Anonymous

“ Ferdinand, the prince of bigots, to whom whole nations of lives were only as so much dust in comparison with the sacredness of his dogmas, mounted the throne, being elected emperor in August of that year. Now all Europe stood in expectation of the bloody decision of this quarrel,—a quarrel which was destined to spread over all Germany, draw into its vortex Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and England, and to be for ever remembered in the world as the most terrible of contests, the "Thirty Years' War." ”

“ Elizabeth replied with perfect serenity that she was unwilling to shed the blood of that wicked woman, the Queen of Scots, though she had so often sought her life, for the preservation of which she expressed her deep gratitude to Almighty God. She wished that she and Mary were two milkmaids, with pails upon their arms, and then she would forgive her all her wrongs. As for her own life, she had no desire on her own account to preserve it; she had nothing left worth living for; but for her people she could endure much. ”

“ This unhappy earl, now the object of your lordships' justice, hath taken as much care, hath used as much cunning, to set a face and countenance of honesty in the performance of all these actions. My lords, it is the greatest baseness of wickedness, that it dares not look in its own colours, nor be seen in its natural countenance. But virtue, as it is amiable in all aspects, so the least is not this, that it puts a nobleness, it puts a bravery upon the mind, and lifts it above hopes and fears, above favour and displeasure: it makes it always uniform and constant to itself. ”

“ It is a satisfaction to turn from this humiliating state of things to the great lights of genius and learning which were burning brightly amid this thick darkness. Here there meets us the illustrious constellation of names of More, Ascham, Puttenham, Sidney, Hooker, Bacon, Barclay, Skelton, Sackville, Heywood, Surrey, Wyatt, Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and others—names which cast a lustre over this period, and in whose blaze all its faults and failings are forgotten. ”

“ Whilst the great looked on all this grandeur in obsequious but resentful silence, the people settled it in their own minds that the wonderful power of the priest over the fiery nature of the monarch was the effect of sorcery. But Wolsey was no mean or ordinary man. His talents and his consummate address were what influenced the king, who was proud of the magnificence which was at once his creation and his representative; and Wolsey had a grasp, an expanse, and an elevation in his ambition, which had something sublime in them. ”

“ Nothing, indeed, could be more melancholy than the situation of that kingdom. Her king was captive, her most distinguished generals and the flower of the army were taken or slain; powerful and triumphant enemies on all sides were ready to seize her as a spoil, and she was equally destitute of allies, of money, of troops, or wise counsel. Scarcely less was the terror of the princes and the states of Italy, for their only safety—the balance of power—was destroyed, and there appeared no defence against the predominant power of the emperor. ”

“ Though he hurled his fiercest terms against those who claimed a universal liberty which he intended only for himself, he had broken the mighty spell of ages—a power and a mystery before which the world had bowed in impotent awe; and no chains which he could forge, no creed which he could set up, no hierarchy which he could frame, could possess more than the strength of the fire-scorched flax against the will of the enfranchised people. ”

“ We have lived, my lords, happily to ourselves at home; we have lived gloriously abroad in the world; let us be content with what our fathers have left us; let not an ambition carry us to be more learned than they were in these killing and destructive acts. My lords, be pleased to give that regard to the peerage of England, as never to expose yourselves to such moot points, such constructive interpretations of law. ”

“ Though she was queen only about six months, she continued to live in England for seventeen years—seeing two queens after her, and Edward VI. and Queen Mary on the throne—greatly honoured by all who knew her, and much beloved by both the princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Not in seventeen years, but in sixteen months, she saw the fall and tragedy of the queen who supplanted her; so that one of her maids of honour, Elizabeth Bassett, could not help exclaiming at the news, "What a man the king is! how many wives will he have?" ”

“ His captivity was rendered less severe by the presence in the Tower of other prisoners of intelligence, and, more than all the rest, of the Earl of Northumberland, who gathered around him in his prison men of science and literature, and thus was instrumental in converting his cell into a palace of knowledge and refined delight. Northumberland was another of those men who revelled in learning, whom a king really wise and learned would have rejoiced to honour. But James's love was not a love of learning or literature on its own account, it was a love of himself. ”

“ The genius of Shakespeare appears to penetrate into all departments of human knowledge, and his instincts possess a universal accuracy. Whether he describes the beauties of Nature at large, or enters the haunts of busy life, high or low, royal, noble, or plebeian, or sends his all-searching glance into the depths of the human mind, or the strange intricacies of human nature, we are equally astonished at the clearness of his perceptive faculties, and the justness of his conclusions. ”

“ I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and, therefore, I am come amongst you at this time not as for my recreation and sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all—to lay down for my God, for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. ”

“ He said, "If we consider aright, and think of the incomparable distance between the supreme height and majesty of a mighty monarch, and the submissive awe and lowliness of loyal subjects, we cannot but receive exceeding comfort and contentment in the frame and constitution of this highest Court, wherein not only prelates, nobles, and grandees, but the commons of all degrees have their part; and wherein that high majesty doth descend to admit, or rather to invite, the humblest of his subjects to conference and council with him." ”

“ Instead of the gay palfreys of France to which she had been accustomed, in their rich accoutrements, she saw a wretched set of Highland shelties prepared to convey her and her retinue to Holyrood; and when she surveyed their tattered furniture and mounted into the bare wooden saddle, the past and the present came so mournfully over her, that her eyes filled with tears. The honest joy of her people, however, was an ample compensation, had she not known what ill-will lurked in the background against her amongst the nobles and clergy.
Mary was the finest woman of her time. ”

“ The consternation of the murderers in the morning may be imagined. The outraged and insulted queen had escaped their hands, and the news came flying that already the nobles and the people were hurrying from all sides to her standard. Huntly, Athole, Bothwell, and whole crowds of barons and gentlemen flew to her, and at Dunbar a numerous army stood as if by magic ready to march on the traitors and execute the vengeance due. They fled. Morton, Ruthven—the grisly, pale-faced assassin—Brunston, and Car of Faudonside, escaped to England. ”

“ Thus fell Catherine Howard in the bloom of her youth and beauty, being declared by an eye-witness to be the handsomest woman of her time, paying for youthful indiscretions the forfeit of her life to the king, though some think she had not sinned against him. So conscious was Henry of this, that he made it high treason, in the Act of Attainder, for any one to conceal any such previous misconduct in a woman whom the sovereign was about to marry. ”

“ It is worthy of note, too, that by abolishing the authority of the Pope, to serve his own selfish ends, he let loose the human mind from its long thraldom, and prepared the way—a necessary sequence—for that political rebellion which was certain to be assumed by a people who had once triumphed in a religious one. Thus was political freedom the consequence of this lawless monarch's attempt to crush it, as much as the Reformation was that of his rejection of the Papacy for the gratification of his passions. ”

“ Whilst the king himself set so notable an example of extortion, we may be sure that his commissioners, spies, and tools of all sorts were not slack in this abominable business of ferreting out and putting through the cruel torture of their secret courts, the unhappy subjects of every corner of the kingdom who had any substance to prey upon. "The king," says Bacon, "had gotten for his purpose, or beyond his purpose, two instruments, Empson and Dudley, whom the people esteemed as his horse-leeches and shearers: bold men, and careless of fame, and that took toll of their master's grist. ”

“ Surely nothing was ever more melancholy and terrible in its mixture of mental decay, dark remorse, and indomitable hardiness and self-will. At one and the same time around her bed were men urging her to take broth, to name her successor, and to hear prayers. The kings of France and Scotland were mentioned to her, but without eliciting the slightest notice; but when they named Beauchamp, the son of the Earl of Hertford and Catherine Grey, one of Elizabeth's victims, she fired up and exclaimed, "I will have no rascal's son in my nest, but one worthy to be a king!" ”

“ Of the few noblemen remaining in the country from the sanguinary decimation of the civil wars, some of the wealthiest were still staunch Roman Catholics, and were watched with greedy eyes by the host of poor but ambitious adventurers who were ready to second every scheme of spoliation meditated by the monarch. When the ancient Church was going to the ground, with all its proud establishments and enormous estates, the nobles who belonged to it felt the very earth shaking under their feet, and saw no means of safety but in the most implicit obedience. ”

“ Burning with resentment at the base and insidious attempts of Henry to disturb the security of his government, and to seize upon his person, and coveting the glory of restoring the last noble scion of a great race to the throne of his ancestors, James was deaf alike to warnings of secret treason or more public danger. ”

“ No sooner did King Henry hear this news, than, throwing aside all further thoughts of the Duchess of Savoy, he applied for the hand of Joanna, the widow of Philip. With Joanna, Queen of Castile, married to himself, and Charles, her son, the heir of all Spain, the Netherlands, and Austria, married to his daughter Mary, what visions of greatness and empire must have swum before the keen eyes of Henry, and excited his intense passion of acquisitiveness! ”

“ Charles was now reduced to a pitiable condition. On the one hand, he had solemnly pledged himself, both to Strafford and to Parliament, never to consent to the earl's death; but, on the other hand, the two Houses had pronounced against him, and the public was waiting with impatience for his ratification of the sentence. He had lately seen the ominous assemblage of the people, and the march of the City bands to support Parliament; the Scots still lay in the North, waiting with fierce desire for the fall of their enemy; one signal, and the whole country would be in a blaze. ”

“ His object was to strengthen the king's government beyond all precedent; to make him, as we now have it under his own hand, the most absolute and independent monarch that ever lived. True, from the reign of Henry IV. to that of Queen Mary, many other species of high treason had been created by the Crown, and especially by Henry VIII. But in none of these reigns, when almost every imaginable or unimaginable thing affecting kingship was made treason, had it ever entered the royal or legal head to conceive of the possibility of treason against the people. ”

“ Sympathising as she did with the oppressed Protestants of the Netherlands, her course was quite obvious. She could call on Philip to give to them free exercise of their religion, and if he refused, she had a fair plea to break with him and to support the cause of the common religion. But Elizabeth had too much politic regard for the rights of kings openly to support against them the rights of the people; and, what was still more embarrassing, she was practising the very intolerance and persecution against her Roman Catholic subjects that Philip was against his Protestant ones. ”

“ My lord, I can show you when a man of a greater blood than your lordship, as high in place and power, and as deep in the favour of the king as you, hath been hanged for as small a crime as the least of these articles contain."
Sir John Eliot wound up the charge, and compared Buckingham to Sejanus; as proud, insolent, rapacious, an accuser of others, a base adulator and tyrant by turns, and one who conferred commands and offices on his dependants. "Ask England, Scotland, and Ireland," exclaimed Sir John, "and they will tell you whether this man doth not the like. ”

“ A more horrible night no unfortunate creatures ever passed, for a tempest had set in, a furious gale blowing from the south-west, the rain falling in torrents, and the pitchy gloom being lit up only by the glare of lightning.
A loud cannonade in the direction of Gravelines announced that the hostile fleets were engaged there, and it became the signal for the fugitives to draw together, but all along the coast the active English commanders were ready to receive them, and Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, Frobisher, Seymour, and Cumberland vied in their endeavours to win the highest distinction. ”

“ Truth and goodness, my lords, they are the beauty of the soul, they are the perfection of all created natures, they are the image and character of God upon the creatures. This beauty, evil spirits and evil men have lost; but yet there are none so wicked, but they desire to march under the show and shadow of it, though they hate the reality of it. ”

“ The Duke of Longueville, who was one of the prisoners taken at the Battle of Spurs, was in London, and instructed by Louis, kept his ears open to Henry's angry denunciations of his perfidious allies. He represented to him that Anne, the Queen of France, being dead, there was a noble opportunity of avenging himself on these ungrateful princes, and of forming an alliance with Louis which would make them all tremble. Mary, the Princess of England, might become Queen of France, and thus a league be established between England and France which would decide the fate of Europe. ”

“ The trade of England continued to flourish and extend itself through this century, in spite of the obstacles and ruinous effects of almost perpetual war. Our kings, however warlike they might be, were yet very sensible of the advantages of commerce, and during this century made numerous treaties in its favour. At the same time, it is curious that, even when two countries were at war, such was the spirit of trade, that the merchants went on trading whenever they could, just as if there was no war at all. This was the case, especially between England and Flanders. ”