There is a pause in our pageantry. While the next scene is preparing, let the story of the intervening period be briefly told. Twenty-eight years, long and fateful, have come and gone since Wolsey died of a broken heart, and in the interval a new England with a new destiny and a new faith has arisen. The years that have sped have been marked by religious upheaval, and by an extraordinary outburst of persecuting zeal. The fires of Smithfield have blazed, and the thumb-screw and the rack have done their fiendish work “for the glory of the Lord.” Henry in his rage against the Pope has swept away the monasteries, sent the monks adrift, and plundered them of their lands and riches. Year by year the doctrines of Church reformers have gained ground, and ere Henry’s long reign of terror and crime draws to a close, Protestantism is a powerful force in England. His son, Edward the Sixth, a precocious, consumptive lad of ten, succeeds, and then the reformers gain the upper hand. A new Prayer Book “in the vulgar tongue, understanded of the people at large,” is issued, and the Reformation is hurried on with undue speed. There is a ruthless and irreverent destruction of images, pictures, and stained glass in the churches, and many pious persons, otherwise favourable to the “new worship,” are shocked into opposition. To secure the triumph of Protestantism, Edward is persuaded on his deathbed to make a will excluding his Catholic sister Mary from the throne, and naming Lady Jane Grey as his successor.

The young king dies in his sixteenth year, and three days later Queen Jane is proclaimed. Not a hat is tossed in the air, not a cheer is raised. London declares for Mary; the nobles and gentry flock to her. The poor “eleven days’ queen”—young, innocent, and beautiful—is utterly deserted. She vanishes into the Tower, and her head pays the penalty of her father-in-law’s ambition.

Mary is now queen, and she sets herself immediately to undo the work of the Reformation and to restore England to the power of the Pope. She makes the fatal mistake of marrying Philip of Spain, whose horrible outrages on the Dutch have made him an object of terror and loathing in England. Soon he deserts her, and the miserable queen, racked by painful disease, throws her whole heart into a frenzied attempt to stamp out Protestantism in her realm. Martyrs perish at the stake, and the nation is horrified at the queen’s cruelty. And yet one cannot but be sorry for the wretched woman. In feeble health, miserable, and soured by the desertion of her husband, filled with anxious fears for the future of her kingdom, and conscious of the hatred of her people, she honestly believes that she is doing the will of Heaven in burning and torturing those of her subjects who do not see eye to eye with her in matters of religion. Every week her people grow more and more discontented; every week her health and spirits grow worse.

At length the climax is reached. Her husband drags her into war with France, and in the struggle “the chief jewel of the realm”—Calais—is lost. For two hundred years it has been in English hands, and its possession has meant the command of the “narrow seas.” Now England is without a foot of soil on French ground, and Englishmen grow bitterly angry at the thought. Mary has enough national spirit to understand the magnitude of the disaster. “When I am dead,” she cries, “you will find ‘Calais’ written on my heart!”

Ten months later, on the eve of a great national revolt, the miserable Mary dies, conscious that she has been a hopeless, helpless failure. She has striven to re-establish Romanism in the land, but has only succeeded in ringing its death-knell. Protestantism is again in the ascendant. While Mary’s obsequies are preparing, a great burst of joy sweeps over the country, for Elizabeth, her Protestant sister, is now queen.