No Spanish inquisition possessed larger or less tolerable powers; no English sovereign ever more entirely set aside the restrictions of the law.[593] The appointment of the commission was followed up by Pole in a visitation of the diocese of Canterbury. Persons were nominated to examine into the doctrines of the clergy; to learn whether those who had been married held communication with their wives; whether the names of those who had not been reconciled had been registered as he had ordered; and from every clergyman to ascertain the habits, beliefs, and opinions of every resident, male or female, in his parish.[594]

Other commissioners again were sent to the universities, with powers extending, not over the living only, but the dead.

Scot, Bishop of Chester, Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, and Christopherson, Master of Trinity and Bishop of Chichester, went in January to Cambridge, accompanied by Ormaneto, the Venetian, a confidential friend of the legate. Bucer and Fagius slept in St. Mary's and St. Michael's. The 10th of January, the day after the bishops' arrival, the two churches were laid under an interdict, as defiled with the presence of unhallowed bodies. On the 15th a summons was fixed to St. Mary's door, citing Martin Bucer and Paul Fagius, or any other who would plead on their behalf, to make answer three days after, before the commission, on a charge of heresy. The court sate, and no one appeared. The session was adjourned for a week, while the colleges were searched, and Primers, Prayer-books, Bibles, or other interdicted volumes, were hunted out and brought together. On the 26th the bishops met again; the accused remained undefended, and the heresy was taken to be proved; sentence was passed therefore, that the bodies should be disinterred and burnt. On the 6th of February the coffins were taken out of the graves, and chained to a stake in the market-place; the Bibles and prayer-books were heaped round them with a pile of faggots, and books and bodies were reduced to ashes.

Having purged Cambridge, Ormaneto proceeded to Oxford, on business of the same description.

Peter Martyr, when he came into residence as divinity professor at Christ Church, had outraged the orthodox party in the university by bringing a wife within the college walls; and Catherine Cathie, so the wife was named, had, like the wife of Luther, been a professed nun. She had died before Mary's accession, and had been buried in the cathedral. A process has now instituted against her similar to that at Cambridge. An unforeseen difficulty occurred in the conduct of the prosecution. Catherine Cathie had lived quietly and unobtrusively; she had taught nothing and had written no books; and no evidence could be found to justify her conviction on a charge of heresy.

Ormaneto wrote to the legate for instructions; and as burning was not permissible, the legate replied that, "forasmuch as Catherine Cathie, of detestable memory, had called herself the wife of Peter Martyr, a heretic, although both he and she had before taken vows of religion; forasmuch as she had lived with him in Oxford in fornication, and after her death was buried near the sepulchre of the Holy Virgin St. Frideswide, Ormaneto should invite the dean of the cathedral to cast out the carcase from holy ground, and deal with it according to his discretion."

Catherine Cathie, therefore, was dug up, taken out of her coffin, and flung into a cesspool at the back of the dean's house, and it was hoped that by this means the blessed St. Frideswide would be able to rest again in peace. Human foresight is imperfect; years passed and times changed; and Elizabeth, when she had the power to command, directed that the body should be restored to decent burial. The fragments were recovered with difficulty, and were about to be replaced in the earth under the floor of the cathedral, when some one produced the sacred box which contained the remains of St. Frideswide. Made accessible to the veneration of the faithful by Cardinal Pole, the relics had been concealed on the return of heresy by some pious worshipper. They were brought out at the critical moment, and an instant sense of the fitness of things consigned to the same resting-place the bones of the wife of Peter Martyr. The married nun and the virgin saint were buried together, and the dust of the two still remains under the pavement inextricably blended.[595] But Pole did not live to see the retribution. Convinced, if ever there was a sincere conviction in any man, that the course which he was pursuing was precisely that which God required of him, he laboured on in his dark vocation. Through the spring and summer the persecution, under the new commission, raged with redoubled fury.

The subject is one to which it will not be necessary to return, except with some brief details. In this place, therefore, shall be given an extract from a tract in circulation among the Protestants who were expecting death; and it may be judged, from the sentiments with which these noble-natured men faced the prospect of their terrible trial, with what justice Pole called them brambles and briars only fit to be burnt—criminals worse than thieves, or murderers, or adulterers.[596]

"The cross of persecution, if we will put childishness apart, and visibly weigh the worthiness thereof, is that sovereign, tried medicine that quencheth the daily digested poison of self-love, worldly pleasure, fleshly felicity. It is the only worthy poison of ambition, covetousness, extortion, uncleanness, licentiousness, wrath, strife, sedition, sects, malice, and such other wayward worms: it is the hard hammer that breaketh off the rust from the anchor of a Christian faith. O profitable instrument! O excellent exercise, that cannot be spared in a Christian life! with what alacrity of mind, with what desirous affection, with what earnest zeal, ought we to embrace this incomparable jewel, this sovereign medicine, this comfortable cup of tribulation.

"When a piece of ground is limited and bounded, it doth not only signify that it goeth no further, but also it tendeth and stretcheth to the bound. It is not enough to consider that we shall not pass the time that God hath limited and determined us to live, but we must assuredly persuade ourselves that we shall live as long as He hath ordained us to live; and so shall we do, in despite of all our enemies.

"And tell me, have men given us our life? No, forsooth. No more can they take it away from us. God hath given it, and God only doth take it away, for He is the Lord of death as well as of life; wherefore when the appointed time of our death is come, let us assure ourselves, that it is God only and none other that doth kill us, for He saith, It is I that kill and make alive again.

"Let us follow the example of Christ, our Master, who seeing His death approaching, said to God, My Father, not as I will, but as thou wilt; thy will be done, and not mine.—Let us offer then, unto God our Father, ourselves for a sacrifice, whose savour, although it be evil in the nose of the world, yet it is good and agreeable unto God, by Jesus Christ his Son, in the faith of whom we do dedicate and offer ourselves, when we perceive our hour to approach.

"And, whatsoever betide, let us not fear men; let us not fear them. God doth inhibit and forbid us in the same, saying, by his prophet, Fear them not, for I am with you; and seeing God doth forbid us to fear men, can we fear them without sin? No truly. To what purpose do we fear them? Men of themselves can do nothing, and if at any time they have any power, the same only cometh unto them from God, and is given unto them only to accomplish the will of God. But peradventure ye will say to me that Jesus Christ himself, in the time of his cross, did fear death, and therefore it is no marvel though we do fear it, in whom is no such perfection and constancy. Truly the flesh doth always abuse herself with the example of Jesus Christ; she doth abuse it, for she cannot rightfully use it, inasmuch as the flesh is in all ways repugnant unto the spirit and the good will of God. Forasmuch as ye will herein follow Christ—well, I am contented—fear death, but fear it as he did fear it. If you will say that Christ had fear of death, consider the same also to be on such sort as the fear did not keep him back from the voluntary obedience of his Father, and from saying, with unfeigned lips, Thy will be done.

"Ye will say, We fear not death for any fear we have to be damned, neither for any diffidence that we have of eternal life; but we fear death for the human understanding that we have of the great pain that some do suffer in dying, and especially in dying by fire; for we suppose that pain to surmount all patience. O fond flesh, thy voice is always full of love of thyself, and of a secret diffidence and mistrust of the Almighty power, wisdom, and goodness of God."

While the true heroes of the age were fighting for freedom with the weapons of noble suffering, the world was about to recommence its own battles, with which it is less easy to sympathise. The attempt on Calais having failed, it became a question at the French court, whether, after having given so just cause of quarrel to England, wisdom would not suggest an abandonment of the intention of recommencing the war with Philip. Noailles crossed to Paris in December, where the king questioned him whether Mary would be able to declare war. Noailles assured him, "that out of doubt she would not; for if she should send those whom she trusted out of the realm, then would they whom she trusted not, not fail to be busy within the realm."[597] Reassured by the ambassador's opinion, Henry resumed his intentions. In March, the Duke of Guise led an army into Italy. The pope recovered courage, defied Alva, and again laid claim to Naples; and it was to be seen now whether Noailles was right—whether the English people would unite with the court to resent the French king's conduct sufficiently to permit Mary at last to join in the quarrel.

Philip, anxious and hopeful, paid England the respect of returning for a few weeks, and in the same month of March came over to sue the council in person. The affair at Calais was a substantial ground for a rupture, but the attack, though intended, had not been actually made. The story might seem, to the suspicions of the country, to have been invented by the court; and, in other respects, Mary's injuries were not the injuries of the nation. The currency was still prostrate; the people in unexampled distress. The Flanders debts were as heavy as ever, and the queen had insisted on abandoning a fifth of her revenues. A war would inevitably be most unpopular. The attempt nevertheless was made. The queen produced the treaty of 1546, between England and the empire; and, in compliance with its provisions, laid before the privy council a proposal, if not to declare war with France, yet to threaten a declaration, in the event of an invasion of the Netherlands.

The privy council considered the queen's request; their conclusion was not what she desired.

The treaty of 1546, the council replied, had been abrogated by the treaty of marriage, so far as it might involve England in a war with France. "Her majesty would be unable to maintain a war, and, therefore, to say to the French king that she would aid her husband, according to the treaty, and not being able to perform it, indeed would be dishonourable, and many ways dangerous." "It was to be considered further, that, if by these means the realm should be drawn into war, the fault would be imputed to the king's majesty." "The common people of the realm were at present many ways grieved—some pinched with famine, some for want of payment of money due to them, some discontented for matters of religion; and, generally, all yet tasting the smart of the late wars. It would be hard to have any aid of money of them. And in times past," the council added, significantly, "although the prince found himself able to make and maintain wars, yet the causes of those wars were opened for the most part in parliament."[598]

Objections so decided and so just would have hardly been overcome, but for an injudicious enterprise of the refugees, under French auspices. The French court believed that, by keeping Mary in alarm at home, they would make it the less easy for her to join in the war. They mistook the disposition of the people, who resented and detested the interference of France in their concerns.

Among the exiles at the court of Paris, the most distinguished by birth, if not by ability, was Sir Thomas Stafford, Lord Stafford's second son, and grandson of the Duke of Buckingham, who was put to death under Henry VIII. On the 27th of April, Wotton sent notice to the queen that Stafford had sailed from the mouth of the Seine with two vessels well manned and appointed. His destination was unknown; but it was understood that he intended to take some fortress on the English coast, and that the refugees, in a body, intended to follow him. Before Wotton's letter arrived, the scheme, such as it was, had been already executed. Stafford, with thirty Englishmen and one Frenchman, had surprised Scarborough Castle, and sent his proclamations through Yorkshire. He was come, he said, to deliver his country from foreign tyranny. He had sure evidence that an army of Spaniards was about to land, and that Philip intended to seize the crown by force. The queen, by her marriage with a stranger, had forfeited her own rights; and he himself, as the protector of English liberty, intended to bestow the crown on the next rightful heir, and to restore all such acts, laws, liberties, and customs as were established in the time of that most prudent prince, King Henry VIII. "He did not mind," he thought it necessary to add, "to work his own advancement touching possession of the crown, but to restore the blood and house of the Staffords to its pristine estate, which had been wrongfully suppressed by Cardinal Wolsey."[599] The landing of Edward IV., at Ravenspurg, had made any wild enterprise seem feasible, and Stafford had counted on the notorious hatred of the people for the queen.

But if the Spaniards meditated a descent upon England, it was not by adventurers like the refugees that their coming would be either prevented or avenged; and the good sense of the country had determined once for all to give no countenance to revolution supported by France. The occupation of Scarborough lasted two days, at the end of which Stafford and his whole party were taken by the Earl of Westmoreland. Thirty-two prisoners were sent to London; thirty-one were put to death; and the council reluctantly withdrew their opposition to the war. A hundred and forty thousand pounds were in the exchequer, being part of the subsidy granted by parliament to pay the crown debts.[600] With this the court prepared to commence, trusting to fortune for the future. War was to be declared on the 7th of June, and, while seven thousand men were to cross the Channel and join Pembroke in the Low Countries,[601] Howard was to cruise with the fleet in the Channel to use his discretion in annoying the enemy, and, if possible, to destroy the French ships at Dieppe.[602]

Happy, however, in having succeeded in gratifying her husband, the queen brought at once upon herself a blow which she had little foreseen, and from a quarter from which an injury was most painful. In her desire to punish France for assisting her rebellious heretical subjects, she seemed to have forgotten that France had an ally beyond the Alps. No sooner did Paul IV. learn that England was about to declare on the side of Philip, than, under the plausible pretence that he could have no ambassador residing in a country with which he was at war, he resolved to gratify his old animosity against Cardinal Pole, and cancel his legation.

Sir Edward Karne, the English resident at Rome, waited on the pope to remonstrate. He urged Paul to recollect how much the Holy See owed to the queen, and how dangerous it might be to re-open a wound imperfectly healed. The pope at first was obstinate. At length he seemed so far inclined to yield as to say that, if the queen would herself expressly desire it, he would distinguish between her and her husband.[603] But the suspension of the legation, though not at first published, was carried through the Consistory; and so ingeniously was it worded, that not only the formal and especial commission was declared at an end, but the legatine privileges, attached by immemorial custom to the archbishopric of Canterbury, were cancelled with it. The pope chose to leave himself without representative, ordinary or extraordinary, at the English court.

The queen was in despair. Before Karne's letter reached her, she had heard what was impending, and she wrote a letter of passionate expostulation, in which she expatiated on her services to religion, and on the assistance which Pole had rendered her. She said that, in the unsettled condition of England, the presence of a legate with supreme authority was absolutely necessary; and she implored Paul to reconsider a decision so rash and so unkind.

The council added their separate protest.[604] "They had heard with infinite grief that the legate was to be taken from them. There was no precedent for the recall of a legate who had been once commissioned, unless from fault of his own; and for themselves, they were unconscious of having misconducted themselves in any way since the reconciliation. Cardinal Pole had been the saviour of religion. Before his coming to England, the queen, with the best intentions to do good, had failed to arrest the growth of heresy, and the name of the Holy See was held in detestation. Pole, the noblest and most distinguished of the cardinals, had made what was crooked straight; he had introduced reforms everywhere; in a few years the wound would heal, and all would be well. If, however, he were now removed, the convalescent, deserted too soon by his physician, would relapse, and be worse than before. They entreated his holiness, therefore, to listen to them, and allow him to remain. When they were reconciled, the pope then reigning had promised that the customary privileges and immunities of the English nation should be maintained. It was the special prerogative of English sovereigns to have a legate perpetually resident in the person of the Archbishop of Canterbury; and from immemorial time there was no record of any archbishop to whom the legatine character had not attached as of right. The queen, who had risked her life for the faith of the church, did not deserve that the first exception should be made in her disfavour. The bishops did not deserve it. The few who, in the late times of trial, had remained faithful, did not deserve it. Even if the queen would consent and give way, they would themselves be obliged to remonstrate."[605]

Karne's letter produced a brief hope that the pope would relent. But the partial promise of reconsidering his resolution had been extorted from Paul, while it was uncertain whether England would actually join in the conflict; the intended declaration of war had in the interval become a reality, and the pope, more indignant than ever, chose to consider Pole personally responsible for the queen's conduct. Since a point was made of the presence of a papal legate in England, he was so far ready to give way; but so far only. The king left England the first week in July. Mary accompanied him to Dover, and there a papal nuncio met her, bringing a commission by which Pole was reduced into the ordinary rank of archbishop; and the office of papal representative was conferred on Peto, the Greenwich friar. For his objections to the present legate, the pope gave the strange but wounding reason, that his orthodoxy was not above suspicion.

The queen, with something of her father's temper in her, ordered the nuncio to return to Calais till she could again communicate with Rome. She interdicted Peto from accepting the commission, and desired Pole to continue to exercise his functions till the pope had pronounced again a final resolution. Pole, however, was too faithful a child of the church to disobey a papal injunction; he relinquished his office, but he sent Ormaneto to Rome with his own entreaties and protests.

Never had a legate of the Holy See been treated as he was treated, he said; there was no precedent, therefore, to teach him how to act, nor was ever charge of heresy urged with less occasion than against one whose whole employment had been to recover souls to Christ and his church, and to cut off those that were obstinate as rotten members. His services to the church, he passionately exclaimed, transcended far the services of any legate who had been employed for centuries, and, nevertheless, he found himself accused of heresy by the Vicar of Christ upon earth. Such an insult was unjust and unprovoked; and his holiness should consider also what he was doing in bringing the queen, the mother of obedience, into heaviness and sorrow. Mother of obedience the Queen of England might well be called, whom God had made a mother of sons who were the joy of the whole church. How was the pope rewarding this sainted woman, when with the thunder of his voice he accused the king, her husband, of schism, and himself, the legate, of heresy?[606]

Scarcely in his whole troubled life had a calamity more agitating overtaken Reginald Pole. To maintain the supremacy of the successor of St. Peter, he had spent twenty years in treason to his native country. He had held up his sovereign to the execration of mankind for rejecting an authority which had rewarded him with an act of enormous injustice; and to plead his consciousness of innocence before the world against his spiritual sovereign, would be to commit the same crime of disobedience for which he had put to death Cranmer, and laboured to set Europe on fire. Most fatal, most subtle retribution—for he knew that he was accused without cause; he knew that the pope after all was but a peevish, violent, and spiteful old man; he knew it—yet even to himself he could not admit his own conviction.

Fortune, however, seemed inclined for a time to make some amends to Mary in the results of the war.

The French usually opened their summer campaigns by an advance into Lorraine or the Netherlands. This year their aggressive resources had been directed wholly into Italy, and at home they remained on the defensive. Philip, with creditable exertion, collected an army of 50,000 men, to take advantage of the opportunity. Fixing his own residence at Cambray, he gave the command in the field to the Duke of Savoy; and Philibert, after having succeeded in distracting the attention of the enemy, and leading them to expect him in Champagne, turned suddenly into Picardy, and invested the town of St. Quentin. The garrison must soon have yielded, had not Coligny, the Admiral of France, broken through the siege lines and carried in reinforcements. Time was thus gained, and the constable, eager to save a strong place, the possession of which would open to the Spaniards the road to Paris, advanced with all the force which he could collect, not meaning to risk a battle, but to throw provisions and further supplies of men into St. Quentin. Montmorency had but 20,000 men with him. His levies consisted of the reserved force of the kingdom—princes, peers, knights, gentlemen, with their personal retinues, the best blood in France. It was such an army as that which lost Agincourt, and a fate not very different was prepared for it.

On the 10th of August, the constable was forced by accident into an engagement, in which he had the disadvantage of position as well as of numbers. Mistaken movements caused a panic in the opening of the battle, and the almost instant result was a confused and hopeless rout. The Duke d'Enghien fell on the field with four thousand men; the constable himself, the Duke de Montpensier, the Duke de Longueville, the Marshal St. AndrÉ, three hundred gentlemen, and several thousand common soldiers, were taken; the defeat was irretrievably complete, and to the victors almost bloodless. The English did not share in the glory of the battle, for they were not present; but they arrived two days after to take part in the storming of St. Quentin, and to share, to their shame, in the sack and spoiling of the town. They gained no honour; but they were on the winning side. The victory was credited to the queen as a success, and was celebrated in London with processions, bonfires, and Te Deums.

Nor was the defeat at St. Quentin the only disaster which the French arms experienced. Henry sent in haste to Italy for the Duke of Guise to defend Paris, where Philibert was daily expected. Guise was already returning after a failure less conspicuous, but not less complete, than that of the constable. The pope had received him on his arrival with enthusiasm, but the promised papal contingent for the campaign had not been provided; the pope was contented to be the soul of the enterprise of which France was to furnish the body. Guise advanced alone for the conquest of Naples, and he found himself, like De Lautrec in 1528, baffled by an enemy who would not meet him in the field, and obliged to waste his time and the health of his army in a series of unsuccessful sieges, till in a few months the climate had done Alva's work. The French troops perished in thousands, and Guise at last drew off his thinned ranks and fell back on Rome. Here the news of St. Quentin reached him, and the duke, leaving Paul to his fate, amid a storm of mutual reproaches, hurried back to his own country.

The pontiff had now no resource but to yield; and the piety of the Spaniards, whom he had compelled against their will to be his enemies, softened the ignominy of his compelled submission. Cardinal Caraffa and the Duke of Alva met at Cava, where, in a few words, it was agreed that his holiness should relinquish his alliance with France, and cease to trouble the Colonnas. Alva, on his side, restored the papal towns which he had taken; he went to Rome to ask pardon on his knees, in Philip's name, for the violence which he had used to his spiritual father; and the pope gave him gracious absolution.

This bad business, which had tried Mary so severely, was thus well finished, and on the 6th of October London was again illuminated for the peace between the king and the papacy. But the shadow which had been thrown on Pole was maliciously permitted to remain unremoved; on him, perhaps from personal ill-feeling, Paul visited his own disappointment. With the return of peace there was no longer any plausible reason for the recall of the legation; Peto was dead, having survived his unpropitious honours but a few months: yet, unmoved by Pole's entreaties, the pope refused to permit him to resume his legatine functions, except so far as they were inherent in the archbishopric. The odious accusation of heresy was not withdrawn; and the torturing charge was left to embitter the peace of mind, and poison the last days of the most faithful servant of the church who was then living.[607]

And again, though there was peace with the pope, there was still war with France; there was still war with Scotland. The events which had taken place in Scotland will be related hereafter. It is enough for the present to say that the Scots had been true as usual to their old allies; no sooner was an English army landed in France, than a Scotch army was wasting and burning on the Border. A second force had to be raised and kept in the field to meet them, and the scantily supplied treasury was soon empty. Money had to be found somewhere. The harvest, happily, had been at last abundant, and wheat had fallen from fifty shillings a quarter to four or five. The country was in a condition to lend, and a commission was sent out for a forced loan, calculated on the assessment of the last subsidy. Lists of the owners of property in each county were drawn out, with sums of money opposite to their names, and the collectors were directed "to travail by all the best ways they might for obtaining the sums noted." Persons found conformable were to receive acknowledgments. Should "any be froward" they were to find securities to appear when called on before the privy council, or to be arrested on the spot and sent to London.[608] A hundred and ten thousand pounds were collected under the commission, in spite of outcry and resistance;[609] but it was not enough for the hungry consumption of the war, and the court was driven to call a parliament.

The writs went out at the beginning of December, accompanied with the usual circulars; to which the queen added a promise, that if the mayors and sheriffs[610] would consult her wishes she would remember their services. In a second address she said her pleasure was that when the privy council, or any of them within their jurisdiction, should recommend "men of learning and wisdom," their directions should "be regarded and followed."[611] Yet there was not perhaps any wish to have the House of Commons unfairly packed. Mary desired, probably with sincerity, "to have the assembly of the most chiefest men in the realm for advice and counsel."

How the parliament would have acted in the circumstances under which the meeting was anticipated, is very uncertain. The intense unpopularity of the war had been little relieved by the victory at St. Quentin, and the general state of suffering made a fresh demand for money infinitely grievous. But between the issue of the writs and the 20th of January a blow had fallen on England which left room for no other thought.

For the last ten years the French had kept their eyes on Calais. The recovery of Boulogne was an insufficient retaliation for the disgrace which they had suffered in the loss of it, while the ill success with which the English maintained themselves in their new conquest, suggested the hope, and proved the possibility, of expelling them from the old. The occupation of a French fortress by a foreign power was a perpetual insult to the national pride; it was a memorial of evil times; while it gave England inconvenient authority in the "narrow seas." Scarcely a month had passed since Mary had been on the throne, without a hint from some quarter or other to the English government to look well to Calais; and the recent plot for its surprise was but one of a series of schemes which had been successively formed and abandoned.

In 1541 the defences of Guisnes, Hammes, and Calais, had been repaired by Henry VIII. The dykes had been cleared and enlarged, the embankments strengthened, and the sluices put in order.[612] But in the wasteful times of Edward, the works had fallen again into ruin; and Mary, straitened by debt, by a diminished revenue, and a supposed obligation to make good the losses of the clergy, had found neither means nor leisure to attend to them.

In the year 1500, the cost of maintaining the three fortresses was something less than £10,000 a-year;[613] and the expense had been almost or entirely supported by the revenue of the Pale. The more extended fortifications had necessitated an increase in the garrison; two hundred men were now scarcely sufficient to man the works;[614] while, owing to bad government, and the growing anomaly of the English position, the wealthier inhabitants had migrated over the frontiers, and left the Pale to a scanty, wretched, starving population, who could scarcely extract from the soil sufficient for their own subsistence.[615] While the cost of the occupation was becoming greater, the means of meeting it became less. The country could no longer thrive in English hands, and it was time for the invaders to begone.

The government in London, however, seemed, notwithstanding warnings, to be unable to conceive the loss of so old a possession to be a possibility; and Calais shared the persevering neglect to which the temporal interests of the realm were subjected. The near escape from the Dudley treason created a momentary improvement. The arrears of wages were paid up, and the garrison was increased. Yet a few months after, when war was on the point of being declared, there were but two hundred men in Guisnes, a number inadequate to defend even the castle; and although the French fleet at that time commanded the Channel, Calais contained provisions to last but for a few weeks.[616] Lord Grey, the governor of Guisnes, reported in June, after the declaration, that the French were collecting in strength in the neighbourhood, and that unless he was reinforced, he was at their mercy. A small detachment was sent over in consequence of Grey's letter; but on the 2nd of July Sir Thomas Cornwallis informed the queen that the numbers were still inadequate. "The enemy," Cornwallis said, "perceiving our weakness, maketh daily attempts upon your subjects, who are much abashed to see the courage of your enemies, whom they are not able to hurt nor yet defend themselves." He entreated that a larger force should be sent immediately, and maintained in the Pale during the war. The charge would be great, but the peril would be greater if the men were not provided; and as her majesty had been pleased to enter into the war, her honour must be more considered than her treasure.[617]

The arrival of the army under Pembroke removed the immediate ground for alarm; and after the defeat of the French, the danger was supposed to be over altogether. The queen was frightened at the expenses which she was incurring, and again allowed the establishment to sink below the legitimate level. Lord Wentworth was left at Calais with not more than five hundred men. Grey had something more than a thousand at Guisnes, but a part only were English; the rest were Burgundians and Spaniards. More unfortunately also, a proclamation had forbidden the export of corn in England, from which Calais had not been excepted. Guisnes and Hammes depended for their supplies on Calais, and by the middle of the winter there was an actual scarcity of food.[618]

Up to the beginning of December, notwithstanding, there were no external symptoms to create uneasiness; military movements lay under the usual stagnation of winter, and except a few detachments on the frontiers of the Pale, who gave trouble by marauding excursions, the French appeared to be resting in profound repose. On the 1st of December, the governor of Guisnes reported an expedition for the destruction of one of their outlying parties, which had been accomplished with ominous cruelty.

"I advertised your grace," Lord Grey wrote to the queen, "how I purposed to make a journey to a church called Bushing, strongly fortified by the enemy, much annoying this your majesty's frontier. It may please your majesty, upon Monday last, at nine of the clock at night, having with me Mr. Aucher marshal of Calais, Mr. Alexander captain of Newnham Bridge, Sir Henry Palmer, my son,[619] and my cousin Louis Dives, with such horsemen and footmen as could be conveniently spared abroad in service, leaving your majesty's pieces in surety, I took my journey towards the said Bushing, and carried with me two cannon and a sacre, for that both the weather and the ways served well to the purpose, and next morning came hither before day. And having before our coming enclosed the said Bushing with two hundred footmen harquebuziers, I sent an officer to summon the same in the king's highness' and your majesty's name; whereunto the captain there, a man of good estimation, who the day before was sent there with twelve men by M. Senarpont, captain of Boulogne, answered that he was not minded to render, but would keep it with such men as he had, which were forty in number or thereabouts, even to the death; and further said, if their fortune was so to lose their lives, he knew that the king his master had more men alive to serve, with many other words of French bravery. Upon this answer, I caused the gunners to bring up their artillery to plank, and then shot off immediately ten or twelve times. But yet for all this they would not yield. At length, when the cannon had made an indifferent breach, the Frenchmen made signs to parley, and would gladly have rendered; but I again, weighing it not meet to abuse your majesty's service therein, and having Sir H. Palmer there hurt, and some others of my men, refused to receive them, and, according to the law of arms, put as many of them to the sword as could be gotten at the entry of the breach, and all the rest were blown up with the steeple at the rasing thereof, and so all slain."[620]

The law of arms forbade the defence of a fort not rationally defensible; but it was over hardly construed against a gallant gentleman. Grey was a fierce, stern man. It was Grey who hung the priests in Oxfordshire from their church towers. It was Grey who led the fiery charge upon the Scots at Musselburgh, and with a pike wound, which laid open cheek, tongue, and palate, he "pursued out the chase," till, choked by heat, dust, and his own blood, he was near falling under his horse's feet.[621]

Three weeks passed, and still the French had made no sign. On the 22nd an indistinct rumour came to Guisnes that danger was near. The frost had set in; the low damp ground was hard, the dykes were frozen; and in sending notice of the report to England, Grey said that Calais was unprovided with food; Guisnes contained a few droves of cattle brought in by forays over the frontier,[622] but no corn. On the 27th, the intelligence became more distinct and more alarming. The Duke of Guise was at CompiÈgne. A force of uncertain magnitude, but known to be large, had suddenly appeared at Abbeville. Something evidently was intended, and something on a scale which the English commanders felt ill prepared to encounter. In a hurried council of war held at Calais, it was resolved to make no attempt to meet the enemy in the field until the arrival of reinforcements, which were written for in pressing haste.[623]

But the foes with whom they had to deal knew their condition, and were as well aware as themselves that success depended on rapidity. Had the queen paid attention to Grey's despatch of the 22nd there was time to have trebled the garrison and thrown in supplies; but it was vague, and no notice was taken of it. The joint letter of Grey and Wentworth written on the 27th, was in London in two days, and there were ships at Portsmouth and in the Thames, which ought to have been ready for sea at a moment's warning. Orders were sent to prepare; the Earl of Rutland was commissioned to raise troops; and the queen, though without sending men, sent a courier with encouragements and promises. But when every moment was precious, a fatal slowness, and more fatal irresolution hung about the movements of the government. On the 29th Wentworth wrote again, that the French were certainly arming and might be looked for immediately. On the 31st, the queen, deceived probably by some emissary of Guise, replied, that "she had intelligence that no enterprise was intended against Calais or the Pale," and that she had therefore countermanded the reinforcements.[624]

The letter containing the death sentence, for it was nothing less, of English rule in Calais was crossed on the way by another from Grey, in which he informed the queen that there were thirty or forty vessels in the harbour at Hambletue, two fitted as floating batteries, the rest loaded with hurdles, ladders, and other materials for a siege. Four-and-twenty thousand men were in the camp above Boulogne; and their mark he knew to be Calais. For himself, he would defend his charge to the death; but help must be sent instantly, or it would be too late to be of use.

The afternoon of the same day, December 31, he added, in a postscript, that flying companies of the French were at that moment before Guisnes; part of the garrison had been out to skirmish, but had been driven in by numbers; the whole country was alive with troops.

The next morning (January 1, 1558) Wentworth reported to the same purpose, that, on the land side, Calais was then invested. The sea was still open, and the forts at the mouth of the harbour on the Rysbank were yet in his hands. Heavy siege cannon, however, were said to be on their way from Boulogne, and it was uncertain how long he could hold them. The defences of Calais towards the land, though in bad repair, had been laid out with the best engineering skill of the time. The country was intersected with deep muddy ditches; the roads were causeways, and at the bridges were bulwarks and cannon. Guisnes, which was three miles from Calais, was connected with it by a line of small forts and "turnpikes." Hammes lay between the two, equidistant from both. Towards the sea the long line of low sandhills, rising in front of the harbour to the Rysbank, formed a natural pier; and on the Rysbank was the castle, which commanded the entrance and the town. The possession of the Rysbank was the possession of Calais.

The approaches to the sandhills were commanded by a bulwark towards the south-west called the Sandgate, and further inland by a large work called Newnham Bridge. At this last place were sluices, through which, at high water, the sea could be let in over the marshes. If done effectually, the town could by this means be effectually protected; but unfortunately, owing to the bad condition of the banks, the sea water leaked in from the high levels to the wells and reservoirs in Calais.

The night of the 1st of January the French remained quiet; with the morning they advanced in force upon Newnham Bridge. An advanced party of English archers and musketeers who were outside the gate were driven in, and the enemy pushed in pursuit so close under the walls that the heavy guns could not be depressed to touch them. The English, however, bored holes through the gates with augers, fired their muskets through them, and so forced their assailants back. Towards Hammes and Guisnes the sea was let in, and the French, finding themselves up to their waists in water, and the tide still rising, retreated on that side also. Wentworth wrote in the afternoon in high spirits at the result of the first attack. The brewers were set to work to fill their vats with fresh water, that full advantage might be taken of the next tide. Working parties were sent to cut the sluices, and the English commander felt confident that if help was on the way, or could now be looked for, he could keep his charge secure. But the enemy, he said, were now thirty thousand strong; Guise had taken the Sandgate, and upwards of a hundred boats were passing backwards and forwards to Boulogne and Hambletue, bringing stores and ammunition.[625] If the queen had a body of men in readiness, they would come without delay. If she was unprepared, "the passages should be thrown open," and "liberty be proclaimed for all men to come that would bring sufficient victuals for themselves;" thus, he "was of opinion that there would be enough with more speed than would be made by order."

So far Wentworth had written. While the pen was in his hand, a message reached him, that the French, without waiting for their guns, were streaming up over the Rysbank, and laying ladders against the walls of the fort. He had but time to close his letter, and send his swiftest boat out of the harbour with it, when the castle was won, and ingress and egress at an end. The same evening, the heavy guns came from Boulogne, and for two days and nights the town was fired upon incessantly from the sandbank, and from "St. Peter's Heath."

The fate of Calais was now a question of hours; Wentworth had but 500 men to repel an army, and he was without provisions. Calais was probably gone, but Guisnes might be saved; Guisnes could be relieved with a great effort out of the Netherlands. On the night of the 4th, Grey found means to send a letter through the French lines to England. "The enemy," he said, "were now in possession of Calais harbour, and all the country between Calais and Guisnes." He was now "clean cut off from all relief and aid which he looked to have;" and there "was no other way for the succour of Calais" and the other fortresses, but "a power of men out of England or from the king's majesty, or from both," either to force the French into a battle or to raise the siege. Come what would, he would himself do the duty of a faithful subject, and keep the castle while men could hold it.[626]

The court, which had been incredulous of danger till it had appeared, was now paralysed by the greatness of it. Definite orders to collect troops were not issued till the 2nd of January. The Earl of Rutland galloped the same day to Dover, where the musters were to meet, flung himself into the first boat that he found, without waiting for them, and was half-way across the Channel when he was met by the news of the loss of the Rysbank.[627] Rutland therefore returned to Dover, happy so far to have escaped sharing the fate of Wentworth, which his single presence could not have averted. The next day, the 3rd, parties of men came in slowly from Kent and Sussex; but so vague had been the language of the proclamation, that they came without arms; and although the country was at war with France, there were no arms with which to provide them, either in Deal, Dover, or Sandwich. Again, so indistinct had been Rutland's orders, that although a few hundred men did come in at last tolerably well equipped, and the Prince of Savoy had collected some companies of Spaniards at Gravelines, and had sent word to Dover for the English to join him, Rutland was now obliged to refer to London for permission to go over. On the 7th, permission came; it was found by that time, or supposed to be found, that the queen's ships were none of them seaworthy, and an order of the council came out to press all competent merchant ships and all able seamen everywhere, for the queen's service.[628] Rutland contrived at last, by vigorous efforts, to collect a few hoys and boats, but the French had by this time ships of war in co-operation with them, and he could but approach the French coast near enough to see that he could venture no nearer, and again return.[629]

He would have been too late to save Calais at that time, however, even if he had succeeded in crossing.

The day preceding, the 6th of January, after a furious cannonade, Guise had stormed the castle. The English had attempted to blow it up when they could not save it, but their powder train was wetted, and they failed. The Spaniards, for once honourably careful of English interests, came along the shore from Gravelines alone, since no one joined them from England, and attempted in the face of overwhelming odds to force their way into the town; but they were driven back, and Wentworth, feeling that further resistance would lead to useless slaughter, demanded a parley, and after a short discussion accepted the terms of surrender offered by Guise. The garrison and the inhabitants of Calais, amounting in all, men, women, and children, to 5000 souls, were permitted to retire to England with their lives, and nothing more. Wentworth and fifty others were to remain prisoners; the town, with all that it contained, was to be given up to the conquerors.

On these conditions the English laid down their arms and the French troops entered. The spoil was enormous, and the plunder of St. Quentin was not unjustly revenged; jewels, plate, and money were deposited on the altars of the churches, and the inhabitants, carrying with them the clothes which they wore, were sent as homeless beggars in the ensuing week across the Channel.

Then only, when it was too late, the queen roused herself. As soon as Calais had definitely fallen, all the English counties were called on by proclamation to contribute their musters. Then all was haste, eagerness, impetuosity; those who had money were to provide for those who had none, till "order could be taken."

On the 7th of January, the vice-admiral, Sir William Woodhouse, was directed to go instantly to sea, pressing everything that would float, and promising indemnity to the owners in the queen's name. Thirty thousand men were rapidly on their way to the coast; the weather had all along been clear and frosty, with calms and light east winds, and the sea off Dover was swiftly covered with a miscellaneous crowd of vessels. On the 10th came the queen's command for the army to cross to Dunkirk, join the Duke of Savoy, and save Guisnes.

But the opportunity which had been long offered, and long neglected, was now altogether gone; the ships were ready, troops came, and arms came, but a change of weather came also, and westerly gales and storms. On the night of the 10th a gale blew up from the south-west which raged for four days: such vessels as could face the sea, slipped their moorings, and made their way into the Thames with loss of spars and rigging; the hulls of the rest strewed Dover beach with wrecks, or were swallowed in the quicksands of the Goodwin.

The effect of this last misfortune on the queen was to produce utter prostration. Storms may rise, vessels may be wrecked, and excellent enterprises may suffer hindrance, by the common laws or common chances of things; but the queen in every large occurrence imagined a miracle; Heaven she believed was against her. Though Guisnes was yet standing, she ordered Woodhouse to collect the ships again in the Thames, "forasmuch as the principal cause of their sending forth had ceased;"[630] and on the 13th she counter-ordered the musters, and sent home all the troops which had arrived at Dover.[631]

Having given way to despondency, the court should have communicated with Grey, and directed him to make terms for himself and the garrisons of Guisnes and Hammes. In the latter place there was but a small detachment; but at Guisnes were eleven hundred men, who might lose their lives in a desperate and now useless defence. The disaster, however, had taken away the power of thinking or resolving upon anything.

It must be said for Philip that he recognised more clearly and discharged more faithfully the duty of an English sovereign than the queen or the queen's advisers. Spanish and Burgundian troops were called under arms as fast as possible; and when he heard of the gale he sent ships from Antwerp and Dunkirk to bring across the English army. But when his transports arrived at Dover they found the men all gone. Proclamations went out on the 17th to call them back;[632] but two days after there was a counter-panic and a dread of invasion, and the perplexed levies were again told that they must remain at home. So it went on to the end of the month; the resolution of one day alternated with the hesitation of the next, and nothing was done.

The queen's government had lost their heads. Philip having done his own part, did not feel it incumbent on him to risk a battle with inferior numbers, when those who were more nearly concerned were contented to be supine. Guisnes, therefore, and its defenders, were left to their fate.

On Thursday, the 13th, the Duke of Guise appeared before the gates. The garrison could have been starved out in a month, but Guise gave England credit for energy, and would not run the risk of a blockade. To reduce the extent of his lines, Grey abandoned the town, burnt the houses, and withdrew into the castle. The French made their approaches in form. On the morning of Monday the 17th they opened fire from two heavily armed batteries, and by the middle of the day they had silenced the English guns, and made a breach which they thought practicable. A storming party ventured an attempt: after sharp fighting the advanced columns had to retreat; but as they drew back the batteries re-opened, and so effectively, that the coming on of night alone saved the English from being driven at once, and on the spot, from their defences. The walls were of the old sort, constructed when the art of gunnery was in its infancy, and brick and stone crumbled to ruins before the heavy cannon which had come lately into use.

Under shelter of the darkness earthworks were thrown up, which proved a better protection; but the French on their side planted other batteries, and all Tuesday and Wednesday the terrible bombardment was continued. The old walls were swept away; the ditch was choked with the rubbish, and was but a foot in depth; the French trenches had been advanced close to its edge, and on Wednesday afternoon (January 19), twelve companies of Gascons and Swiss again dashed at the breaches. The Gascons were the first; the Swiss followed "with a stately leisure;" and a hand-to-hand fight began all along the English works. The guns from a single tower which had been left standing causing loss to the assailants, it was destroyed by the batteries. The fight continued till night, when darkness as before put an end to it.

The earthworks could be again repaired, but the powder began to fail, and this loss was irreparable. Lord Grey, going his rounds in the dark, trod upon a sword point, and was wounded in the foot. The daylight brought the enemy again, who now succeeded in making themselves masters of the outer line of defence. Grey, crippled as he was, when he saw his men give way, sprung to the top of the rampart, "wishing God that some shot would take him." A soldier caught him by the scarf and pulled him down, and all that was left of the garrison fell back, carrying their commander with them into the keep. The gate was rammed close, but Guise could now finish his work at his leisure, and had the English at his mercy. He sent a trumpeter in the evening to propose a parley, and the soldiers insisted that if reasonable terms could be had, they should be accepted. The extremity of the position was obvious, and Grey, as we have seen, was no stranger to the law of arms in such cases. Hostages were exchanged, and the next morning the two commanders met in the French camp.

Better terms were offered by Guise than had been granted to Calais—Grey, Sir Henry Palmer, and a few officers should consider themselves prisoners; the rest of the garrison might depart with their arms, and "every man a crown in his purse." Grey, however, demanded that they should march out with their colours flying; Guise refused, and after an hour's discussion they separated without a conclusion.

But the soldiers were insensible to nice distinctions; if they had the reality, they were not particular about the form. Grey lectured them on the duties of honour; for his part, he said, he would rather die under the red cross than lose it. The soldiers replied that their case was desperate; they would not be thrust into butchery or sell their lives for vain glory. The dispute was at its height when the Swiss troops began to lay ladders to the walls; the English refused to strike another blow; and Grey, on his own rule, would have deserved to be executed had he persisted longer.

Guise's terms were accepted. He had lived to repay England for his spear wound at Boulogne, and the last remnant of the conquests of the Plantagenets was gone.

Measured by substantial value, the loss of Calais was a gain. English princes were never again to lay claim to the crown of France, and the possession of a fortress on French soil was a perpetual irritation. But Calais was called the "brightest jewel in the English crown." A jewel it was, useless, costly, but dearly prized. Over the gate of Calais had once stood the insolent inscription:—

"Then shall the Frenchmen Calais win,
When iron and lead like cork shall swim:"

and the Frenchmen had won it, won it in fair and gallant fight.

If Spain should rise suddenly into her ancient strength and tear Gibraltar from us, our mortification would be faint, compared to the anguish of humiliated pride with which the loss of Calais distracted the subjects of Queen Mary.(Back to Content)