Mary II of England

“ It is unnecessary here to enter into the mere facts of the political history; how Northumberland's ill-arranged and almost childish scheme fell to pieces and collapsed, and how, within a few days of Edward's death, Mary found herself undisputed Queen of England, and those who opposed her had not only gained nothing, but had put themselves entirety at her mercy. Mary was herself, perhaps, as unfit to rule as any sovereign who ever arrived at a throne in mature age. ”

“ In spite of the Queen’s resolve to treat the peace disturbers with greater severity than heretofore, her former leniency having been so much abused, it does not appear from the above that Mary had any desire for their death, but it would seem rather, as if she snatched at every pretext for sparing their lives, providing them with every possible pretext for escape. In her desolation and perplexities, she turned more than ever to the consolations of religion, and to the relief of the poor and afflicted. ”

“ Mary was held a closer captive than ever. She sent to Elizabeth asking her to remove these restraints, and allow her to depart either to her own country or to France. Elizabeth replied that she could not, considering all the circumstances of the case, allow her to leave England; but that, if she would give up all claims to the government of Scotland to her son, the young prince, she might remain in peace in England. Mary replied that she would suffer death a thousand times rather than dishonor herself in the eyes of the world by abandoning, in such a way, her rights as a sovereign. ”

“ By this marriage Mary strengthened her claim on the throne of England, and had she now acted with prudence, Elizabeth might have been driven from the throne, or else compelled to recognize Mary as her successor. But Mary, with all her cleverness, could not control her passions, and by giving way to them she lost not only all chance of becoming queen of England, but also caused herself to be driven into exile. She soon tired of her young husband, who was a foolish youth, and wanted to become king, and by his jealousies and follies gave Mary much annoyance. ”

“ Neither am I a stranger to the feelings of humanity, nor unacquainted with the duties of religion, and it is my nature to be more inclined to the devotion of Esther, than to the sword of Judith. If ever I have given consent by my words, or even by my thoughts, to any attempt against the life of the Queen of England, far from declining the judgment of men, I shall not even pray for the mercy of God.” [192]
Elizabeth’s advocates were not a little surprised at the eloquent and able manner in which Mary conducted her defence. ”

“ It is not unlikely that Mary’s self-conquest in regard to Elizabeth, at the time of the latter’s abandonment and disgrace, would have resulted in a lasting affection, founded on pity, and that motherly instinct so strongly developed in the Queen, had not her sister persistently thrown herself into the arms of the rebels. At the time of Henry’s death, and until the beginning of Mary’s reign, their relations were as cordial as it was possible for Mary to make them. ”

“ To have within her realm the one whom a large portion of her subjects considered by right Queen of England, and through whom the Pope and the Catholic powers hoped to see the island restored to the obedience of the Holy See, was eminently calculated to make her life uncomfortable. She was conscious that she was an object of hatred to many who had power to do her no end of mischief. But she must have foreseen these troubles when she elected to detain Mary a prisoner. ”

“ In two days, she found herself at the head of 30,000 men, and while the conspirators were taking possession of the Tower, of the Crown, of the Crown jewels and the revenues, Mary without a single accessory of royalty, without arms or money, was gathering round her the flower of the nobility, and was issuing manifestoes to the whole kingdom, as calmly as if she were already undisputed mistress of the realm. ”

“ And as Mary Queen of Scots would have inherited the English crown in right of her birth, supposing the English Parliament not to have altered the succession, the Pope himself, and most of the discontented who were followers of his, maintained that Mary was the rightful Queen of England, and Elizabeth the wrongful Queen. Mary being so closely connected with France, and France being jealous of England, there was far greater danger in this than there would have been if she had had no alliance with that great power. ”

“ Each day brought Mary fresh conquests. After a nine days’ rebellion, without a single blow having been struck in her defence, she was proclaimed Queen in every town in England. Her journey to London was a triumphal progress. Antoine de Noailles, the French ambassador, who had so lately conspired with Edward’s Council, and who was to be the evil genius of the new reign, rode twenty-five miles into the country to meet and congratulate the Queen in his master’s name, offering her the whole of the French forces, in support of her right. ”

“ Mary, though personally a gentle and peaceful woman, yet in her teens, was very formidable to Elizabeth as an opposing claimant of the crown. All the Catholics in France and in Scotland would naturally take Mary's side. Then, besides this, there was a large Catholic party in England, who would be strongly disposed to favor any plan which should give them a Catholic monarch. ”

“ But Mary’s most pressing cause for anxiety was Philip’s determination to invade France, and to prevail on the English, not only to succour his army with troops and money, but to consent to an aggressive alliance, and a formal declaration of war against Henry II. Under other conditions there would have been nothing repugnant to Mary in an open rupture with the most Christian King, who from the moment of her accession had been her secret, powerful and most insidious enemy. ”

“ It was becoming more and more evident that the only hope for France was in a speedy alliance with England. The Bishop of Tarbes, on his return from his embassy to solicit Mary’s hand for his master, contributed his meed of praise, assuring Francis that the Princess was “the pearl of the world,” and “of such beauty and virtue that the King of England esteemed her more than anything on earth”. ”

“ The Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary are eloquent of her generosity towards “the Lady Elizabeth’s grace,” and until Elizabeth forfeited her esteem by making common cause with her enemies, there was no diminution of cordiality on the part of the Queen towards her sister. She married Philip of Spain in spite of all opposition, in the first place for the sake of the realm, and in the hope of issue, and gave him a [Pg 479] passionate devotion. In most of these things Mary was a true woman, no heroine, but tender and human to a fault. ”

“ Mary with a few kindred spirits was reactionary, and if for a while, her popularity was as great, the nation’s love for her as enthusiastic as ever, it was because people were still more than half unconscious of the new forces at work among them. England was not yet Protestantised. The legislation of five or six years had not overcome the habits of thought formed by nine centuries, and although a new generation had sprung up since the rupture with Rome, believing that Pope spelt arch-enemy, the greater number of Englishmen were in all other respects Catholics by choice. ”

“ Mary living, and in her power, was an asset. She might always be set at liberty on terms. Elizabeth hated parting with a political asset even at a high price, for good value. Hitherto she had reckoned the living Mary as worth more than Mary's death would be: for Mary might simply be replaced as a claimant by James, who was not, like his mother, in her power, and might very well think the crown of England worth a Mass.
[Sidenote: its recent developments]
Now however, a considerable change had come over the situation. Failing Mary the English Catholics were divided as to the succession. ”

“ There was a great nobleman in England, named the Duke of Norfolk, who had vast estates, and was regarded as the greatest subject in the realm. He was a Catholic. Among the other countless schemes and plots to which Mary's presence in England gave rise, he formed a plan of marrying her, and, through her [Pg 258] claim to the crown and by the help of the Catholics, to overturn the government of Elizabeth. He entered into negotiations with Mary, and she consented to become his wife, without, however, as she says, being a party to his political schemes. ”

“ In France, she was obliged to bear the blame of many instances of bigotry and over-severity in the government of her uncles;—in England, Elizabeth took every opportunity to load with opprobrium a sister Queen, whose descent, birth, station, and accomplishments, were so much superior to her own;—in Scotland, the Reformers, inspired by James Stuart, who, with ulterior views of his own, was contented to act as the tool of Elizabeth, laboured to make it be believed that Mary was an uncompromising and narrow-minded Catholic. ”

“ Underhill, although belonging to the so-called gospellers, and having been arrested while Mary was in Suffolk, for a ballad which he had written against Papists, was released a few days after her arrival in London. He always remained a Protestant, but was so conspicuously loyal to the Queen that he was never molested for religion during her reign. ”

“ There is little doubt that there had been no further movement to raise the Lady Jane to the throne, and had her father remained faithful, although sentence of death had been passed on her, she would shortly with her husband have regained complete liberty. None suspected Suffolk’s fidelity, for with consummate deceit, the Duke feigned the deepest attachment to the person of the Queen, giving repeated assurances of the same, and of his approval of her marriage. So entirely was Mary deceived, that it was thought she contemplated placing him at the head of her troops. ”

“ Mary did not however on this account vanish from the stage of the world: rather she obtained an exceedingly important position by her presence in England, where one party acknowledged her immediate claim to the throne, the other at least her claim to the succession; and hence arose not merely inconveniences but very serious dangers for the English government. Even in 1569, at a moment when the Catholic military power had the superiority in France and the Netherlands, Mary's uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, proposed to the King of Spain an offensive alliance against Queen Elizabeth. ”

“ On Mary’s accession, he wrote many urgent appeals to the Queen, beseeching her to lose no time in riveting the broken chain between England and Rome. He possessed undoubted influence with her, but less than the Emperor, who counselled delay, and took care that the interests of the empire should before all be secured. The eldest son of the Church, Charles ever made religion the handmaid of politics ”

“ It is doubtful, even had her hopes of an heir not proved vain, whether Mary would have been able to control the revolutionary movement that had now spread from London into various parts of the country. She had formed an alliance with the most powerful nation in Europe, she had reconciled her kingdom to the one stable institution in Christendom, she had worked incessantly to promote peace between the Emperor and the French King, she had earnestly desired peace in her time ”

“ This led her into a political labyrinth, and into those entanglements which were connected with her disastrous marriage, and then, through its combination with the religious idea, into all the guilt which is imputed to her more or less justly. It cost Mary her country and her life. Even on the scaffold she reminded men of her high rank which was not subject to the laws: she thought the sentence of heretics on her, a free queen, would be of service to the kingdom of God. ”

“ With a great deal of circumlocution, he prayed the Queen to marry, but not to choose a husband among foreigners, and he expatiated on the advantages she would derive from a union with a member of the English nobility. Such language, respectful though it might be, was not such as to be acceptable to Tudor ears, and in an aside, Mary exclaimed that she would be a match for all her Chancellor’s cunning. ”

“ Peter Frarin of Antwerp, Master of Arts, and Bachelor of both laws, writing in the next reign says enthusiastically: “I could declare unto you how the traitorous gospellers of England gathered a main host against their most virtuous lady Queen Marie, the rare treasure, the peerless jewel, the most perfect pattern and example of our days. How they shot arrows and darts against her court gates, conspired her death, devised to poison and kill her with a dagg at one time, with a privy dagger at another time, reviled her, called her bastard, butcher ”

“ Mary was Queen of Scotland, and claimed to be Queen of England. She said Elizabeth had no right to the throne. Mary was suspected of murdering her husband Darnley, was driven from Scotland by the people, and became Elizabeth's prisoner for nineteen years. She was always plotting against her cousin; sometimes she planned the assassination of the Queen with the discontented English, and sometimes she called upon the Kings of France and Spain to invade England, and place her on its throne. Mary's long captivity and various misfortunes have made her an object of lasting interest. ”